(Re)invoking humanism in modernity: architecture and spectacle in Fascist Italy
This substantial co-authored chapter examines the influence of early 20th century debates on Humanism on developments in architecture and spectacle in Fascist Italy. During a time when eminent philosophers and historians of Renaissance culture were...
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This substantial co-authored chapter examines the influence of early 20th century debates on Humanism on developments in architecture and spectacle in Fascist Italy. During a time when eminent philosophers and historians of Renaissance culture were engaged in disputes about the meaning and philosophical value of Renaissance Humanism, parallel architectural developments were taking place (specially in Italy) on the inter-relationships between modernism and classicism. These alliances were subject to much disagreement among architectural pundits (both practitioners and academics) that also drew heavily on the legacy of humanism; perceived by some as a distinctly Italian intellectual and creative movement. The chapter focuses on a number of key disputes in both Germany and Italy during the interwar period (specifically between Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile and Martin Heidegger and Ernesto Grassi) that provided the basis of a fertile intellectual milieu for articulating arguments about the role of humanism in architectural creativity. Among the many architects discussed, Giuseppe Terragni, Gustavo Giovannoni and Giovanni Michelucci are the main sources, each presenting very different notions of 'Romanitas' during the period of Fascism.
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Envisioning geometry: architecture in the grip of perspective
This book chapter examines the early developments of perspective in 15th century Florence, arguing that the conception of pictorial space in the Early Renaissance both drew upon late Medieval notions of luminary space and anticipated the...
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This book chapter examines the early developments of perspective in 15th century Florence, arguing that the conception of pictorial space in the Early Renaissance both drew upon late Medieval notions of luminary space and anticipated the 'geometrisation' of space in Modernity. The paper demonstrates this intermediate position (at once reflective and anticipatory) through an examination of the ideas of Nicolas Cusanus, Filippo Brunelleschi, Lorenzo Ghiberti and Leon Battista Alberti, all of whom presented different 'models' of perspective in the light of their own artistic predilections and architectural interests. A shared view however of the role and significance of perspective at this time concerns its capacity to redefine pictorially the civic and religious dimensions of the actual city. This is demonstrated in both Brunelleschi's perspective 'experiments' and Ghiberti's composition and spatial articulation of the 'Gates of Paradise' for Florence Baptistery. In the final section of the paper, I examine a photograph by Le Corbusier in which I demonstrate how his visual recording of his studio (articulated in a drawing by Peter Carl) applies similar methods of luminary and geometric relationships found in Renaissance pictorial space.
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