CL O S E R E A D IN G A N D F OR M A L AN A LY S IS
FALL 2020 Y A L E S CHO O L O F A R CHI T E CT UR E P R O F : P E T E R E I S E NMA N T F : S HE L B Y W R I G HT
E T HNI E X U
CONTENTS
FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI - Humanist Origins
01
LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI - The Definition of Space as the Production of What is Not Seen
02
DONATO BRAMANTE | LUCIANO LAURANA - The Definition of the Organism
03
RAPHAEL - The Rational Extension of Bramante
04
MICHELANGELO - The Subjective Extension of Bramante
05
SABASTIANO SERLIO - A First Critique of Homogeneous Space
06
ANDREA PALLADIO - The Continuity from Raphael
07
VIGNOLA - The Continuity from Michelangelo
08
FRANCESCO BORROMINI - Surface As Space
09
GIAN LORENZO BERNINI | CARLO RAINALDI - Baroque Heterogeneity
10
GIAMBATTISTA NOLLI | GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI - Figural Space as Ground
11
KARL FRIEDRICH SCHINKEL - The Unseen Open Space (Partnered with Kai Wu)
12
01 FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI Basilica di San Lorenzo
Florence, Italy. 1470
Basilica di Santo Spirito
Florence, Italy. 1481
Humanist Origins An intrinsic internal conflict seems to be intertwined with the desire for perfection found in the design of both Santo Spirito and San Lorenzo by Brunelleschi. Being heavily politically driven by the social instability during the revolutionary period in Brunelleschi’s lifetime, both projects displayed strong passion towards an imagined stable future and afterlife while being careful and conservative in the material and formal application. Although San Lorenzo was initially driven by private sponsorship and Santo Spirito was built for public function from the beginning, both architectural designs experimented with inventive means of construction unprecedented at their times using classical elements to push the boundaries of classical architecture.
Since Santo Spirito was built through a much longer span of time compared to San Lorenzo, which even extended beyond Brunelleschi’s lifetime, the final outcome of Santo Spirito expresses the collective goal of architects and designers at the time who were dedicated to search for and obey a higher degree of order, with the belief that such order can not only bring beauty to the architecture itself but also serve as an authority for the unstable social environment. The floor plan of Santo Spirito was intentionally designed a perfect cross along with each measurement of the building components purposely designed to be in proportion with each other, allowing observers to peak into the power that the government and elite wish to display onto the general public, as well as the nobilities’ respect to nature and an imagined higher order. Being more functionally driven, San Lorenzo has an asymmetrical floor plan that follows certain functional circulation rather than the dominant perfection of grid evident in San Spirito.
Since great architecture indicates how humans wish to position themselves in the world, both buildings effectively articulate the progressive development of human’s admiration to order and perfection heralding the upcoming Enlightenment.
02 LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI Tempio Malatestiano
Rimini, Italy. 1468
The Definition of Space as the Production of What is Not Seen As L.B. Alberti believed, beauty is the inherent harmony within the form, structure, and context of a building. The unfinished church Tempio Malatestiano as it originally has been built as a 13th-century Gothic church for the Franciscans now exists as a combination of different styles from across a span of several hundred years. Although the building was never built as Alberti’s vision during his reconstruction period, the current outcome of this renovation expresses an atmospheric harmony between the seamless merge of its original ornamental Gothic style interior design and Alberti’s dynamic wrapping based on theories following geometrical means.
To subtly diminish the attention drawn by the church’s Gothic facade, Alberti’s method of integration is to wrap it. The thickness of the wall wrapping around the gothic ornaments indicates Alberti’s inspiration from the Roman arches, which allows the sun to create monumental shadows when moving across the facade and at the same time leaving space for the original Gothic decorations to reveal itself humbly underneath the arches around the church.
The ambitious design of a large-sized dome setting at the end of the church was never realized and never reached the construction stage, leaving the interior of the church almost untouched by Alberti. The contrast between the geometrically organized facades dominated by compositions circular forms and its ornamental interior guided by rectilinear geometries appears disconnected in context yet tightly connected structurally, leaving this building as an apparent unfinished fusion of time. On top of this fusion, this inextricable conflict also provides another opportunity for the church to add another layer of social value in its reflection across time.
