bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Stalinist Westernizer? Aleksandr Arosev's Literary and Political Depictions of Europe
Authors: David-Fox Michael
Published: April 2006

This article examines variegated depictions of Europe and the west produced in the 1920s and 1930s by Aleksandr Iakovlevich Arosev, an Old Bolshevik cultural official, writer, and diplomat. Arosev traveled and worked in many parts of Europe in the prewar emigration, in the 1920s and early 1930s as Soviet ambassador to Prague and other European capitals, and during the years of the Popular Front as head of the All-Union Society for Cultural Ties Abroad (VOKS). The discussion refracts a much asked question—what new sources say about attitudes toward the Soviet system—through a new prism, depictions of the outside world. Although Arosev's personal diary and unpublished reports on cultural diplomacy with European fellow-travelers suggest an often startling degree of admiration and affinity for the west, higher levels of hostility are expressed in his literary output, mass-produced pamphlets, and especially his letters to Iosif Stalin. Interpreting these disjunctures, David-Fox argues that Arosev took advantage of tensions within Soviet ideology to craft depictions of Europe for different audiences. Until his execution in 1938, it was not impossible for Arosev to be both a Stalinist and a westernizer, but the combination was perilous, painful, and difficult to sustain.
Contesting Capitalism at the Post-Soviet Dacha: The Meaning of Food Cultivation for Urban Russians
Authors: Zavisca Jane
Published: April 2006

Nearly half of urban Russian households grow food on their dacha plots. This study investigates the meaning of this activity for both those who embrace it and those who reject it. Existing scholarship frames the post-Soviet dacha as a survival strategy and debates its efficiency. Ethnographic evidence reveals that the dacha provides not simply a source of food but a discursive arena for debating the rationality and morality of the transition to a market economy. Due to their rich history, dachas may be interpreted as sites of production or of consumption, as economic necessities or status signifiers. This ambiguity makes dachas particularly salient in disputes over the proper relationship between economic power and social esteem in the shifting stratification order.
Did Russia's Emancipated Serfs Really Pay Too Much for Too Little Land? Statistical Anomalies and Long-Tailed Distributions
Authors: Hoch Steven L.
Published: April 2006

According to the widely accepted view, under the terms of emancipation and land reform, Russian peasants received inadequate allotments of land for which they had to pay a disproportionately high purchase price. The data used to support the standard interpretation and the statistical methods underlying it are seriously flawed, however. Steven L. Hoch provides a detailed critique of these data and the methods of analysis, and he concludes that the price Russia's former serfs paid was fair, if not below the market price, for a viable subsistence plot. Overall, Hoch believes that the land reform settlement was a reasonable state policy producing a desirable economic outcome.
The Architecture of Urban Housing in the United States during the Early 1930s
Authors: Pommer Richard
Published: April 2006

The housing programs undertaken by the federal government in 1932-1934 through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Housing Division of the Public Works Administration set the pattern for the architecture of housing projects in many cities of the nation for the rest of the decade. In these works the older traditions of American philanthropic housing, apartment house layout, and Beaux-Arts planning collided with new ideas of housing developed by European modernists in the 1920s and introduced into this country just as the federal housing programs began. This process is examined in the three cities most open to Continental modernism in housing: Philadelphia, in the Carl Mackley Houses; Cleveland, especially in Lakeview Terrace; and New York City, in early works of its Housing Authority such as Harlem River Houses and Williamsburg Houses. These examples are then set against the different backgrounds of American and German housing in the preceding decades. The role of Henry Wright in promoting the new architecture on the federal level is clarified. In the light of this evidence, derived largely from unpublished archives and interviews, an explanation is attempted of the early successes and eventual failures of America's public housing design and, more broadly, of aspects of our assimilation of modernist architecture.
Ancient Cities in Burma
Authors: Hla U Kan
Published: April 2006

The rich town planning and architectural legacy of the ancient state of Pyu, located on the middle branch of the Irravaddy River, is largely a discovery of archaeological excavation undertaken during the 1960s. This analysis of Pyu city plans and architectural compositions is based on reports of the Archaeological Survey of Burma and material from the author's own field studies. The analysis demonstrates that traditional medieval town planning in Burma is based on Pyu achievements, such as the system of city and palace planning, the main types of Buddhist temples, and the brick building technology that employs radiating arches.
The Origins of 18th-Century Neo-Medievalism in a Georgian Norman Castle
Authors: Mowl Timothy , Earnshaw Brian
Published: April 2006

