Early Modern Architecture

La lettura archeologica dei tessuti storici urbani deve tenere conto dei diversi fattori che ne hanno condizionato l’assetto archettonico: storici, socia- li, politici, ambientali (orografia, accesso a risorse naturali, clima, materiali costruttivi locali...), non- ché di quelli legati alla religione e alle tradizioni. Pertanto, nel campo della ricerca su tale argomen- to, si applica un tipo di lettura multidisciplinare sia al paesaggio rurale sia alla città pre-moderna. Quest’ultima è intesa come una realtà stratificata nel tempo, le cui caratteristiche principali e il cui processo evolutivo possono definirsi unicamente a partire da una realtà storica frammentaria1. Si sviluppano attualmente studi di “archeologia del- la transizione” che mettono a fuoco le dinamiche delle diverse civiltà e dei contesti multiculturali che hanno condizionato la storia dei paesi del Me- diterraneo utilizzando una prospettiva diacronica che non si concentra soltanto su di un periodo storico determinato.

Wenn heute vom Forum die Rede ist, dürfte eine breite Assoziationskette ins Spiel kommen, da das Forum längst zum Synonym für Öffentlichkeit geworden ist . Es darauf zu reduzieren, wäre jedoch zu kurz gegriffen und würde seinem Einfluss auf Architektur und Stadt nicht gerecht. Dies gilt auch für die folgende Annäherung an einen Strang der Forumsidee, der auf das ‚Bürgerforum‘ zielt. Der zu Beginn vielleicht irritierend wirkende Begriff ‚Action Architecture‘ ist als abgewandelte Allusion auf seine manifestartige Definition von Gerhard Kallmann im Jahr 1959 zu verstehen . Der Architekt war ein Protagonist der von Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles in den 1960er Jahren errichteten City Hall in Boston, die dem Stil des Brutalismus verpflichtet ist. Konzipiert war sie als ein city forum und urban theater, als ein Ort für Demonstrationen und für Feierlichkeiten. Es ging den Architekten um ein Rathaus, das auf sich aufmerksam macht, um eine Architektur, die im Sinn einer ‚Action Architecture‘ in den Stadtraum aus- und eingreift, um eine Architektur, die der modernen Angst vor dem Nichts etwas entgegenstellen sollte, wie der Architekturhistoriker David Monteyne schreibt. Aufgrund dieser bewussten architektonischen Haltung gegenüber der bestehenden sozialen Realität erweist sich ‚Action Architecture‘ als anregende Kategorie für das Nachdenken über das Potenzial der Forumsidee. Sie steht, so die These, für die Suche nach kommunaler bzw. bürgerlicher Teilhabe, Macht und Repräsentation. Da die Forumsidee an die Antike als Dispositiv gebunden ist, gehen mit deren Reaktivierung auch besondere Erwartungen an die soziale Kraft und emotive Wirkung von Architektur- und Stadträumen einher.

Resultado científico en el marco del Proyecto I+D+I "Pest-OE/EAT/4041/2011 - Projecto Estratégico – UI 4041 – 2011-2012 com prolongamento a 2013", del Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo (CEAA), financiado por la Fundaçao para a Ciència e a Tecnologia (FCT). Ministério da Educaçao e Ciência, Portugal

This article makes a detailed analysis of all the documentary sources so far recorded on the Torre Nueva in Zaragoza, be they direct or indirect, well-known or hitherto unheard-of. This provides a new base from which to evaluate existing data and, as a result analyse the Torre Nueva within its original context and in the context of later centuries.
Es éste un análisis en profundidad de las fuentes documentales, directas e indirectas, conocidas e inéditas, registradas hasta el momento sobre la Torre Nueva. Con él se establece un nuevo punto de partida desde el que valorar los datos existentes y, en consecuencia, la obra de la Torre inserta en la problemática correspondiente a su contexto así como al de los siglos pos- teriores a él.

