Fabio Colonnese

The Quincunx as Architectural Structure. Geometry and Digital Reconstructions After Leonardo Da Vinci’s Centralized Plan Temples

The success of the Quincunx plan in the religious architecture of 15th and 16th century Italy is generally related to the suggestions coming from some monumental sacred buildings, from the places where these buildings are located and their ancient and oriental origin. Added to this, this scheme demonstrated an ability to adapt to different sites and themes and to be contaminated by forms and types coming from distant sources. Some of Leonardo da Vinci’s studies on centralized temples, which are collected in the Codex B at the Institute de France, in the Codex Ashburnham 2037, and in the Codex Atlanticus, testify above all the value of the Quincunx as a flexible geometric and compositional device with great semantic and didactic potential, providing a medium for the subsequent 16th century developments by Bramante and his Roman followers.

L’immagine del Campidoglio e le pratiche di manipolazione visiva tra XVI e XVIII secolo

L’analisi delle rappresentazioni del Campidoglio michelangiolesco, con le sue peculiarita geometriche e percettive, consente di identificare alcune tecniche di manipolazione visiva adottate dagli artisti, ponendole in relazione sia con la forma e l’esperienza del luogo, sia con la produzione di capricci architettonici. The analysis of the representations of Michelangelo’s Campidoglio, with its peculiar geometrical and perceptual features, allows to identify artists’ techniques of visual manipulation, relating them to the place’s experience and form as well the production of architectural capriccio.

Between Antinomy and Symmetry. Architectural Drawings of Presentation and Comparison in the XVI Century

As part of a wider enquiry on the historical typologies of architectural representation, this essay addresses a classification of XVI century architecture drawings that exploit the presence of one or more symmetry axes in the represented building. This kind of split drawings have never been studied as a specific group of works inspired by the specific peculiarities of buildings but only occasionally to mark a new role of architectural drawing. Actually, symmetry combined to orthogonal projections allowed the development of graphic procedures with peculiar goals. Initially restricted into the circle of artist and his assistants, they were gradually addressed to a wider audience. They show a diffuse attitude to draw or copy only half-building; to match interior with exterior; to combine distant elements from a building; to compare alternatives; to confront geometry and perspective effect. All of these practices deeply changed the visual code of architects, evolved the relationship between the artist and commitment; and improved the ability of ordinary people to understand partial and analytical drawings.

Territorio e rappresentazione: lo “sguardo virtuale” dal treno

Il territorio della citta diffusa viene abitualmente attraversato e percepito da mezzi di trasporto rapidi come il treno. Ripercorrendo le caratteristiche formali della ferrovia e l’evoluzione percettiva favorita storicamente dall’esperienza del treno – sorta di “camera con vista” su ruote – e dalle sue interazioni con altri media visuali, questo articolo contestualizza le opportunita offerte da un ripensamento del territorio in chiave cinematografica e da nuove rappresentazioni spazio-temporali. The territory of the urban sprawl is daily crossed and perceived by fast means of transport like the train. By tracing back the formal characteristics of the railway and the perception shift historically fostered by the train experience – sort of “room with a view” on wheels – and its interactions with other visual media, this article contextualizes the opportunities offered by both rethinking of the territory cinematically and new space-time representations.

Le Corbusier and the mysterious “résidence du président d’un collège”

Abstract: At the very end of his travel to United States, Le Corbusier conceived and designed a modern villa that he lately inserted in the third volume of his Oeuvre Complete with the title ‘Residence du president d’un college pres Chicago’ and few words below describing it. He interpreted a simple request for suggestions by Joseph Brewer, the president of the Olivet College, Michigan, into an actual commission for a new house that responded to the kind of works he expected from his American admirers. He possibly designed it in a few hours’ time from Kalamazoo to Chicago but the autograph hand-drafted plans and bird’s-eye perspective view in the Oeuvre Complete congruently describe a well-thought project showing a number of affinities with his most celebrated European houses. The villa can be considered as an aware modular assemblage of parts that he had previously designed or even built, tied together by a long and suggestive promenade architecturale, to offer the “timid” American people a sort of full scale model to introduce them to his vision of modern life. By analyzing Le Corbusier’s sketches and conjecturing both dimensions and missing elements from previous designs, a threedimensional digital model has been elaborated to virtually visit the residence and understand its fictive and educational value. Keywords: Le Corbusier; Joseph Brewer; Olivet College; Promenade architecturale; Intertextuality; Digital Model. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/LC2015.2015.774