"Gothick" in the first decades of the 18th century often simply meant "medieval," an inclusive term for both the round-arched Norman and the later pointed forms. But architectural historians using terms more precisely, have tended to focus on pointed arches. The round-arched, or Neo-Norman, expressions of medievalism in the baroque period have thus been largely ignored. This study sets out to remedy that deficiency by concentrating on one particular castle, a remarkably early instance of neo-medievalist design. The castle in question is Shirburn in Oxfordshire. It was rebuilt between 1716 and 1725 by Thomas Parker, first Earl of Macclesfield, probably to assert a link with a supposed Norman foundation. Parker was Lord Chancellor from 1718 until his fall in 1725. The castle was not a folly but his country seat. That a prominent member of the first generation of the Whig Oligarchy should have chosen to rebuild a medieval moated castle in round-arched Vanbrughian forms, rather than work in the Palladian manner of the next decade or the Gothic shapes of the second generation Whigs, is significant. It underlines the fact that romanticism as an architectural impulse must be held to include Neo-Norman as well as Neo-Gothic elements, and at a period earlier than most historians suggest: the second and third decades of the 18th century.
The Origin of Balloon Framing
Authors: Sprague Paul E.
Published: April 2006

Modern interest in the balloon frame dates from 1941 when Siegfried Giedion identified the inventor of this important technological innovation in wooden construction as George Snow of Chicago. According to Giedion, Snow used the technique for the first time in 1833 to build St. Mary's Church in Chicago. Walker Field, writing in an early issue of the SAH Journal corrected Giedion's assertion by proving that if St. Mary's Church possessed the first balloon frame, then its inventor had to be the builder of that church, a carpenter named Augustine Taylor. Here we are able to verify that indeed it was George Snow who originated balloon framing, but in 1832, not 1833, and in the erection of a building that was not a church, but a warehouse. Further investigations have revealed the probable location of Snow's warehouse on the bank of the Chicago River near its mouth, and have provided plausible explanations as to why Snow built in so revolutionary a way in so primitive a place as the village of Chicago-viz., the sudden and rapid growth of Chicago, the lack of large timbers and the services of skilled carpenters needed for ordinary frame construction, and the availability of scantling and nails. From this modest experiment in building evolved a system of wooden construction that not only made possible the rapid settlement of the treeless regions of the West, but which still serves in modified form as the basic ingredient of contemporary wooden frame construction.
The Choir of the Cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand: The Beginning of Construction and the Work of Jean Deschamps
Authors: Davis Michael T.
Published: April 2006

The cathedral of Clermont exists as an interloper of the northern French Gothic style in a region long faithful to the Romanesque tradition. Without local stylistic antecedent, it appears without warning as an example of the mature Rayonnant style in an area where the preceding phases of Gothic architecture virtually had been ignored. Robert Branner's recent hypothesis, which postpones the beginning of construction from 1248 to 1262-1263, is important for the analysis of the cathedral's chronology, and its place within and impact upon the general development of Gothic architecture in the second half of the 13th century. Is the cathedral choir a monument which took shape in the late 1240s to the 1260s and logically builds upon the premises of Amiens, Reims, Beauvais, and the Paris transepts? Or is it, as Branner states, a tardy example of the restrained Court Style architecture of the mid-13th century? A careful analysis of the surviving documentation, corroborated by a study of the building itself, yields the conclusion that the choir of the cathedral of Clermont was constructed between about 1248 and 1280. Through a careful study of the plan and the fabric of the cathedral, the sections of the choir which were erected under the supervision of Jean Deschamps may be isolated. Though Deschamps can be credited only with the hemicycle and parts of the forechoir of Clermont, his work was followed scrupulously by his successors. This examination of Clermont and the work of Jean Deschamps sheds new light on the building history of a cathedral which, serving as a model for many of the major Gothic structures of the Midi, takes an important first step in defining the career of one of the key figures in French Gothic architecture of the second half of the 13th century.
The Mechanization of Design in the 16th Century: The Structural Formulae of Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón
Authors: Sanabria Sergio Luis
Published: April 2006