Rather than a renovation project of a Gothic church, the construction of this building serves a greater function providing an opportunity for its future visitors to experience the unsettling relationship between the Gothic traditions and the architect’s geometrical reasoning.
03 DONATO BRAMANTE Santa Maria della Pace
Rome, Italy. 1482
LUCIANO LAURANA Palazzo Ducale
Urbino, Italy. 1454
The Definition of the Organism The courtyard designs in both buildings are generated based on the underlying principle of an overarching spatial arrangement. Similar positions of the columns in the courtyards are derived from strict symmetry and centripetal axes.
In Bramante’s Santa Maria Della Pace the corner columns are generated from the same architectural language as the surrounding columns appearing in uniformity. The corner conditions of the courtyard are also intentionally offset from the corner position of the levels above, creating a shift in the verticle edge of the inner facade. The visual significance of the courtyard corner columns is downplayed under the overarching geometry consistency. An implied continuity is present among columns of the same level, regardless of their positions. The separation in geometrical condition appears across the vertical levels, in which additional subordinative columns are added on the level above, adding variety to the consistency established through the ground level courtyard columns.
As opposed to Santa Maria Della Pace, Lauranna’s Palazzo Ducale uses repetition of building components to create strong corner conditions in the courtyard without compromising the repeated geometry at the corners. A change in dimensional uniformity is present at edge conditions by inventing an additional corner component, highlighting the boundary of the floor plan by enhancing the diagonal axis. This emphasis continues to the levels above, creating a strong visual hierarchy dominant at the corners in both the perspective view and the planimetric experience.
04 RAPHAEL The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple
Vatican City. 1513
The Rational Extension of Bramante The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple painted by Raphael establishes an extended architectural view in multiple dimensions from the apparently flat fresco. By setting a viewpoint framed in a semi-circular arch, an assumption of the viewer being in an equally grand space is established. The unfinished elements on all sides of the opening arch suggest the extenuation of space following the same order of layout.
The composition of the painting is organized by several key semi-circular frames forming arches and domes linked in the horizontal and vertical axis. The unfinished crop activates an extended view of all dimensions through the columns and walls.
An assumed order of symmetry is suggested through the missing parts of the semi-circular forms. The traditions of the classical architectural organization are being strictly followed. The order is carried out through the hierarchy of different sized arches, shrinking as the view goes from foreground to background. Each of the following arches sits within the previous one, extending the view in an invitational manner allowing imagination for the other half of the symmetry.
05 MICHELANGELO Laurentian Library
Florence, Italy. 1571
The Subjective Extension of Bramante The overall design structure of the library was well planned out by Michelangelo following strict symmetry and repetition of elements, with an underlying part-to-whole system. A continuity is determined to carry from the entrance to all the way to the back. Although the library was not completed entirely by Michelangelo himself, the later execution did pay full respect to his original architectural drawings.
In the ricetto, the form of the staircase does not directly correspond to the surrounding decorative and functional elements on the sidewalls of the room. The staircase appears to breaks from the uniformity of the overall design structure. Yet its geometry (specifically the edge lines) is derived from the entrance of the library across on the other side. Once looking at the plan of the ricetto stairs in relationship with the whole library together with the external elements, perspective reference lines are evident. The relationship between spatial elements inside the ricotta appears to be deliberately weakened, which reinforces their dialogue with the outer geometry as a whole.
An experiential awareness is created in the experience of walking up the staircase into the reading room through its disconnection with the strong horizontality and verticality of the surrounding environment. It creates the effect of being on an island isolated from the immediately surrounding, yet is related to and derived from the bigger overall environment.
06 SABASTIANO SERLIO Dwelling For A King
Serlio Book VI. 1550
A First Critique of Homogeneous Space Although not invented to be directly built from, Serlio’s plan drawings did embody messages that he wished to deliver through spatial imagination. One of the key characteristics of Mannerist architecture is that social context no longer dominates form. Instead, it becomes reframed or redefined by heterogeneous spatial elements.
The design being analyzed is one of Serlio’s plans, Dwelling For A King. Two almost identical plans of the same title were found, in which one of them was included in The Sixth Book.
