Hold that the beauty of the orders comes from fixed proportions that please by nature, as consonances do in music; where the ancients differ, the differences answer to circumstances such as distance and height.
Firmness, commodity and delight
Every building must satisfy three demands at once: it must stand up (firmitas), serve its purpose (utilitas), and give pleasure to the eye (venustas).
architecture = firmitas + utilitas + venustas
Vitruvius says that durability comes from sound foundations and well-chosen materials, convenience from an arrangement of rooms that works without hindrance, and beauty from pleasing appearance and correct proportion of the members. Sir Henry Wotton’s English rendering of 1624, “firmness, commodity and delight”, became the most famous definition of architecture in the language.
Almost every later theory can be read as a shift of emphasis within the triad: the Gothic engineers pushed firmitas to its limits, the functionalists of the twentieth century promoted utilitas, and the academies of the eighteenth century argued endlessly about the grounds of venustas.
Related rules
Give the flight of steps before a temple an odd number, so that one who starts with the right foot will also set the right foot first on the top.
Judge every building against the first shelter: four trees for columns, branches laid across them for the entablature, and a pitched roof whose end makes the pediment. These three are the essential parts; all else is added.
Let columns stand free, round and upright, carrying a straight entablature directly; do not engage them in walls, replace them with pilasters, or set them on pedestals.
Avoid the ornaments that have no model in the hut: broken or curved pediments, pediments on the long side of a roof, orders piled storey upon storey on a church front, arches carried on columns, and twisted or cabled shafts.
Seek in every building only fitness (solidity, healthiness, convenience) and economy (symmetry, regularity, simplicity); a building that has these will please, and ornament added for its own sake is waste.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Firmness, commodity and delight”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/vitruvian-triad. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.