The existing fragments of an architectural booklet by the 16th-century Spanish architect Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón reveal an ingenious attempt to systematize the design process by creating a sequence of formulaic procedures to be followed in ecclesiastical projects. The formulae are addressed to two more or less separate issues. The first is to synthesize Gothic and Classic proportioning methods, and demonstrate their fundamental identity. The second is to establish an independent "science" of structural design. Aside from the more theoretical writings of Leonardo da Vinci, the work of Rodrigo Gil is the principal evidence extant for the development of structural thinking among 16th-century master masons. Seven formulae discussed here are concerned with the correct depth of a buttress to support an arch or a rib vault. The formulae do not seem to have been derived through theoretical analysis, using the medieval Scientia de Ponderibus. Rather they are the result of new experimentation and traditional Gothic geometric thinking applied to classical arches, and of new arithmetic procedures applied to Gothic rib vaults.
Five Fatimid Minarets in Upper Egypt
Authors: Bloom Jonathan M.
Published: April 2006

Five minarets in Upper Egypt traditionally have been attributed to the patronage of the Fatimid vizier Badr al-Jamali. They were thought to symbolize his reassertion of Fatimid power in the late 11th century. A re-examination of their formal, functional, and physical contexts suggests instead that these structures were the products of local patrons who found their models not in Lower Egypt, but in the Hijaz region of Arabia.
The Palazzo dei Camerlenghi in Venice
Authors: Hamilton Paul C.
Published: April 2006

Intrinsic evidence proves that the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi in Venice was built in two major campaigns. Coats of arms interpreted with the aid of documents confirm that the first campaign took place in 1488. Although the architect cannot be identified, the structure of 1488 now takes its rightful place in the chronological sequence of early Venetian Renaissance buildings and represents the second known Venetian experiment in the use of superposed pilasters (following by only a few years S. Maria dei Miracoli). An inscription on the later section includes the date 1525, the terminal date of the second campaign. Stylistic analysis and historical considerations make plausible the attribution of this later part to Scarpagnino.
Richard Morris Hunt, the Continental Picturesque, and the "Stick Style"
Authors: Landau Sarah Bradford
Published: April 2006

Focusing on the Newport villas of Richard Morris Hunt, this study develops the thesis that picturesque imagery and foreign sources are critical to the understanding and interpretation of American wood houses of the late 1850s through the early 1870s. Before 1860 American architects had broadened their range of sources to include contemporary German rustic architecture. In 1855 the Beaux-Arts trained Hunt had returned to America. His presence and the example of his Griswold house (ca. 1861-1863) in Newport helped direct attention to Continental and especially French rustic architecture. Comparison of American resort houses by Hunt and other architects with designs illustrated in European publications of that time reveals the influence of the contemporary revival of half-timber and vernacular rustic architecture abroad. The picturesque American domestic architecture that resulted from this infusion of foreign ideas, often described as "Stick Style," reached its apogee with Hunt's Newport houses of the early 1870s.
The Acquisition of Pienza 1459-1464
Authors: Adams Nicholas
Published: April 2006

The transformation of the central Italian village of Corsignano into Pienza (1459-1464) by Pope Pius II (Enea Silvio Piccolomini) required an elaborate series of property purchases. Through the discovery of hitherto unpublished notarial memoranda from the Archivio di Stato, Siena, it is now possible to consider the process of urbanization as a distinct series of phases rather than simply as the result of papal will. These documents, recording the price paid for the property, its appurtenances, and the zone of the village in which it was located, reveal that the Pope developed different areas in sequence. Purchasers with a variety of relations to him and the Piccolomini family tended to buy in different areas. With these documents it is possible to begin to consider the Pope's intentions at each stage. It is also possible to use the documents to reconsider some traditional ownership attributions.
The Façade of Leone Leoni's House in Milan, the Casa degli Omenoni: The Artist and the Public
Authors: Mezzatesta Michael P.
Published: April 2006