When comparing and contrasting the two plans in particular at places where Serlio decided to change, subtle design decisions were indicated. These changes could reveal a conflict between Serlio’s original ambition and his expectation of the public’s acceptance. It is evident that in the book version of the plan (upper), spaces around the central oval appear to be more uniformly distributed, and stronger symmetry is evident despite subtle differences between unit spaces. Whereas the lower version suggests a more dynamic strategy for circulation and individual rooms, where no two rooms were intended to be identical and no linear circulation was expected in the overall space. Since there is little evidence of the exact order of production of these two plans, the one not included in the book could reveal Serlio’s initial ambition of the space, in which the ideas of Mannerism if being practiced in a creative approach. Whereas the one included in the book could be read as a reconciled product between his ambition and his expectation of his audiences’ level of acceptance for such a space, in which more authoritarian logic has been put into it rather than pure spatial logic-driven.
07 ANDREA PALLADIO Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore
Venice, Italy. 1592
San Giorgio Maggiore
Venice, Italy. 1610
The Continuity from Raphael The implementation of a mathematical system in the spatial organization is deeply rooted in Renaissance architecture. Under this overbearing guideline, any aesthetic that does not fit into this category could be judged as an outlier. Palladio respects Vitruvius’ authority but challenges the part-to-whole coherence that had been governing architectural design for decades, which is evident in his facade and plan designs.
In both the facades of II Redentore and San Giorgio Maggiore designed by Palladio, implied continuations of pediments were repetitively used under the layering techniques of the front facade, blurring the differentiation between real and fake depths of order from the front view. Viewers are only to observe the real spatial order of the sequence of the building layout when walking around the building. The facades are no longer extruded from one side of the plan, instead, it is composed of varies segments of the components on different sides of the plan. A facade can no longer be predicted by looking at single sides of the plan.
The intentional breakage of an overall order is also seen in Palladio’s plans. In II Redentore the plan is laid out in different parts following a sequence, parts are directly connected yet do not follow the spatial order of one another geometrically. In the plan of San Giorgio Maggiore, the nave dominates the spatial geometry and has the center part extended forming two individual areas. Although an overall spatial logic is evident, each part is designed following its own spatial logic.
08 VIGNOLA Villa Giulia
Rome, Italy. 1553
The Continuity from Michelangelo Initially designed by Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola in 1551-1553, the Villa Giulia today consists of a combination of different Italian master’s ingenuity. The nymphaeum and other garden structures were designed by Bartolomeo Ammanati, under the supervision of Giorgio Vasari. Michelangelo has also worked on it.
The building and the garden area to be experienced together as a delicate piece of the Mannerist architectural complex. Villa Giulia is made up of multiple parts laid out in a sequence on the plan. After entering from the front facade, the visitor will experience changes in spatial function and aesthetics through a sequence - from the building to the courtyard, then to the garden. Segments of the sequence are directly connected yet mismatched in geometry at transitional moments. The experience of changing spatial atmosphere is established through the gaps in formal continuity and scale. One feature that maintains the same which keeps a stable directionality of sequence is the pilasters present in the ongoing symmetry through the entire structure. The layout of pilasters on walls speaks to each other through different sequences despite the overall discontinuity. Together they lead an overarching role in unifying heterogeneous elements in the overall sequence of the design.
09 FRANCESCO BORROMINI Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza
Rome, Italy. 1660
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane
Rome, Italy. 1646
Surface As Space Borromini’s architectural designs have strong volumetric qualities that are enhanced by the underlying geometries embodied in them, in both two-dimensional organization and three-dimensional projection of the buildings. It is suspected that such formal logic could be related to his background as a stonemason.
As a keen follower of Michelangelo and the ruins of antiquity, Borromini not only developed from the great masters but also combined the methodology learn from the masters with his own geometrical approach - which made his architecture less Classical and more rational despite the huge classical influence.
The ceiling geometries in both buildings are specifically form driven, as well as their projectional relationship with the rest of the building. In San Carlo, the ceiling form is the expansion of one oval; whereas in Sant’ivo it consists of three semi-circles that unite at a middle point. The potentially different geometrical organization and generation principles embodied in both buildings are outlined in the drawings, with emphasis on both buildings’ dialogue with the “central” space. In Sant’ivo it appears that the middle portion was generated from several forms with an equal relationship with each other, which differs from the dominance of a circular central form in San Carlo.
