The pairing of the terms sustainability and pleasure recalls a distinction familiar from historical discussions of architecture, a distinction between the discipline's utilitarian and hedonistic dedications. Sometime before Vitruvius placed venustas in relative isolation from the terminological doublet that articulates his response to the necessitarian aspects of human accommodation (fermitas, utilitas), Cicero had already distinguished those arts devoted to the satisfaction of necessity, among which he had one-sidedly included architecture, from those devoted to the pursuit of pleasure.1 The distinction is made explicit in the dyadic formula "beauty and utility," that organizes 18th-century thinking about landscape and to a lesser extent the building arts.
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