Leone Leoni's house in Milan, the Casa degli Omenoni, is one of the city's most distinctive architectural landmarks. It has long earned the attention and admiration of visitors, particularly for its unusual façade decorated with six over-life-sized barbarian prisoners and two half-length caryatids flanking the central portal. Figures of this kind had never been seen on a house or palace façade before they appeared here. This article analyzes the sculptural and architectural sources of these figures as well as the architectural sources of the façade in general. The Casa degli Omenoni is placed within the context of the three major façade types at mid-century, in order to further clarify its innovative qualities. Finally, the iconology is discussed, with Leoni's dedication of the house to Marcus Aurelius seen in relation to the popularity of two books on the ancient emperor by the court historian of Charles V, Fray Antonio de Guevara. The prisoner motif is linked to the Persian Portico, and the famous frieze relief showing lions attacking a satyr is related to a similar device in Filarete's palace for the pseudonymous architect Onitoan Noliaver. It will be seen that Leoni presented himself to the public less as an artist than as a gentleman in the social camp of the Hapsburgs.
Architectural Representation in Victorian England
Authors: Kaufman Edward N.
Published: April 2006

Victorian architectural theorists believed that buildings were capable of conveying meanings in a direct and precise way, rather like books, paintings, or even orators. These meanings were understood to refer to things outside the building: architecture was thus conceived to be a representational form of art. This essay explores some of the consequences of this view. What subjects did Victorian buildings represent, and how did they do so? What criteria determined a building's adequacy as a representation? How, finally, did the demand for representational content shape the central Victorian concept of architectural truth?
Vitruvius on Stage Architecture and Some Recently Discovered Scaenae Frons Decorations
Authors: Cerutti Steven , Richardson, L.
Published: April 2006

The recent discoveries of the Room of the Masks in the Casa di Augusto on the Palatine in Rome, and the atrium of the building at Torre dell'Annunziata now generally known as Oplontis, have rekindled interest in the influence of stage architecture on Second Style wall painting, yet their real importance has not been fully appreciated. While the origins of the Second Style are still debated, the influence of the design of stage settings in the late republic is undeniable. That the paintings of these two rooms conform to Vitruvius's criteria for stage construction and theatrical scenery confirms this thesis. The influence of the stage is also a crucial factor in the development of the later styles and their dating.
The Flamboyant Architecture of St.-Maclou, Rouen, and the Development of a Style
Authors: Neagley Linda Elaine
Published: April 2006

The construction of St.-Maclou after 1432 revitalized architecture in Rouen and Normandy for the next 90 years. Both the patrons and the architect played a significant role in the emergence of this new style. The architecture has been attributed to the Parisian master Pierre Robin, but the stylistic evidence based on a unique vocabulary of forms suggests that the St.-Maclou master was trained in the Norman Vexin and had a knowledge of architecture of Germany, Flanders, and central Europe. The parish church was also modeled on several monumental features found at the cathedral of Rouen including the interior and transept elevations, the lantern tower, and the western porch. This ambitious project, undertaken by the merchant class families of the parish during the English occupation, reflects both a desire to assume the duties of the old orders of the city and a conscious rejection of contemporary English-influenced architecture constructed during the occupation. One of these families, the Dufours, assisted the French king, Charles VII, in the recapitulation of Rouen in 1449. Thus, the retrospective and hence conservative reference to the Rayonnant parts of the cathedral of Rouen may have reflected a nostalgia for the architectural style associated with Louis IX and a golden age of French royalty. Using both stylistic and documentary evidence, this article attempts to identify the role of the patrons and architect in the development of the style of St.-Maclou.
Hawksmoor's "Basilica after the Primitive Christians": Architecture and Theology
Authors: Prey Pierre de la Ruffiniere du
Published: April 2006

The purpose, operation, and theological orientation of the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches in London, established in 1711, provides the background for an understanding of Nicholas Hawksmoor's drawing for an ideal "Basilica after the Primitive Christians." Point by point his detailed specifications can be related to theological writings of the period, which in turn reflected the beliefs of certain key commissioners. These beliefs about the ecclesiastical architecture of the early Christians in the Near East suggest new interpretations for the symbolism of the commissioners' churches.
"Neugriechisch/Néo-Grec:" The German Vocabulary of French Romantic Architecture
Authors: Brownlee David B.
Published: April 2006

