European Early modern architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism

At times, the image of a building attains a status above and beyond the physical artifact represented, wherein the depiction of what could have been is given equal status to or privileged over what was built. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s oeuvre is chockablock with such instances – both intentional and not. The canonical Berliner Bild-Bericht photographs of his German Pavilion for the Barcelona International Exposition (1928–29) are the most celebrated of these, while the drawings of his “Project for a Brick Country House” are arguably the most influential of his early Weimar experiments (1921–25).1 Yet, typical of the uncertainty that surrounds much of Mies’ avant-garde work of the 1920s, little is known with certainty of the genesis of the brick villa project: not its client, if there was one; not its site, if there was one; not even the year in which the drawings were made. Only two drawings attributable to Mies’ Berlin office describe the project: a spare plan, largely absent annotations, and a perspective. Neither existed for very long; no one seems to know what became of them.The brick villa project occupied the center of five years of fundamental experimentation in Mies’ career, beginning in 1921, a watershed year for the architect. Fundamental questions remain: what do the Der Neubau reproductions of the brick villa drawings represent and what can we learn from them? What do they document, and what do they depict?

Until recently the impact of the Lutheran Reformation has been largely regarded in political and socio-economic terms, yet for most people it was not the abstract theological debates that had the greatest impact upon their lives, but what they saw in their parish churches every Sunday. This collection of essays provides a coherent and interdisciplinary investigation of the impact that the Lutheran Reformation had on the appearance, architecture and arrangement of early modern churches.

Drawing upon recent research being undertaken by leading art historians and historians on Lutheran places of worship, the volume emphasises often surprising levels of continuity, reflecting the survival of Catholic fixtures, fittings and altarpieces, and exploring how these could be remodelled in order to conform with the tenets of Lutheran belief. The volume not only addresses Lutheran art but also the way in which the architecture of their churches reflected the importance of preaching and the administration of the sacraments. Furthermore the collection is committed to extending these discussions beyond a purely German context, and to look at churches not only within the Holy Roman Empire, but also in Scandinavia, the Baltic States as well as towns dominated by Saxon communities in areas such as in Hungary and Transylvania.

By focusing on ecclesiastical 'material culture' the collection helps to place the art and architecture of Lutheran places of worship into the historical, political and theological context of early modern Europe.

Architectural atlas of Zagreb contains overview of the history of Zagreb architecture and 900 entries on buildings from all parts of the city.
The buildings are grouped according to Zagreb’s neighborhoods: Upper Town, Kaptol, Lower Town - Centre, Lower Town - West, Lower Town - East, Savska street, Vukovarska street and Slavonska avenue, New Zagreb, etc. Each of these neighborhoods has been split into streets, and the buildings are organized according to their official street number. Along with each city area, a map showing the locations of all the marked buildings mentioned in the atlas is also attached.
The buildings in this atlas have been selected primarily according to their importance to the history of Zagreb’s architecture, while also bearing in mind their interest to the average visitor to Zagreb. The city center (Lower Town, Upper Town, and Kaptol) has been covered in most detail.

Archaeological excavations outside the Church of the Birth of John the Baptist in Modra. In the autumn of 2013, rescue archaeological excavations were carried out outside the Church of the Birth of John the Baptis, during which remnants of architecture from the medieval and modern phases of the history of the church’s development were discovered, together with the foundations of two graves from the nineteenth century and a modern age road. The aim of this paper is to provide more detailed information on the results of the excavations and try to point out certain design elements in sacral architecture, unique in Slovakia

