Project

History and Theory of Early Modern Architecture

Code
BOF/STA/202109/040
Duration
01 March 2022 → 28 February 2026
Funding
Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund
Research disciplines
  • Humanities
    • Cultural history
    • Early modern history
    • Architectural history and theory
    • Architectural design history and theory
    • History of art
Keywords
early modern architecture theory history design practices
 
Project description

My research examines the practices and techniques of early modern architecture, with particular attention to fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy. My work is pioneering in the authority it grants practical, working architectural drawings, renderings that are commonly overlooked by historians of architecture and art due to their utilitarian and workaday qualities. Since Giorgio Vasari, scholars have been conditioned to differentiate “architecture” -- the intellectual, aesthetically pleasing building design of the authorial artist -- from “engineering” -- the more mechanical, and utilitarian design of the (often anonymous) building practitioner.  Yet, ample evidence shows that this theoretical distinction did not align with early modern practice. My research thus lays the foundations for an expanded history, looking beyond anachronistic conceptions of “art,” “architecture,” and “engineering” and examining a broader corpus of the architect’s output. Within this framework, my work directs focus away from the geniuses and singular authors, and in turn, acknowledges a substantially broader, richer tapestry of architectural production that was largely anonymous. In conceiving architecture as a discourse, my research confronts its mainstream interlocuters, individuals who brought to the discussion different qualifications and skills, but whose names were unrecorded. There is a vital need for a more systemic and critical language for assessing anonymous contributions in early modern architecture, and my work assumes this challenge.