The enigmatic term néo-grec, attached to the architecture and architectural thinking of mid-nineteenth-century France, seems to have been born in Germany. There, in the first years of the century, neugriechisch was used to describe the Byzantine-influenced Romanesque architecture of the Rhineland. Ludovic Vitet, soon to be named Inspecteur général des Monuments historiques, learned about this terminology in 1829, when he toured Germany and met with Sulpiz Boisserée, the antiquarian who had invented it. Vitet translated the term and took it home, along with the romantic view of history that it embodied.
H. H. Richardson's Ames Gate Lodge and the Romantic Landscape Tradition
Authors: Kowsky Francis R.
Published: April 2006

The Ames gate lodge in North Easton, Massachusetts, has long been acknowledged as one of Henry Hobson Richardson's most remarkable works. Designed in 1880-1881, the building was set amidst grounds landscaped by Richardson's friend Frederick Law Olmsted. The distinctive elements of the gate lodge are its boulder walls and its great archway spanning the estate drive. These features surely drew their inspiration from Richardson's knowledge and understanding of bridges erected according to designs chiefly by Calvert Vaux in Central Park, America's first important municipal pleasure ground. This article seeks to identify the gate lodge as a descendent of those imaginative structures and an expression of the romantic ideals of landscape architecture that informed their design.
Mansart's Colonnade at Versailles: Further Observations
Authors: Berger Robert W.
Published: April 2006

Documents of April and May 1684-including a letter by the Marquis de Louvois to Jules Hardouin-Mansart, dated 22 May 1684-indicate that the Crown was intending to move the sculptures of the Grotto of Tethys to the site then occupied by Les Sources, and that Mansart had been instructed to replace Les Sources with a new design suitable for the sculptures. The eventual new creation, the Colonnade (design begun in June), was probably intended from the outset as a monarchical setting. The spandrel sculptures of the Colonnade may allude to the peace France was enjoying during most of the 1680s.
"ad modum franciae": Charles of Anjou and Gothic Architecture in the Kingdom of Sicily
Authors: Bruzelius Caroline A.
Published: April 2006

The ruined abbeys of S. Maria di Realvalle and S. Maria della Vittoria in southern Italy attest to the use of French Gothic architecture as part of a policy of cultural and political domination over the kingdom conquered by Charles of Anjou in 1266. The Angevin registers document the king's emphasis on Frenchness in all details and provide the names of many of the French masons and sculptors who worked on royal building projects. As in the other territories that fell under French control after the middle of the thirteenth century, such as southwestern France, Gothic from the Ile-de-France was utilized in the Kingdom of Sicily to connote the authority and prestige of the new regime. In insisting not only on the adoption of French architecture at the abbeys, but also on a population of French monks, Charles envisioned the monasteries as strongholds of French culture and prestige. Yet this was a short-lived phenomenon, for the subsequent generations of monuments erected by Charles II and Robert the Wise, especially those in Lucera and Naples, are profoundly different in character, and for the most part references to French models are eliminated. The rejection of the Frenchness promoted by Charles of Anjou and the evolution of a new and distinctly different type of architecture for royal monuments in the last years of the thirteenth century perhaps reflected new attitudes of cultural adaptation that resulted from the outbreak of the War of the Vespers in 1282.
Edgar J. Kaufmann, Frank Lloyd Wright and the "Pittsburgh Point Park Coney Island in Automobile Scale"
Authors: Cleary Richard
Published: April 2006

Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr. was a patron of Frank Lloyd Wright from 1934 until Kaufmann's death in 1955. In addition to building Fallingwater and an office interior, Kaufmann repeatedly sought to find a place for Wright's talents in Pittsburgh. The most spectacular of his commissions were two schemes prepared in 1947 and 1948 for transforming the Pittsburgh Point at the junction of the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela Rivers into a populist civic center. The schemes reflect Kaufmann's dream of a beautiful, modern city and Wright's vision for the "automobile objectives" that were to be the social hubs of his utopia, Broadacre City.
Architecture and the Housing Market: Nineteenth Century Row Housing in Boston's South End
Authors: Smith Margaret Supplee , Moorhouse John C.
Published: April 2006

