Architecture's Ephemeral Practices

_____________________________________ ENIGMATIC CONSTRUCTIONS_________863 Enigmatic Constructions STEVEN QUEVEDO University of Texas at Arlington Reflections on the Future in the while artifacts of architecture survey the ruins Fragments of the Past of the future. Making references to the spatial architecture of the past, machine buildings Architectural images project the un-built, the occupy the remains. imagined future. With the Quattro cento, the advent of theory and the perspective forecast The perspective served as a visual reference new architecture for an immediate future by tracing the ideological shifts in architectural reinventing ancient paradigms. In the history. Since the Renaissance, the perspective twentieth century, new forms inspired by the staged ideal settings based on the machine will replace classicism with an adverse rediscovering of ancient classicism. Re- rejection of the past. In Renaissance paintings, positioning man as center of the universe, the a review of the perspective reflects the revival perspective focused on the embodied role of in the studies of classical architecture, a humankind unified within an ordered contemplation based on the past, which environment. It established an architectural foreshadows the realized architecture of the discipline of symmetry, contained spaces and future for the next four hundred years. formal mastery realized in painting, sculpture, Beginning with the Urbino panel, La Città buildings, gardens and ultimately, the city. Ideale and ending with the fantastic works of With the perspective, the drawing device Antonio Sant’Elia’s La Città Nuova and Le mimicked how the eye reads spatial depth, and Corbusier’s Plan Voisin the perspective as a as a drawing mechanism, coincided with the prediction for realized work shows remarkable advent of scientific investigation. The clarity foretelling built space. Rereading the perspective epitomized Renaissance space architectural perspective as a device for being simultaneously a media of spatial imaging conveyance capable of predicting conveyance as well as a cultural artifact. spatial realization allows the perspective to serve as an insightful tool for the imagined. Yet How the image serves as a precursor the perspective as a drawing device operates anticipating the future is the question for all as a meditation on spatial depth by visually designers. Was the imagining of new space representing which how the eye perceives realized as predicted in the image? The answer space. It is this insight into the mind of an is one in which the image does predicts certain architect’s imagination, which reveals the manifestations of spatial ideas but the design potential of the perspective. of form remains a variable. Written theory and visual manifestation predict built form. The As precedent for a series of drawings, The capturing of images can read consequentially Enigmatic Constructions, this brief historical as successful or futile models for the future. review of the perspective investigates how the Architectural history is rich in imaginary image influences ideas in the creation of new predictions, yet these images are often spatial contemplations. The Enigmatic conveyed in sterile settings. These visions Constructions meditate on architecture’s role in show a complete world isolated from the an imagined future. These analogous vignettes idiosyncrasies produced by daily activity, decay reveal an earth upset by environmental chaos or acts of war. 864_______ FRESH AIR ______________________________________________________ Alberti and Piranesi: the Fragments of the dramatic shift takes place in architectural Past representation. Rather than conveying a flat two-dimensional stage set for the depiction of In Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria a religious or political narrative, architectural (1452), written theory re-emerged as a space is the emerging and dominant theme. practical application and process. Alberti set The city operates as the central organizational forth collecting ancient information relating to device. The representation of palazzi and all means of building. Initially conceived to churches are widely variant, but still restrained expound upon Vitruvius, De re aedificatoria to collectively define fixed and volumetric united the lessons of the past with the most space. The constituency of buildings acts in current and pragmatic building methods. unison for the creation of inhabitance, and “Being to treat of the designs of edifices, we consequently, ritual. The phenomenon of shall collect and transcribe into this our Work, articulating spatial unity served as a definitive all the most curious and useful observations model for realized urban spaces. left us by the Ancients, and which they gathered in the actual execution of their The Ideal City is often used as a foreword in work.”1 the discussion of urban design. In the Piazza and Palazzo Piccolomini at Pienza (1458), His meticulous descriptions ranged from the Bernardo Rossellino, Alberti’s student, created proper selection of site, the most practical the ideal space reiterated in the Urbino panels. choice and use of materials, the devices for Alberti prescribes that, “For my part I would construction, the aesthetics of the ancient have the square twice as long as broad, and orders, their proper application and measure. that the porticoes and other buildings about it He provided chapters on both public and should answer in some proportion to the open private structures, clarifying their particular area in the middle.”4 typology and their particular part within the city. He expounded in great length on the role Buildings and space act as the prime example of the architect, essentially re-establishing and of the Renaissance conception of unity and defining the profession from antiquity. Alberti order. Here is the perfect balance of scale, wrote on the inherent nature of human hierarchy and monumentality of the human observation and the need to complete and spirit. The man-made world exemplified in improve built form. The publication of the De spatial containment set against the boundless re aedificatoria would influence the direction beauty of the Tuscan landscape. The for Renaissance architecture, verbally imagined application of perspective in urban design is a “design as a firm and graceful pre-ordering thus realized from the Alberti’s theory and of the lines and angles conceived in the Mind, illustrated in the perspectives.5 and contrived by an ingenious Artist.”2 The tradition of the vedute, idealized views, Alberti’s text provides the foundations for a continues in Italian painting with the works of rebirth of past classical forms; the application Ferdinando Galli da Bibiena, Guiseppe Vasi, of its visual imagery comes to light in the early Giovanni Paolo Pannini and Cannaletto. In Renaissance perspectives. A capricci, an contrast to these pure visions of classicism, the invented view, acts as a fantastic imagining of brooding perspectives of Giovanni Battista speculative space. La Città Ideale di Urbino, Piranesi portend an ominous forecast. The attributed to Luciano Laurana, the architect of work of Piranesi presents a darker, yet more the Palazzo Ducale at Urbino or to the studio of complex vision, which deviates from the Piero della Francesca, characterizes this Euclidean views of the classical world. Renaissance archetype. The exact source of this painting remains a mystery, but it has By the seventeenth century, ideas of a fixed recently been suggested that Alberti had and finite universe had given way to traveled to Urbino and assisted in the Newtonian absolute space. Euclidean geometry construction of the perspective.3 Indeed closer had proven to be unreliable in explaining the examination shows buildings, which bear complexities in mathematics. The perspective striking similarities to Alberti’s own work in had attained extraordinary achievements in the Florence. In addition, buildings in the work of Andrea Pozzo, who combined and composition resemble classical revisions of San confused built space with imaginary illusion. Minialto al Monte and the Battistero. Here a Simultaneously, the first signs of experiential _____________________________________ ENIGMATIC CONSTRUCTIONS_________865 depiction in the perspective were being cited in Sant’Elia and Le Corbusier: Reflections on the work of Johann Heinrich Lambert who the Future “writes of the return to a natural perspective concerned with the visibility of three In the 20th century, classicism is challenged for dimensional space for an embodied observer. its obsolescent application. Replacing the He was the first to introduce the word Renaissance vignette of spatial unity, the phenomenology in a philosophy of architectural image echoed with infinite views perception.”6 of spatial phenomenon derived from the theories of relativity, cubism and the functional Significantly, Piranesi will advance the use of aesthetics of engineering. These images the perspective by crowding the picture plane promoted a future with the promise of the with an exaggeration of the architecture. machine, not the canons of antiquity. Piranesi uses the two-point perspective to Technology would provide the new depict a complex vastness of spaces crowded architectural language. The image resonated with historical references. These images with oblique, dynamic stills of the mechanized reiterate the dramatic spatial investigations of object situated in moving environments. Baroque Rome, but predict the obsessive Replacing the

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