Formal Analysis

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The drawing composition started with a Serlio plan. Serlio’s concepts of ordered framework with a disordered pochè immediately brought me to think of the Nolli & Piranesi relationship. I began by filling the wall pochè of the Serlio plan with Piranesi’s Campo Marzio. The more ordered portions of the centralized courtyards are filled with the Nolli map as an abstract way to compare order and disorder. The first courtyard in the Serlio framework became a place to revisit Bramante’s column conditions. One side of the courtyard becomes Santa Maria della Pace, a field of columns that breaks through the wall barrier and extends into space. The other half takes on the quality of Palazzo Ducale, where the courtyard becomes a binding element and contains the columns within. The circular courtyard at the end of the Serlio framework transforms itself into Santa Maria in Montesanto, and takes on the role of the apse. The perimeter of the drawing is composed of Palladian plans. Il Redentore frames the drawing on the right hand side and suggests the double transept, which is completed by Palladio’s San Giorgio Maggiore and Rainaldi’s Santa Maria dei Miracoli. The final element of the drawing is Palladio’s Palazzo Chiericati. Where the column condition condenses the interior entry space into the unfamiliar lozenge form. I see this compressive act literally as a squeezing action, where the excess space is then pushed to the sides to create the full facade of the building. The building is created using an unpacking diagram where the centralized space split in half, expanded, and is then rotated.

Instructor: Peter Eisenman

Semester Drawing Competition

Competition Winner - Featured in Retrospecta 2014-2015

Alberti

The Production of What is Not Seen

Alberti’s San Sebastiano is a scheme that is derived using additive and subtractive elements to create a strong central axis and connection between the plan and elevation. The additive elements take place in the plan. When looking at the crypt level there is a defined system of columns, Alberti uses additive elements on the columns along the central axis to accentuate the linear progression. Elements that would normally be seen on the classical façade have been subtracted. The most important subtracted element is the central portion of the cornice. Had the cornice continued across the façade it would have acted as a termination point for the axis. The axis does terminate on the façade by hitting the center of the circular

arch bridging the cornice. In the plan, the termination happens in the apse. These two termination points also share a proportional relationship which helps to build the argument that this axis is to be read as a continuous unfolding element that happens on multiple surface planes.

Bramante

Organism from Concinnitas

Comparing the corners of Bramante’s Santa Maria della Pace in Rome & Laurana’s Palazzo Ducale in Urbino exposes Bramante’s different extremes of space making. Inspection of the wall behind the colonnade in tandem with the corner itself brings up the argument of expansive space compared to contained space. In S.M Pace, Bramante is true to the tartan grid established by the columns, so much so that the corner pieces are constructed of two intersecting columns and only a small sliver of the column remains. If you look at the wall behind the colonnade, pilasters have been established to make the viewer feel as if the grid of columns continues out into space. At Palazzo Ducale in Urbino Bramante uses a double column condition on the end of each palazzo façade. This double column essentially acts as a cap for the grid, and the space becomes very much contained within the Palazzo. The wall behind the colonnade at Palazzo Ducale is completely flat, which is another tool used by Bramante to show that the space is contained within itself.

Bernini & Rainaldi

Baroque Heterogeneity

Looking at the two churches at the Piazza del Popolo, I am most interested in the idea of continuity of form. Santa Maria dei Miracoli, designed by Rainaldi, takes on the oblong form of an ellipse. The form of an ellipse is interesting within itself: it presents ideas of multiple centers and suggests a longitudinal progression rather than the idealization of the centralized plan. When looking at Santa Maria in Montesanto by Bernini, the plan is a traditional centralized plan. The idea of continuity comes into play when one compares the two simplified forms of the plans and specifically the wall pochè of the churches. One would expect Bernini’s Santa Maria in Montesanto to have the more continuous plan because of its perfect

circular shape, but this is not the case, specifically in the wall pochè. There is a tension in the plan between the space making strategies of the wall pochè: is it claiming interior, or exterior? One would expect that Santa Maria in Montesanto to have three interior chapels to set up the idea of symmetry about its cross axis. But the side chapel closest to the entry is given to the exterior condition and the pochè of the wall is broken in order to make the two churches appear identical.