This study combines historical and quantitative methods to determine the market response to a major nineteenth century American urban architectural form-the speculatively built row house. The paper estimates a hedonic price index which decomposes the original purchase price of the row house into a set of prices for the characteristics of the house, including detailed architectural features. In turn, the estimated prices for the architectural features reveal the market's response to the aesthetic design. With more than 3,500 row houses, its tree-lined streets, and scattered parks, Boston's South End is the largest Victorian residential district remaining in the United States. The homogeneity of the brick bowfront row house form, coupled with the variety of architectural features, provides an unusual opportunity to test the effect of architecture on market values. We find that variables for lot size, house size, and location within the neighborhood explain 74 percent of the price of a row house. Architectural style and features account for an additional 14 percent of the price of the house and are more highly valued when they differentiate a row house from its neighbors. These are significant results, for they provide systematic statistical evidence that architectural design matters in the marketplace. "But tell me: When you say; 'The value of a building,' do you really lay more stress on the subjective value than the dollar value?" "On both. For human nature determines that subjective value, sooner or later, becomes money value; and the lack of it, sooner or later, money loss. The subjective value is far higher, by far the more permanent; but money value is inseparable from the affairs of life; to ignore it would be moonshine."
Bell Towers and Building Workshops in Medieval Rome
Authors: Priester Ann
Published: April 2006

Thirty-five medieval bell towers, along with dozens of churches such as S. Clemente, S. Crisogono, S. Maria in Trastevere, and S. Lorenzo fuori le mura, survive as testimony to a boom in ecclesiastical construction in Rome during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This article focuses on these bell towers, using computer database analysis of their architectural and decorative features to investigate the nature of building workshops in medieval Rome. A comparison of a number of variable features among the bell towers, such as masonry techniques, cornices, and decorative details, uncovered patterns of similarities and differences which may be attributed to workshop practices. Four distinct groups of bell towers are identified on the basis of these features, which I suggest are evidence of the existence of four workshops of brick masons active in bell tower construction in Rome between the early twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. Finally, the article addresses the question of specialization within medieval Rome's building industry and the circumstances behind a rapid decline around 1200 in bell tower building and the fate of the workshops that built them. I observe that by the early thirteenth century, certain prestigious architectural commissions, such as the cloisters at the Lateran and S. Paolo f.l.m., were not given to workshops of brick masons, but to marble workers.
S. Ivo Alla Sapienza: The First Three Minutes
Authors: Connors Joseph
Published: April 2006

Francesco Borromini's masterpiece, the university chapel of S. Ivo alla Sapienza in Rome, was built over three pontificates, with many radical changes after each conclave. This is a study of the first building period under Urban VIII Barberini, and in particular of the earliest known plan for the church, datable to 1642, now kept in the Archivio di Stato in Rome. The drawing shows the basic plan of the church-a triangle-plus-apses-minus-angles-being moved, manipulated, and stretched as Borromini fine-tuned his design. The plan contains echoes of centralized buildings by Baldassarre Peruzzi and Giuliano da Sangallo, and also reveals Borromini's study of ancient apsidal structures, in particular, the "funerary hexaconch" standing along-side the Via Appia, best known from Peruzzi's drawings. Neither the Barberini bee nor the star of Solomon played a role in the genesis of the plan. But the idea of a highly geometrical architecture may owe something to the mathematical culture of the Barberini court, especially to Galileo's disciple Fra Benedetto Castelli.
An Unrecorded Manuscript Translation of Philander's "Digressio Utilissimo" on the Classical Orders and the Geneva Vitruvius of 1618
Authors: Mitchell Herbert , Marmor Max
Published: April 2006

