Prof. Mirka Beneš U Texas School of Architecture LAR 388 / ARC Fall 2010 p. 1 LAR 388 / ARC 368 R / ARC 388 R Prof. Mirka Beneš Thursday, 2pm-5pm Office hours: TBA Room: Sutton 3.112 Office: School of Architecture University of Texas at Austin LAR 388: Seminar Professional Design Practice in Baroque Rome: Landscape, Urbanism, Architecture Francesco Borromini. Fall Semester 2010 * Course Unique Numbers LAR 388 [01810], ARC 388 R [01210], ARC 368 R [00935]. Course Description This inter-disciplinary seminar on the City of Rome during the Baroque period (c. 1600-1700) focuses this year on the life and works of one architect as a means to explore the urban, landscape, and architectural dimensions of the city. The seminar takes Francesco Borromini, one of seventeenth-century Papal Rome's greatest architects and draughtsmen, as the departure point for exploring professional practices and disciplines at a paradigmatic moment in the history of design, when landscape architecture, urbanism, and architecture were the practices of a single designer, but the turn to specializations was already appearing. Set against the scenery of Rome, one of Europe's monumental Baroque cities, epitomized by the seventeenth-century Piazza Navona with its fountains and sculptures, the "spine" of the seminar follows the chronological study of Borromini's major works (1630s to 1660s)--among them, San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane and the Oratory of San Filippo Neri for religious communities, and Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza for the Roman University; chapels such as the Cappella dei Re' Magi; designs for the Barberini, Carpegna, and Pamphilj palaces. These works are also considered synchronically within the broader contexts of Roman Baroque society and its papal monarchy in a period of triumphant Catholic Counter-Reformation, as well as diachronically with a view to ancient, medieval, and Renaissance precedents, from Hadrian's Villa to Gothic architecture to Palladio. Borromini's complex works are at the same time profoundly emotional and rigorously intellectual and serious, and the specificity of their conceptualization is considered in illuminating contrast to the jubilant, dynamic, and dramatic creations of his so-called professional rival in Rome, the sculptor-architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Students are immersed in the richness of design culture in Baroque Rome, a period of exceptional artistic innovation, connected on the one hand to modernity, to new scientific studies of perception, optics and light, machinery, and botany, and on the other hand to antiquity, to remarkable archaeological and antiquarian studies. Recent, exceptional historical research on Roman society provides understanding of the social categories fundamental to Baroque Rome's urban, architectural, and landscape development--rural and urban, public and private, religious and secular spaces; men and women; vernacular and elite lives; patronage and social networks of the designers. Prof. Mirka Beneš U Texas School of Architecture LAR 388 / ARC Fall 2010 p. 2 Seminar meetings and our discussions, including sessions with rare books, prints, and maps in the Harry Ransom Center and one session in the Prints & Drawings Room of the Blanton Art Museum, focus on topics that contextualize Borromini, such as: --education, training and social status of the designer; --disciplinary boundaries between sculptors, architects, painters and theatrical set-designers--how did Borromini and Bernini each use architecture and sculpture in ornament and expression?; --drawing techniques, types and new media, in relation to Borromini's innovative use of the graphite pencil; --the study of the Antique, from Pirro Ligorio to Borromini to Giovanni Battista Piranesi; --urban design and development, the grand piazzas, and the "Masters of the Street," representatives of the Roman municipal government who negotiated Rome's urban development with the ever-encroaching interests of the papal monarchs (and their families) who ruled Rome; --the new sciences in Galileo Galilei's Rome--uses of the microscope and the telescope; building technologies in relation to vision and surveying instruments; collecting of floral, vegetal, and rare specimens, in relation to architectural and natural ornament; --construction and ornamental materials, from marbles to stuccoes, travertines to bricks. --hydrology, water-works, and design of urban fountains and garden fountains; --building types--churches, palaces, villa buildings and villa gardens; --cultural life and the libraries of architects, artists, and members of Roman society and of the papal bureaucracy; --the publication of designers'--like Borromini's--buildings, gardens, streets