The subject of the study is the interpretation of the construction development and history of the burgher house no. 210, situated in the historical centre of Opava. Text presents facts about development phases of the construction of the building from the Renaissance period, Baroque and Classicism periods until the historicizing period in the 19th century. The clarification of the context of some degradation changes of the building and the yard buildings in the 20th century is also part of this text. The modifications are put into context not only with the owners and the builders implementing them, but also in the context of contemporary architectural culture of the wider region.

Being attributed as one of the most significant examples of Modern Architecture, Barcelona Pavilion emerged as a prototype in terms of immateriality and the virtual dimension of space, as well as a distinguished case that juxtaposes the discourse and praxis of its epoch, which still remains as an inspiring example in today's debates. However, the pavilion was constructed in the glowing years of Modern Period, with its outstanding affiliation to International Style, this paper focuses on the pavilion as a milestone in which the intangible characteristics of the spatiality have influenced the constitution of architectural space. While declining the closed-box ideology of the conventional spatiality, this paper aims to discuss the emergence of an architectural embodiment through corporeal and incorporeal becomings (the transitive existence of architectural space as well as the interaction of subjects). This paper also interacts with spatio-temporal multiplicities, and appraises their transforming capacities in space, that enable the proliferation of the spatial relations by constituting the multiple actualization processes of endless potentials of the virtual. Besides the processes of deterritorailization and reterritorialization appear within the procedure of territorial shifts in the transition of architectural becoming and the immaterialization of the embodiment. Moreover, this paper also brings inside and outside relations into debate as well as notions of floating space and spatial continuity; visual continuity, reflection and surveillance, and furthermore the imperative affect of the image in spatial relations. In addition to all, this work is also keen at discussing these cited conceptions resonating with the concepts of contemporary theory, while speculating on the significant effect of the pavilion in contemporary architecture.

From: Las artes en Quito en el cambio del siglo XVII al XVIII (Quito: FONSAL, 2009), pp. 11-25.
Traces the history of architect José Jaime Ortiz through archival sources from his birth in Alicante, Spain, through his work in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to the culmination of his career in Quito.

Title: "The development of bastioned fortifications in Utrecht (1528-1559): local tradition versus Italian innovation."

Abstract: Charles V’s annexation of Utrecht in 1528 marked the start of three decades of uninterrupted building activity on the city’s fortifications. The new works ranged from an innovative citadel (1528-1535) to rather old-fashioned round guntowers (1536-1542) and the most extraordinary of bastions (1543-1558). The latter were the result of close collaboration between the imperial engineer Donato de Bono, who visited Utrecht at least four times, and the local city architect Willem van Noort, who was in charge of their construction. It turns out that Van Noort had a surprisingly large share in the design of the bastions, the architecture of which is strikingly un-Italian. Indeed they bear the stamp of the local building tradition. The vertical composition of the flanks – including the odd guard-houses with stepped gables standing on top of the casemates – clearly descends from the type of guntower built by Van Noort in the preceding decade. Another highly unusual feature is the bastion’s organization around an open-air inner courtyard, which is reminiscent of earlier bulwark-gates in other towns of the Low Countries. In short, the Utrecht bastions can only be understood as a fusion of local practice and Italian innovation.

For ordinary people, the impact of the Reformation would have centred around local parish churches, rather than the theological debates of the Reformers. Focusing on the Calvinists, this volume explores how the architecture, appearance and arrangement of places of worship were transformed by new theology and religious practice.

Based on original research and site visits, this book charts the impact of the Reformed faith across Europe, concentrating in particular on France, the Netherlands and Scotland. While in some areas a Calvinist Reformation led to the adaptation of existing buildings, elsewhere it resulted in the construction of new places of worship to innovative new designs. Reformed places of worship also reflected local considerations, vested interests and civic aspirations, often employing the latest styles and forms of decoration, and here provide a lens through which to examine not only the impact of the Reformation at a local level but also the character of the different religious settlements across Europe during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

[EN] Military engineering treatises and the curricula of such institutions as the Academy of Barcelona, the École Royale du Génie de Mézières and the École Polythecnique stress the role of art du trait or stereotomy, a graphical method for the formal control of ashlar masonry, based in double or multiple orthogonal projection. In the years of the French Revolution, such procedures morphed into Descriptive Geometry, a science that deals with a wide range of geometric problems, both practical and theoretical.
This chapter includes a synchronic presentation of these practices and a diachronic survey of its evolution from the Late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, finishing with a discussion of the relevance of this field in treatises and didactic practice. Rather than its use in such military construction members as rere-arches, skew arches or stairways, the reason for the importance granted to stereotomy in military construction is to be found in its role in the education of the spatial vision of the engineer.