In 1950, the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University acquired a copy of Vitruvius's treatise on architecture in the French translation of Jean Martin, published by Jêrome de Marnef and Guillaume Cavellat in Paris in 1572. This copy features copious editorial and marginal annotations in at least two early hands, as well as a contemporary, eight-page (four-leaf) manuscript bound in at the back, also copiously annotated. The annotations show that this copy was used as the basis for a later edition of the Martin Vitruvius, published by the firm of Jean de Tournes (Geneva, 1618). The bound-in manuscript proves to be a French translation of Guillaume Philander's "Digressio Utilissimo" on the classical orders, from his Annotationes to Vitruvius (first edition, Rome 1544). This unrecorded manuscript translation of Philander's important commentary on the orders furnished the text that de Tournes incorporated in the 1618 edition of Vitruvius. Avery's copy of the Martin Vitruvius of 1572, in addition to offering rare firsthand evidence of editorial and printing practices in the early seventeenth century, further provides concrete and exhaustive evidence of the editorial strategies employed by a publisher of architectural books intent upon filling the perceived market for an illustrated, scholarly-yet accessible-edition of Vitruvius in the vernacular.
Political Ruins: Gothic Sham Ruins and the '45
Authors: Stewart David
Published: April 2006

Many Gothic sham ruins erected after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 were produced as attacks on England's Catholic and baronial past. Such ruins were not simply images of picturesque beauty or of nostalgia: rather, they were monuments of ridicule and images of just destruction, commemorating the defeat of Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, by the forces of George II. The Young Pretender threatened England with the return of monasteries, the return of the tyranny of John and Charles I, and the return to the power of the pope in England. The one thing that many eighteenth-century Englishmen did not want was a genuine return to the Gothic past; such a return threatened to extinguish much that eighteenth-century Whiggism had accomplished. The Gothic sham ruins discussed in this essay were the product not of a deep sense of cultural respect, but, in fact, for some, of a sense of cultural opposition. Politics and religion help us to understand why Sanderson Miller, George Lyttelton, Lord Hardwicke, and William Shenstone built Gothic ruins. Distrust for things Gothic spread far beyond these four men: It extended from Horace Walpole at mid-century to William Gilpin at the end of the century, from the century's greatest leader of the Gothic Revival to the century's greatest promoter of the picturesque aesthetic.
Nationalism and Architecture: The Creation of a National Style in Serbian Architecture and Its Political Implications
Authors: Pantelić Bratislav
Published: April 2006

From the mid-nineteenth century until the late 1930s the dominant architectural mode in Serbia was a local historicist style termed Serbo-Byzantine. At first it was used only for churches but was soon extended to schools and then to all types of buildings. Although mostly based on academic revivalist forms, this idiom, which purportedly drew its inspiration from Balkan medieval architecture, did, on occasion, display distinctly local characteristics. Although part of a pan-European trend. Serbian historicism was detached from architectural developments elsewhere. Unlike other Romantic-era revivalist movements. Serbo-Byzantine architecture was not sponsored for its picturesque or romantic qualities but above all for its symbolism. It was widely believed that forms derived from the national monuments of the Middle Ages symbolized Serbian statehood and contained ethnic and religious attributes representative of the Serbian nation. Architecture in Serbia was thus primarily a means for articulating national policy and a powerful instrument for maintaining the national and religious unity of a widely separated group of people. Ideologists of the national program even believed that the definition of a style particular to the Serbs was a matter of national survival. Such political bias was conditioned by ethnic and territorial disputes among the various ethnic groups in the Balkan dominions of the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. After 1945 the new Communist authorities proscribed historicism as nationalistic and promoted a utilitarian brand of nonornamental architecture which contained no national overtones. Serbian historicism, however, demonstrated unusual vitality; resurgence of nationalism in the 1980s was accompanied by a spate of church building in the Serbo-Byzantine style, which reasserted its position as the canonical style of the Orthodox church.
Architecture and Infirmitas: Doge Andrea Gritti and the Chancel of San Marco
Authors: Hopkins Andrew
Published: April 2006

The mid-sixteenth century location of the doge's throne and the seating for the Signoria in S. Marco, Venice, were considerably different from the original arrangements of the twelfth century. The date of the changes and the motives that prompted them have never been clarified. An examination of Marin Sanudo's Diaries provides not only the date of the changes in practice but also suggests the initial and hitherto unsuspected impetus: the infirmity of Doge Andrea Gritti. This article utilizes Sanudo's contemporary accounts to shed light on architectural changes in the chancel of S. Marco in the 1530s.
Reconciling National Narratives in Socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Baščaršija Project, 1948-1953
Authors: Alić Dijana , Gusheh Maryam
Published: April 2006

