This chapter shows how Vitruvius developed his three fundamental categories within a naturalistic and empiricist conception of human life and perception. In the Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti and Andrea Palladio, inspired by Neo-Platonism, took a more rationalistic, mathematical approach to beauty in their theories and their buildings. In the eighteenth century, the Scottish philosopher Lord Kames returned to Vitruvius's empiricist approach, while the French theorist Marc-Antoine Laugier, inspired by the aesthetic theory of Charles Batteux, identified beauty with the imitation of nature, but specifically with the identification of beauty with structural functionality.

The Introduction uses the examples of two weekend retreats built four centuries apart by Andrea Palladio and Steven Holl to argue that for all their differences, both structures aim at good construction, functionality, and aesthetic appeal. The argument is amplified by consideration of a very different structure, a recycling plant designed by the contemporary architect Annabelle Selldorf. The cast of characters for the rest of the book are then introduced.