The increased scholarly preoccupation with early modern collections and the Kunst- und Wunderkammer – seen during recent decades – has led to new understandings of how architectural arrangements of collections have developed within discourses on knowledge, scienti c method and learning. This paper addresses Johann Daniel Major’s Unvorgreifliches Bedencken von Kunst- und Naturalien-Kammern insgemein (1674), a treatise on the organisation of collections with regard to the architectural disposition in buildings, rooms, on shelves, in cabinets and drawers. The treatise draws on a vast repertoire of visits to collections, written accounts, catalogues, previously published treatises etc, and mirrors the Kunstkammer architecture of the period and contributes to its development. I will be construing Major’s nomenclature of Kunstkammern and its etymologies as an attempt to establish the ancestry for a building type and contextualise the theory into knowledge management of early modern erudite culture. I am asserting that the ideal architecture of the Kunstkammer cannot be understood as the adaptation of Vitruvian or other early modern architectural theory, but emerges in the process of arranging knowledge systems in physical space, relating the architecture to rhetorical and dialectic concepts such as methodus, dispositio, ordo, memoria and loci communes, ultimately derived from rhetoric and dialectic. Not particularly Vitruvian – albeit often with a classical appearance – I will demonstrate how the Kunstkammer interiors were fundamentally indebted to prevailing knowledge practices such as commonplacing and classifying, which had been developed by intellectuals like Erasmus of Rotterdam, Petrus Ramus and Theodor Zwinger. In order to provide an original understanding of the rationale behind the early modern Kunstkammer architecture, the paper will highlight how such practices regarding the ordering of knowledge contributed to the envisagement of entirely new and unprecedented types of spaces, ultimately building the foundation for the museum.

In 1466, the western part of the Teutonic Order’s dominion was incorporated into the Polish Crown as Royal Prussia. Castles formerly owned by the Order became seats of the royal administration. Dissimilarly to other parts of Poland, giant fortunes of the rich and noble would not evolve on these territories. Local families based their life and existence on assets received from the crown. Rather than build new castles, they resided on royal estates held in connection with offices held. While modern-day castle reconstructions have not been the subject of any extensive research to date, they do reflect changes taking place in contemporaneous Prussia. Reform usually involved residential space. Interior furnishings were modernised, residential space itself expanded by adding new storeys to formerly low-rise wings of high castles. Profound reconstruction of Gothic high castles became a rarity. Old
residential buildings were reconstructed, new ones erected in zwingers and baileys, in brick and frame structures. Other activities involved non-residential auxiliary buildings. Old Gothic edifices (stables and coach houses) underwent maintenance and repair. If they failed to survive, they would be replaced with new ones, often as not in frame technology. Since these lands would not witness warfare for a prolonged period (until the 17th century), fortifications were not a major part of any modernisation project. Usual efforts would involve more or less successful attempts to preserve old curtain walls. Once damaged, they would often as not be repaired with the use of wooden fencing. Seventeenth-century wars would highlight the inadequacy of mediaeval fortifications. Extensive wartime destruction of the period would mark the beginning of the end of the castle epoch. In the 18th century, the nobility would show propensity for building modern palaces.

