Using New Technologies to Reveal Palladio’s Design Process
Andrea Palladio, a Renaissance architect active in the Venetian Republic and considered one of history’s most influential architects, built churches, palaces, and houses throughout Northern Italy. While it is well known that his study of classical architecture helped shaped his work, what is less clear are the design processes that link many of Palladio’s creations.
Leveraging emerging technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), this project will explore some of the core themes that shaped Palladio’s professional development. With a focus on his early training as a stonecutter and the integration of the designs of the Roman baths into the highly acclaimed Venetian churches of the 1500s, this project will employ novel techniques allowing viewers
to experience firsthand the conceptual arc underlying Palladio’s designs. Understanding these early influences will shed light on Palladio’s work, helping today’s architects better situate the sources of this master’s designs in their own.
Led by Karolina Kawiaka, Architect and Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth College, this project investigates the following premises:
1) Palladio’s training as a stonecutter allowed him to use the ambiguity of orthogonal projection in his designs, playing with similar elevations in different plans. At least two views of three orthogonal projections (plan, section, elevation) are necessary to understand a building spatially (i.e., a free standing colonnade and engaged pilasters would look identical in elevation, but different in plane view as the columns would be pulled away from the façade).
2) Drawing buildings, such as the Baths of Caracalla, not only helped Palladio shape his skills as a draftsman, but these drawings then made their way, out of scale and context, into houses and churches in his later career. Palladio essentially “copied and pasted” parts from different buildings and scales to create his innovative designs. Drawings from temples and baths later reappeared in his houses and churches, making him a precursor to postmodernist architects.
This project will use drawings from early and late stages of Palladio’s life and develop them into 3D models: starting with the drawings of the Roman baths (Diocletian, Caracalla, and Agrippa) and finishing with the late churches (San Giorgio Maggiore, Il Redentore, and San Francesco della Vigna). Viewers can experience the drawings as 3D models and will be able to walk through his drawings in virtual reality and experience first hand the thread of Palladio’s lifelong commitment to playful formal manipulation of scale, plan, and elevation. By creating 3D models of the baths and Palladio’s churches from his original drawings and comparing them to as they exist now, students and architects can contrast the old and the new, the designed and the actual, side by side in ways that have not previously been possible to truly understand the processes embedded in Palladio’s buildings. From stone unto stone, Palladio’s work, viewed with these tools, may yet have much to teach us about his powerful manipulation of form and structure.
Statement of Objectives
The primary objectives of this project include:
1) To develop a deeper understanding of the processes that Palladio employed in his work, with the goal of broadening scholarly knowledge and practitioners’ understanding of this seminal figure within architecture and art history.
2) To draw a line of connection between Palladio’s early career as a stonecutter and tradesman to the later years of his career in which he was recognized as an esteemed artist, thereby further delineating the unfettered blend of craftsmanship, creativity, and innovative architecture that sits at the foundation of fine art.
3) To employ innovative emerging technologies and methodologies that will enable wider audiences – ranging from scholars, students, architects, and the public – to experience and appreciate the works that Palladio created in his later career and also the novel techniques that he employed to create them.
4) To inspire other artists, scholars, and architects to further explore the works of Palladio and push the boundaries of current understanding of his designs by leveraging additional technologies developed in the future. By making this research open source and available to others
Project Background/Previous Phases
This work began as an undergraduate student at Smith College studying under the guidance of Professor John Pinto, and later continued at the Harvard Graduate School of Design under the tutelage of Professor Howard Burns.
The spatial ambiguity inherent in orthogonal architectural drawing, and even in building typology, was used by Palladio to generate alternative design solutions. Palladio used this spatial idea derived from possible multiple readings of orthogonal drawing, as most probably understood intuitively by him by the need for both elevation and section templates to clarify spatially relationships in stonecutting. Hence, there is a tension between Palladio’s 2D orthogonal drawings and the 3D built reality of his designs in terms of scale and materiality and the physical experience of the viewer, and even in terms of building function.
By investigating these aspects of his work using digital tools and by creating digital models and drawings from the ancient and renaissance scanned originals, this project will provide deep insight and hopefully new interest into Palladio’s thought and design processes to allow today’s students, scholars, and architects to employ them in their own research, designs, and creations.
Anticipated Outcomes
As a prospective engineering major modified with studio art, my interests lie at the intersection of physical capability and aesthetic design. In collaboration with Professor Karolina Kawiaka through this research, I practice and gain the ability to convey 2-dimensional ideas into 3-D models, improve upon my spatial awareness, and gain familiarity with software that is heavily used in this field of practice. The knowledge of these modeling programs will be incredibly valuable to me as I continue my education as an undergraduate and beyond.
Through investigations of Palladio’s ancient designs, I deepened my understanding of Renaissance architecture and the processes behind the design of some of the earliest Italian churches, palaces, and houses.
Working under the supervision of Professor Kawiaka will gave me invaluable insight on the practice of a female architect and researcher. This experience will be formative in the formation of my career in this field and aid in my knowledge beyond my undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College.
The anticipated outcomes of this project include:
- Developing complex 3D virtual computer models of Palladio’s early career bath drawings and his late Venetian Church designs that can be experienced in VR
- At least one new publication and various other media stories and publicity
- The creation of an early-stage website – aimed to be accessible by both scholars and the wider public – to allow audiences to experience the findings of this project individually in VR
- A deeper appreciation of the innovative and novel processes employed by Palladio, enabling others to leverage these processes in future scholarly and architectural works
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