10 GIAN LORENZO BERNINI Santa Maria dei Montesanto
Rome, Italy. 1679
CARLO RAINALDI Santa Maria dei Miracoli
Rome, Italy. 1681
Baroque Heterogeneity The twin churches at the Piazza del Popolo appear almost identical from the main facade view, yet adopted different internal spatial strategies.
As contained by the site conditions, the slight variation in widths and lengths of the lots resulted in both churches having asymmetrical floor plans around the periphery. Yet the entrances along with the naves are both symmetrical in the two churches, in which the roof forms both generated from a center point.
For the internal spatial organization, Santa Maria dei Miracoli has four separated individual spaces along the dominant circular center, connected by long narrow intermediate walkways. In Santa Maria dei Montesanto there are six of those separated individual spaces around the oval center, that are identical in size and connected by short small gateways. The transition of these smaller rooms is faster and less private in Montesanto compared to Miracoli. The openings of these smaller rooms from the center are also identical in Montesanto, making them equal in the spatial hierarchy, which at the same time creates a balanced axis through the entrance to the end of the church. This balance is not present in Miracoli as the openings vary in size and do not intentionally mirror each other along the entrance axis.
11 GIAMBATTISTA NOLLI Pianta grande di Roma
Rome, Italy. 1748
GIOVANNI BATTISTA PIRANESI Campo Marzio
Rome, Italy. 1762
Figural Space as Ground Nolli’s Map of Rome and Piranesi’s Campo Mario express different figural relationships within the city through different methodologies of depiction. Nolli’s approach is based on cartography and accuracy of depiction, whereas Piranesi’s map aims to encourage imagination of the future echoing the rise of the Enlightenment.
In Nolli’s map the juxtaposition between the organically grown city streets and houses, and the mathematically structured city monuments is seen clear and sharp. This contrast makes the occasionally posing up monuments appear slightly alienated, almost like an intruder of the original layout of the city. Spaces around the monuments also do not directly connect with nearby existing streets which further emphasizes this separation. According to history, this could have been a pure approach to accurate representation rather than an intentional depiction method.
In Piranesi’s map, the difference in representation between the city monuments and other normal residential streets is downplayed by using a consistent group of figures to represent buildings of all scales and functions. The organic and irregular outlines seen in Nolli’s map are almost eliminated in Piranesi’s drawing, the only remaining evidence is the river and some underlying planning guidelines of streets seen in the gap between gridded buildings. The use of constant poche seen in Nolli’s drawing is also redefined in Piranesi’s map, in which they are now depiction walls rather than indoor scape, and also occasionally used as decorative elements for shading and filling. While a clear figure-to-figure relationship is established in Nolli’s map depicting reality, Piranesi’s organizations of abstract geometries express observer-relative meanings. The visual language used by Piranesi freed the readers from the constraints of traditional map-reading and encourages imagination into the future linked with the Enlightenment.
12 KARL FRIEDRICH SCHINKEL Altes Museum
Berlin, Germany. 1830
Partered with Kai Wu
The Unseen Open Space Schinkel’s poetic use of the architectural effect in public space design is evident in the rotunda of Altes Museum, where the openness of the spherical form not only performs functionally as museum circulation but also embodies his poetic ambition in the design of public space.
Although the openness under the dome is gradually emphasized visually and as the levels get higher, the physical space available for users actually decreases in a reversed manner. The visual and physical expectation in experience juxtaposes, in which the poetry lies in the middle space of empty openness with no specific architectural function. Invisible orders lie within the unseen portions of the rotunda. Around the outer sphere artworks and structures are positioned behind the walls hidden from the public’s experience, providing s seamless visual journey as users meander through space. A rectilinear framework is also present above the dome on the outer facade, with no participation in the interior experience of the open space.
A juxtaposition is established through the contrast between visible user space and invisible poetic space that is symbolic to Schinkel’s museum. With the rest of the space designed following classical geometry of rectilinear space and vertical columns, the open gallery under the dome offers an escape place for the users when emerging themselves into the non-architectural narratives displayed in the museum.