In the aftermath of the period referred to as the Renaissance in Sweden Olof Rudbeck the Elder (1630–1702) envisaged a renaissance with his internationally acclaimed, and criticized, Atlantica. Building on the Swedish hyperborean theory by Bureus and Stiernhielm, the professor in medicine, architect and archaeologist postulated that Atlantis had been located in Old Uppsala. Rudbeck twists the notion of the rebirth of classical antiquity suggesting that ancient Swedish architecture had been the model for Greek and Roman architecture. In designing a grand scheme of academy buildings in Uppsala in accordance with Vitruvius Rudbeck comes full circle and re-establishes new Uppsala as the new Atlantis, with
reference to Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. The paper re-evaluates this analytical perspective by also addressing the theatre as it came to expression in Rudbeck’s theatrum anatomicum. A Renaissance creation, the Vitruvian theatre not only became the prototype for building types such as the anatomical theatre, dramatic theatre and Kunstkammer, but also for schemes of memory and knowledge like Camillo’s L’Idea del theatro or Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum Sapientiæ Æternæ. In Rudbeck’s anatomical theatre the Apollonian temple and the knowledge theatre fuses into an amalgamate of native and foreign and ancient and modern prototypical relationships.

This essay is part of a book about the oratory of The Rosary in San Domenico in Palermo where the Sicilian artist, Giacomo Serpotta, worked at the beginning of the 18th century. Similarly to the other 3 books about Serpotta written by the same team, this book consists in four papers which read the artwork from four different points of view: in detail, this paper examines the urban context and the architectural structure in which the artist worked.

"En este artículo se ofrece una apretada visión de síntesis sobre la arquitectura desarrollada en tierras aragonesas entre la primera mitad del siglo XV y los primeros compases del XVII desde el reconocimiento de la coexistencia de dos tradiciones constructivas diferentes –la arquitectura levantada con ladrillo y con yeso, y la realizada en piedra– que, partiendo de lenguajes artísticos de raíz medieval, experimentaron dos fenómenos artísticos distintos a lo largo de todo este tiempo ya que, por un lado, conocieron una evolución que podría entenderse como propia y, por otro, sirvieron de cauce de expresión a quienes trataron de aplicar el nuevo sistema artístico renacentista que se estaba articulando en la Península Itálica, ofreciendo formas –y respondiendo a estilos– que irían desde el gótico hasta el clasicismo pleno.

In this article we offer a very close synthesis vision of the architecture developed on Aragonese land between the first half of the 15th century and the early 17th, starting from the acknowledgement of the coexistence of two different construction traditions : the architecture built with brick and plaster, and the one executed with stone that, starting from artistic languages of medieval origin, experienced two distinct artistic phenomena in that period since, on one side, they knew an evolution that could be understood as its own, and, on the other, they served as base of expression for those who tried to apply the new artistic Renaissance system that was being developed in the Italic Peninsula, offering forms and responding to styles that would stretch from the Gothic to Classicism.
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Pisan architecture in the fifteenth century, the first age of political domination of Florence on the former independent maritime republic, was marked by an opposition between the persistent Romanesque and Gothic local tradition, and the introduction of Florentine Renaissance innovations. The presence of early Renaissance masters, the activity of specialized craftsmen, and the generosity of Medicean patrons (foremost
among them the bishop Filippo, who built the extraordinary Bishop’s Palace) favored the diffusion of the new architectural language – Brunelleschian at first, then Albertian – which was mainly employed in decorations, exterior elements, and courtyards, without undermining, except for its fortified walls, the medieval image of the town.
L’architettura pisana del XV secolo, caratterizzato dalla prima dominazione fiorentina, è frutto della dialettica fra resistenza della tradizione romanico-gotica locale e introduzione delle innovazioni rinascimentali proposte e imposte dalla Dominante. La presenza dei maestri del primo Rinascimento, l’attività di maestranze specializzate e la liberalità di committenti medicei (primus fra tutti il vescovo Filippo con lo straordinario episodio dell’Episcopio), favorirono il diffondersi del nuovo linguaggio – di stampo brunelleschiano prima, albertiano poi – declinato soprattutto nelle decorazioni, negli arredi e nei cortili, senza intaccare l’immagine medievale della città, se non nel suo bordo fortificato.

Originally published as “The Philosophies in Stone: Reading the Sansevero Chapel in Naples” in Zirpolo (ed.) The Chapels of Italy from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Centuries: Art, Patronage and Identity (New Jersey, 2010): 425-454. This version contains minor edits.