The monastery of Brou founded by Margaret of Austria, daughter of Maximilian I and aunt of his successor Charles V at the head of the Holy Roman Empire, is a masterpiece that has been regarded as a clever political instrument to represent the power of its commissioner. As such, it could also be said that exhibits a keen modern spirit in line with Alberti's literary suggestions, despite its sheer late Gothic architectural features. Considering that the artistic choices of Margaret of Austria might be related to her stay in Spain during the years previous to this foundation, this paper aims at reflecting about the late Gothic – or early Renaissance?! – stylistic experiments that took place in the Iberian Peninsula during that time, which would give rise to the profoundly rhetoric “styles” that became known as Isabellian, Plateresc, and Manueline. Particularly, and focusing on the relationship between visual form and meaning, the paper seeks to reflect on which ideological values – conspicuously “nationalistic” in all the cases – were associated with which different styles in the eve of the short period of time when patrons and architects chose different styles as alternative speeches (namely, the late-Gothic and the Italian Renaissance). The paper will eventually question the preference of Margaret of Austria for a yet “old-fashioned” architectural language as a sort of appraised criticism to provide the buildings at Brou with a particular meaning – this considering some written, pictorial and material evidence.

In the last years the urban sprawl growing suggested by various requirements is producing a radical territory transformation, with negative consequences on environment and society. This phenomenon requires the current settlement model rethinking, adapting to the rapid transformation conditions of the contemporary urban culture and the compatible development current lines. In response to these issues and in line with current conditions, technology and environmental design is addressing towards a new trend that places landscape design as the primary city making tool, summed up through the recent landscape urbanisme theory, that deals with the phenomenon of landscape at different scales. The significant increase of environmentalism and global ecological awareness associated with the growth of tourism, in the search of the local identity sense and the documents arrival such as the European Landscape Convention and the Codice dei Beni Culturali e del Paesaggio, give new importance to the landscape, recognized as a public, cultural, ecological and social asset as well as economic resource. So it is a subject to protect and enhance. It also becomes a multipurpose and multiform tool for the organization, control and generation of urban form, given its qualities that make it suitable for contemporary urbanization processes. In this context, “urban gaps” assume crucial importance, considered a resource in the metropolitan landscape. Landscape architecture becomes the starting point of contemporary urbanism, intervening within multiple processes of territorial planning: from the recovery of degraded sites to drosscapes, from the transport infrastructure integration in the urban fabric to the ecological network restoration. The concept of city as opposed to countryside is outdated and the agricultural landscape is called to play an important strategic role in the urban regeneration policies on the city suburbs, in those of recovery, maintenance and enhancement of landscape, in terms of collective cultural identity and in the economic point of view. The contemporary technological and environmental practices positively affect on the economy, lifestyle, politics, social relations and ecology, bringing out a new urban quality.

This senior honors thesis explores the logic of preservation behind the extension of Strasbourg's World Heritage Site to include the Neustadt, a development built by the German administration between 1870 and 1916. Divided into three sections focusing on the Neustadt master plan, the Orangerie/Conseil des XV neighborhood, and the Grande Percée, the paper reframes the interchange of French and German planning practices in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Výpravná kniha Pavla Zatloukala Meditace o architektuře: Olomouc, Brno, Hradec Králové, 1815–1915 je po všech stránkách úctyhodným příspěvkem k žánru uměleckohistorických profesorských syntéz. Nesluší jí pouze hlavní titul, disproporčně menší pozornost věnovaná Hradci Králové a absence závěru.

On the Medieval Topography of the Towns of Satu Mare and Mintiu
During the Middle Ages the towns of Satu Mare/Szatmár and Mintiu/Németi were situated on the opposite
bank of river Someş/Szamos, as two distinct settlements. They were located close to each other, and they shared
mostly a common history, but they kept their administrative separation until 1712. The close geographical
position, and their parallel history, formed the two towns as twin-settlements, a situation which created a rather
special topographical arrangement for medieval Hungary. Unfortunately, due to the Ottoman Wars of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, and the massive rebuilding during the modern period, the medieval townscapes of the
two twin settlements were not preserved. Using the methodological and conceptual framework developed for the series of the Atlases of Historical Towns, the study analyses the dominant elements of the two towns’ topography: watercourses, fortifications, dominant buildings, and town-parcels. A review of the sources on these topographical elements is given, parallel with the assessment of their relevance for the medieval period. Except of the position of the parish churches, and the trace of the main roads, no other element can be traced back earlier than the sixteenth century, most precisely before the period of the Ottoman Wars.