PS22 Open Session 2 8:30 - 10:40am Friday, 1st May, 2020 Location Salon B, 2nd Floor Track Track 4 Session Chair Matthew A. Cohen
All session times are in US PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME (PDT).
8:35 - 8:55am
PS22 Triangular Obelisks in Roman Asia Minor
Diane Favro University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Abstract
Though resolutely associated with Egypt, obelisks were also popular in the Roman world, most notably in Rome and Constantinople where they served as symbols of conquest, sun memorials, and eye-catching urban features. Equally important, transport and lifting of these enormous monoliths showcased Roman engineering prowess. The imagery of giant obelisks in the Imperial capitals has overshadowed assessment of their deployment elsewhere in the Roman world. During the second century CE, curious obelisk tombs appeared in Asia Minor. In contrast to monolithic Egyptian examples, these funerary obelisks stood on square bases with shafts composed of multiple blocks and plans in the shape of equilateral triangles; their profiles tapered sharply rather than “little by little” as recommended in ancient descriptions. The best preserved is the towering Beştaş tomb of Cassius Philiscus outside Nicaea in Bithynia, measuring over 12 meters in height. Ancient poems imply solar associations, yet the three-sided configurations precluded crowning with a square pyramidion representing the sun’s rays as traditional on Egyptian obelisks. In fact, the triangular obelisks of Turkey had no hieroglyphics or other explicit Egyptianizing features. Their general composition echoed that of other vertical tomb markers in Roman Asia Minor, North Africa, and Syria, though the equilateral shape has no direct precedents. Pragmatic concerns, rather than stylistic or iconographic, may have inspired the unusual configuration. The tapered forms exploited broad extra-urban vistas. At the same time the three-sided geometry and steep profile greatly reduced the obelisks’ overall mass and weight; the individual blocks composing the shafts were significantly easier and cheaper to ship and lift than monoliths. Though anomalous, the triangular memorials from Asia Minor help clarify the motivations for appropriating, adapting, and constructing obelisks in the Roman world, and underscore the value of broadening discussions beyond the canonical to the exceptional. 8:55 - 9:15am
PS22 Politics & Aesthetics of Ripristino: A Select Study of the Preservation Work of Antonio Muñoz in Rome
Aura Maria Jaramillo Columbia University, New York, USA
Abstract
When we think about the architectural and urban construction and dismantling that took place in Rome in the first four decades of the twentieth century, the canon includes the likes of Marcello Piacentini, Adalberto Libera, and Gustavo Giovannoni. Yet some of the period’s most iconic projects — the excavations of the Via dell’Impero and the restoration of the Mausoleum of Augustus, among others — owe much to the often overlooked Antonio Muñoz. An extensive writer, he published books on Baroque and fascist Rome, as well as Gothic architecture in the Lazio region. In addition to being a prolific writer, Antonio Muñoz was an official speaker at the First Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments in Athens in 1931. He was instrumental to the excavation and restoration efforts of countless projects and was an important consultant to Mussolini on matters of historic preservation, Muñoz was an art historian and amateur architect who served as Superintendent of Monuments of Lazio from 1914 to 1928, Inspector General of Antiquities and Fine Arts of the Governorship of Rome between 1928 and 1944, and finally founder of the Museum of Rome. This paper investigates how Muñoz's preservation practice changed methodologically and aesthetically during the fascist regime to better understand the complex relationship between political ideology and preservation aesthetics. To achieve these ends, this investigation examines the “liberation” of the Mausoleum of Augustus and the restoration of the fifth-century basilica of Santa Sabina as case studies that represent seemingly opposing poles in the spectrum of Muñoz’s aesthetic legacy. Through a close reading of these projects, this analysis offers a juxtaposition between the idea of preservation as an act of ripristino (to remake pristine) versus preservation as an act of isolation as complementary and opposing concepts employed for political ends under the fascist regime. 9:15 - 9:35am
PS22 Durable: Monsanto, Illinois (1935—20xx), Aroclor Additives Over Life
Jessica Varner MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract
Perfected in the Monsanto Chemical Laboratory (St. Louis, Missouri) and produced partially in the nearby Plant B factory (Monsanto, Illinois), Aroclor additives (polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs) fast became desirable construction compounds in the 20th century. Advertised as modern, Aroclors purportedly amended problematic traditional materials, like the porous nature of stone, the flammability of layered walls, or a window assembly's tendency to leak. In turn, the additives created new performance expectations, including flexibility, fireproofing, waterproofing, and extended the material life-span of other materials. As a consequence, the prolific use of PCBs embedded the additive in rubber, adhesives, sealants, caulking, joint compounds, polyvinyl chloride plastics, lighting ballasts, and electrical insulation—the stuff of everyday buildings. I argue that shifting aspirations for durable buildings in the United States and the concurrent expansion of PCB additives were not coincident. Monsanto constructed the desire and need for Aroclors. Corporate methods and frameworks shaped, regulated, and made Aroclors coveted as durable, modern substances. At the same time, similar techniques moved PCBs—which demonstrated known injury to structures of life—into more products, turning modern buildings into certain, hazardous objects. This paper looks at a series of decisions made by the corporation from 1935 to 1968 including the company's early expansion into the toxic industrial suburb Monsanto, Illinois; continual product development for more and more building uses for the invisible Aroclor material for other materials; and marketing techniques and use strategies including the implementation of new durability standards and codes to make the additive legally necessary. The research questions how we historically resituate and interpret everyday 20th-century building materials, such as Monsanto's Aroclors, as violent and integral to understanding modern architecture’s history? 9:35 - 9:55am
PS22 Architectural Drawing and Aesthetics in Grand Tour Rome
Tracy Ehrlich Parsons New School, NEW YORK, USA
Abstract
In the 1750s the Roman architect Carlo Marchionni was poised to transform his profession. A protégé of Cardinal Albani, Marchionni was charged with designing a residence to display his patron’s antiquities collection. In producing his decorative scheme for the Villa Albani, Marchionni invented a new type of architectural drawing. He populates the interior renderings with human figures, establishing a relationship between body and building that appears nowhere else in the European tradition of architectural drawing. In Haskell and Penny’s seminal volume, Taste and the Antique, they publish one of these drawings – “project for the installation of the Antinous Bas-Relief in the Villa Albani” – without comment. Marchionni’s drawing represents an extraordinary moment in the history of architectural draftsmanship. Marchionni depicts the chamber, with its fireplace and prized antique relief, in a way that suggests the potential for aesthetic discourse. He envisions a gentleman in dialogue with Hadrian’s beloved. The activity is solitary, but the hint of forward motion, the carefully positioned left hand with its pointing index finger, and the steady gaze of the figure suggests an act of emulation and intensity of engagement with antiquity. Conventional wisdom associates gesturing toward antiquities with the intellectual language of the collector and connoisseur. Gesture implies ownership together with social and cultural distinction. Years before Winckelmann entered Albani’s service as antiquarian and wrote his famous words on imitation, and long before Goethe described the reception of art as a communicative act, Marchionni renders figures in discourse with works of art. Whether Marchionni was aware of the new discipline of aesthetics emerging in Northern Europe or not, in this and other drawings the interaction between gesturing figures, classical artifacts, and architecture evokes the experience of beauty and signals a comment on the interweaving of fine breeding, good taste, and aesthetics. 9:55 - 10:15am
PS22 Italy, 1980's: Touring Club’s Guides and the Non-monumental Heritage
Alessandro Benetti Université Rennes 2, Rennes, France
Abstract
Between 1983 and 1985, the TCI (Touring Club Italiano) publishes the three hardcover, large size volumes of the Guida ai centri minori, literally “a guide to Italy’s secondary towns”, directed by historian and geographer Lucio Gambi. The guide label is misleading for such an ambitious editorial project. A notable series of long form essays by prominent scholars reconstruct the architectural and urban development of each and every one of the 200 selected Italian towns. All texts are accompanied by an extraordinarily rich iconography, also featuring specifically commissioned aerial views, and cartography, including diagrams detailing the main phases and events of the agglomeration’s growth. World-famous Dutch-Italian designer Bob Noorda is responsible for the graphic layout. The Guida ai centri minori seamlessly fits into TCI’s cultural agenda of the time, aimed at rerouting mass tourism away from its traditional destinations. As a matter of fact, the three books, delivered as Christmas gifts to hundreds of thousands of the association’s members, reached a wide, lay public. On the one side, this and other guides familiarized readers with uncharted territories within their country; more importantly, they popularized such notions as centro minore, centro storico (“historical center”), tessuto edilizio (“urban fabric”), conservazione (“preservation”), amongst the others, stemming from a process of theoretical elaboration conducted in the previous decades by specialists from several disciplines – architecture, urbanism, history of art, etc. Starting from this case study, this paper aims at investigating the role played by TCI’s publications of the 1980s in the dissemination to a larger audience of the vocabulary, the contents and the interpretational tools implemented by the then mature, high-culture debate on the non-monumental heritage.