Martin, as Sean Keller has recently noted, was a friend of Gabo and Nicholson, and therefore understood Russian Constructivism as a first step towards the science of the art, but it is clear that Rowe and then Eisenman were not in agreement. For Rowe ‘mathematics’ was more a device for the parti submitted to cultural/spatial interpretation, and not to be taken as a rule or fixed parameter − he was more interested in the relation between the formal structure of the plan and its implied visual and actual movement patterns − centroidal for Palladio, peripheral for Le Corbusier, thus Classical and Modern. For Rowe, the fundamental link between the Mannerist architect and the Modernist architect was both architects’ ‘late’ relationship to their epoch, and their ability to ‘reduce’ the language of their age into formulae that were easily transformed, project by project − ‘types’ one might say.
They were also important for their ability to publish internationally, idealising and presenting their work to those who had not experienced it in person in an easily reproducible way. In Cambridge in the period 1960-62, this paradigm worked, at least for those tutored by Rowe. Eisenman’s characteristic ‘slice and dice’ formal method, for example, was derived from two other canonical articles by Rowe, ‘Mannerism and Modern Architecture’ (1950), and, with Robert Slutzky, ‘Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal’ (conceived 1956-58 but not published until ‘63).