Concinnitās is the state of being skillfully put together or joined; a beauty that comes from the harmony, proportion, and congruity of the various parts of a whole assembled according to principles.
Borrowed from the art of rhetoric, Leon Battista Alberti used concinnitas to describe the inherent beauty of nature from which architecture ought to be inspired. In Alberti’s view, the ‘art of building’ went beyond the physical form, and was equally concerned with the effect of buildings on their users, their surroundings, and on the city. This notion did not refer to an innate or insular beauty, but one that was created from a correspondence and a relationship with its context and its outside.
