Odd question I know, but I am trying to understand what the symbolic and our meta-menaing is to architects as part of a project I am working on. The popular culture conception seems ot be Renaissance Fairs and knights and lads in tights. I am curious if for architects, builders and others in that area, Renaissance has more symbolic meaning and, if so, what that meaning is.
thx, Matthew
On 16 Aug 2005, wrote
To me, it immediately brings to mind Brunelleschi and the Ospedale Innocenti (I think that's the spelling), and in England, Inigo Jones and the Queen's House (Greenwich) and Queen's Chapel (St James's Palace).
Whilst separated by over 200 years, in both instances it meant the (re)introduction of classical forms -- orders, proportion and serenity
-- to replace gothic detailing, complexity and mystery.
(FWIW, knights and lads in tights -- the chivalry thing -- is about the
*last* thing I'd associate with the Renaissance: it's precisely the stuff that the Renaissance replaced.)I instantly associate the Renaissance with Florence.
On 16 Aug 2005, Cato wrote
Yup -- particularly that hospital!
I wonder if anyone has ever figured out just how the hell Brunelleschi came up with that desgn? When I was studying the period it was generally held that the Ospedale -- fully-fledged, completely Renaissance and with no transitional aspects -- had no precedents: it came out of the blue.
Just like the guys that materialized with machine guns when I was there. First and hopefully the last time pissed off people will hold automatics pointed at me. Luckily we got our film back from the US consulate after the Carabinieri confiscated it. Kind of ruined the tourist ambiance.
RRe: Florence and Renaissance
Let me guess: taking pictures on an Italian railway station? ;)
Don't mess with the Carabinieri! I had a buddy who had a "run in" with a couple of them in Rome after he consumed a few too many adult beverages. He was completely in the wrong, but the reaction he got was a bit "overdone" to say the least. After his professor got him out of the pokey, he was a bit worse for the wear. Few broken bits here, few bloody bits there. I asked him what he did to piss them off so much, and all he can remember was "back talking" them in loud English. Then he tells me, "Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I pushed one of the SOBs". Go figure.
On 16 Aug 2005, Cato wrote
Go figure, indeed.
Never back-chat or (god help you) push a cop -- or an immigration or customs guy -- whether they're Italian, Austrian, American, British, Korean, or whatever.
You might as well pin a sign on you that says "Please throw everything you've got at me, and if you can spare the time, sir, I'd wouldn't mind having a good shit-kicking as well"...
Surely they were sub-machine guns.
Surely you'd be just as (if not more so) dead if shot with a bolt action rifle.
(if not more so) dead? Isn't the medical term: Deader?
"Than a door-nail."
(He opined, dragging in an architecture/building reference...)
On 16 Aug 2005, Don wrote
Even the heavy-and-non-fluffy journalists are into this. When the Brazilian guy was shot by police in London, even the so-called "serious" papers kept going on about the how the officers had "pumped" seven bullets into him.
Wouldn't current context be more concerned with the Medici term? Which was, iirc, "_______ for Life." Such that _______ == Pope, Queen, etc.
Not having been to Florence, I do not. However, when I was 18 (and a long time ago that was), I visited the Louvre Museum and noticed a change in architectural styling in one particular area that appealed to me greatly. And then I saw Michaelangelo's David in the center of this amazing place. That overwhelming appreciation of the grace, symmetry, geometry, and perfect classicism of those interiors has always stayed with me. Only much later, in architecture school, did I learn that the style was Renaissance.
-- Curtis D
You got the taking pictures part right, but it was under the loggia of the Ospedale itself. I try to stay on topic. ;)
R
Knowing absolutely nothing about guns, you may be right. All I know is that the hole at the business end looked about the size of a coffee cup. It may have affected my gun identification capabilities.
Ah, the calm logic of distance! At the time I wasn't concerned with the technical details, only the outcome.
R
Since this is an architectural newsgroup I will try to ignore the responses that might come in to your question. I suggest that you go to the library and check out a book on the history of architecture. The architecture of the Renaissance period is what is mimicked when architects designed federal and governmental buildings in the early half of the 1900's in the US which was called the 'Classic Revival'. Where not only were buildings designed to mimic Renaissance architecture but Greek and Gothic architecture as well. It is not really symbolic it is more of a reference to an architectural style.
Hope this helps.
_________________________________________________________ Charles I. Dinsmore, SE PE RA ~ chuck snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com
You did say you went to architecture school. Your history teacher should have made the association for you - without your having to go to Florence. No? Perhaps you should sue.
Yes, it is amazing how off topic it can get online. i actually know that the stylistc issues are. i have a client who claims that most architects and builders associate the Renaissance with radical change and rebirth and i am looking for anecdotal information that most don't really have that uber grasp of it. that most people, even architects and builders, think of it purely in a stylistic change.
On 23 Aug 2005, wrote
Now, that's insulting, that is.
I seem to recall posting and reading about Florence, Brunelleschi, the emergence out of nowhere of new stuff, and the application of the term to mean "damsels in distress".
Pray do tell us: in what way was that amazingly off topic in response to a question -- in an architecture discussion group -- about what architects took to be the meaning of "Renaissance"?
Your question was not elaborated. Given the nature of the forum, it was reasonable to assume that the question related to whether -- in professional use -- the term applied to a narrow set of design precepts, to some sort of wishy-washy general idea of knights in shining armour, or to some combination of both.
If you'd wanted to know "Do architects ascribe any wider meaning to 'Renaissance' over and above its restrictive use as a stylistic term", then you ought to have asked that question.
If you're going to do a survey, dammit, ask what you mean to ask rather than assuming you can figure out what's implied by responses to an inadequate question.
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