and piazzas in books and prints. Goals of the Seminar The purpose is to give students a strong inter-disciplinary grounding in one of the key historical periods of design and in advanced research methods, as well as strong intellectual, conceptual, and historical frameworks with which to approach design creatively today, by rehearsing the translation of the synthetic act of design from the past to the present and by understanding how the design profession carves its territory of concerns and interests, from concrete and technological to spiritual and philosophical. This is accomplished by having students become deeply familiar with the life's work of one outstanding architect in history, Francesco Borromini in seventeenth-century Rome, and thereby to encourage reflection on professional design practice and the status of the architect/landscape architect/urban designer today. Class attendance is mandatory, and forms part of your grade for this course. It is mandatory, unless exemption has been given in advance by the instructor for excusable absences. Students with two (2) or more unexcused absences are subject to lowering of the final grade for the course. Please contact the instructor by email in advance, if you expect to be absent. Time Commitment of Students: Includes class time (lectures and discussions), plus about three-four (3-4) hours (varies) of weekly reading. Additional time for study, reading and preparation for projects. The course assignments are spaced across the semester, and the instructor attempts to accomodate deadlines for the class in view of specific studio deadlines that students may have. Prof. Mirka Beneš U Texas School of Architecture LAR 388 / ARC Fall 2010 p. 3 Honor Code for the University of Texas: The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility. Each member of the university is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and communicty. Honor Code for this Course: Each student in this course is expected to abide by this Honor Code, and any work submitted by a student will be the student's own work. You are encouraged to study together and to discuss information and concepts covered in this course, but you should never copy from one another or from anyone else, be it from printed and/or published work, or from any digital form or from the internet. Any transgressors on an assignment shall receive a "Fail" Grade for that assignment. Basis of Final Grade and Assignments: See at end of this Syllabus for details of Assignments # 1 and # 2. The work in this Seminar is structured so that the first months of the semester have most assignments, while the last month (November) frees you to work on your Final Project. 1. Class Participation: Discussions, questions, and 2-3 page autobiographical essay.......15 % Essay due Sept. 2, 2010. [Assignment 1 handed out Aug. 26, 2010.] 2. Short Project: Essay, 3-4 pages, on "Borromini and 17th century Roman / Italian Culture".........................................................................................20 % Essay due Sept. 30, 2010. [Assignment 2 handed out Aug. 26, 2010.] 3. Short Project: Essay, 2 pages, "The Use of Drawing and/or of Materials (Stucco, Marble, Brick, etc.) in Borromini's Art" and two small drawings on separate sheets, one carefully copied from a Borromini drawing and one drawn in response to that drawing, or complementing it..............20 % Essay/drawings due Oct. 28, 2010. [Assignment 3 handed out Oct. 7.] 4. Final Report/Project: Students will select, early on in the semester, a topic for a Final Project, which will be presented to the class in a Progress Report. The 20-minute Progress Report will be in Class on 11/04, or 11/11/10, or 11/18/10. Your Report will be on the state of your research for your Final Project. Your Final Project is a Written Typed Essay of 12+ pages (plus Bibliography and Notes), or Analytic Model, or Analytic Drawingson a topic relevant to the seminar on Borromini and Baroque Rome. In Class, after your Report, you will receive feedback and guidance for the preparation of your Final Project..................................................45% Presentations in Class: Nov. 4, 11, or 18, 2010. Final Project due to Instructor in Class: Dec. 2, 2010. Important Rules: All assignments not done in class must be typed. Bibliography and/or footnotes must ALWAYS be included. Prof. Mirka Beneš U Texas School of Architecture LAR 388 / ARC Fall 2010 p. 4 All assignments MUST be submitted to the instructor in hard copy. The instructor will not accept assignments sent only by email. All written/typed assignments/papers must be submitted in TWO (2) COPIES EACH, so that the student can have one copy returned with comments. Analytic drawings and any models