The concept of perfection has always had a privileged role within the ambit of architecture. In comparison to ‘beauty’, which constitutes an aesthetic category of value highly determined by the specificity of the paradigmatic theoretical frameworks from which it arises, perfection exhibits a more objective character, related to notions of internal consistency, coherence, and completeness. The will of articulating a whole, by means of the definition of a certain law of configuration that imprints an order to matter and space, is a meta-principle of architectural design that transcends styles, cultural contexts, and epochs. The overarching character of this meta-principle is rooted in physiological aesthetics: the perception of integrity, the pulsion towards visual coherence in any given system composed by differentiated parts, is the projection of an ideal state of plenitude that arises from our natural organic pulsion towards integrity. The maximum degree of perfection corresponds to the achievement of the maximum degree of complexification within the bounds of integrity and correspondence between part and whole. “Perfectio est consensus in varietate” (Wolff, Ontologia, §503, p. 390.). This consensus is a command, which in the case of architecture finds its clearest expression in the plan view, which is not a mere medium of graphic representation, but an imperative sign of correspondence; a decree not written in words, but traced in axes, lines, and measurements. The mastery in the definition of these relationships is the measure of the excellence of an architect, a mastery that evokes demiurgic undertones. Playing the role of ‘semi-gods’, giving form to our projects as consistent (micro)cosmos, is certainly a driving purpose behind our architectural endeavours, whether confessed or not. In words of Cesariano, “quilli Architecti che sano producere li sollerti effecti pareno come semidei perche cercano che larte si asimiglia & supplisca a la natura.” (Cesariano, Di Lucio Vitruvio Pollione de Architectura, etc., Como 1521, lib. I, fol ii v. Quoted in Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural principles in the age of humanism., p. 14.).
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