Unfortunately, very often this symbolism and allegories get lost today as man is not familiar any more with the ancient allegorical languages. Many heritage buildings get their conservation status because of tangible cultural and historic characteristics, and in many cases it is completed with a large intangible content expressed through symbolisms and allegories. The often poor knowledge on historic design criteria nowadays, inevitably leads in many cases to a considerable loss of ‘sense’ and a different type of ‘meaning and message’ in contemporary projects. Architecture (with capital) needs both approaches and apart from the Vitruvian “utilitas, venustas et firmitas ”, Architecture always had an existential and universal dimension dealing with bringing sense and structure in the surrounding space, including physical communication with meanings and messages’ to the observer. This is a discussable principle with potentially quite negative consequences as architecture is not only a question of artistic creativity or aesthetical harmony, nor a pure functional or technical discipline: “Architectura … nascitur et fabrica et ratiocinatione …” (“Architecture is born by craftsmanship and balanced rationality”, Vitruvius, I°sec. One said the architect-artist’s mind had to be liberated from all historic ballast, and should be able to create within his free individual creativity. It caused a proportionate impoverishment of building history knowledge and of traditional design methods. Sullivan, 1900 ca.) and other design maxims. This changed after the 1920’s in favor of a more multidisciplinary and technical orientated training, promoted by “Ornament and Crime” (A. The study of architectural history is and always has been one of the fundamentals in each architect’s education up to the 1920’s circa also the design classes were embedded by the replica of the Greek temple orders and the imitations taken from ancient reference books such as Vitruvius, Palladio, Viollet-le-duc and many other. This historic examples should inspire modern creative design and modern sustainable construction. Francis Basilica at Assisi and the Castel del Monte at Andria. This is illustrated in the analysis of six cases: the Cheops pyramid at Memphis, the Pantheon at Rome, the Charlemagne’s Palace Chapel at Aachen, the Our Lady’s Cathedral at Chartres, the S. Metric analysis reveals this evident design practices and their probable semantic content. They also served as a symbol and an allegorical sign to convey intangible messages from the commissioner. The geometry of forms and the numbers of quantities and dimensions served as a mayor instrument for developing coherent modulation in the design and the structure of the building and his environment. the geometry and the arithmetic’s, created by the Divine Geometer. Architectural design had to reflect the universal cosmic Order and Harmony and the ancient and medieval architect-designer had to rely on the same intangible instruments, i.e. This chapter looks for the remote origins of design criteria and ancient canons, and their application in representative antique and medieval architecture. The role of geometry and arithmetic in ancient building is common knowledge, but it has seldom been proved by measured drawing.
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