The emergence of modernism in post-World War II Bosnia was simultaneous with the development of the Yugoslav socialist regime and the desire to redefine the role of religion and ethnicity in the construction of a new national identity. The debate as to the relevance of the Serbian, Croatian, and Muslim national narratives to the broader universalist and secular Yugoslav agenda brought into question the cultural significance of the Bosnian built heritage. How was the existing built fabric to inform the architecture of the revolution? In this context, the work of Juraj Neidhardt, a former employee of Le Corbusier's, is significant since his seminal text, Architecture of Bosnia and the Way Toward Modernity (1957), articulates a critical link between the existing built fabric and "modern socialist" architecture. In discussing his work within the broader political context of socialist Bosnia, this paper focuses on an architectural and textual analysis of Neidhardt's proposal to turn Baščaršija, the Ottoman-established urban core of Sarajevo, into a cultural center for socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is argued that the specific urban and architectural strategies Neidhardt employed were reflective of his desire to secularize the Ottoman built fabric and thereby allow a distinctly Bosnian narrative to coexist and contribute to the architecture of the socialist regime.
Modernism and Medicine: The Hospitals of Stevens and Lee, 1916-1932
Authors: Adams Annmarie
Published: April 2006

This paper considers the work of Bostonand Toronto-based architects Edward Stevens and Frederick Lee during a critical period in North American hospital expansion. Without exception, their hospitals represented state-of-the-art planning wrapped in conservative exteriors. The firm's work thus offers a rich case study from which to consider the notion of historicist design as a mechanism for coping with change. This paper focuses on five Stevens-and-Lee projects: Notre Dame Hospital and two additions to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, the Kingston General Hospital, and the Ottawa Civic Hospital. Their buildings can be considered typical of the period, since Stevens and Lee designed prominent hospitals across North America. An interpretation of the hospitals is further enriched by the prospect of comparing what was built to the architects' own words. Edward Stevens's The American Hospital of the Twentieth Century (1918) is a classic in the field of hospital architecture, and he published extensively in the architectural and medical professional presses. The study of Steven's words and his hospitals illuminates the inherent danger of regarding historicist building types as antimodern or necessarily conventional. It also reveals the paucity of stylistic interpretations of all architecture. This approach has resulted in the widespread misinterpretation of interwar hospitals as reactionary, or at best antimodern. For this reason, hospitals of the 1920s are generally omitted from studies of the building type and are seen, mistakenly, as simple reverberations of the nineteenth-century model. Generic hospital architecture of the interwar years was modern in its spatial attitudes-not necessarily its look, but rather in its structure, its endorsement of aseptic medical practice, its sanctioning of expert knowledge, its appeal to new patrons, its encouragement of new ways of working, its response to urbanization, its use of zoning, its acceptance of modern social structures, its resemblance to other modern building types, its embrace of internationalism, and its endorsement of standardization.
Architectural Criticism, Science, and Visual Eloquence: Teofilo Gallaccini in Seventeenth-Century Siena
Authors: Payne Alina A.
Published: April 2006

This article examines the transition from a mimetic conception of architecture as proposed by the great treatise writers of the Renaissance, to the modern, science- and engineering-oriented one that began to supplant it in the eighteenth century. The focus of the investigation is the textual culture of Italian Baroque theory and its vehicle, the till now largely unknown corpus of the Sienese scientist Teofilo Gallaccini. It is argued that alongside the traditional path of architectural theory produced by architects, which evolved in the grooves set in the Vitruvian Renaissance, there existed a parallel path driven by scientists. Absorbing the imitatio practices of visual artists into their own inquiries, scientists provided other outlets for their use and in so doing also provided other directions for architectural discourse. By locating Gallaccini's work in the scientific and architectural culture of his own time, and by exploring its appeal to exponents of the Enlightenment who held widely divergent views on the means of achieving architectural reform, this article argues that-far from proceeding by watersheds and paradigm revolutions, as modernist history writing has held-modern theory owes much to both the scientific and mimetic approaches that not only co-existed but also intertwined in the Baroque.
A Reassessment of the Western Parts of the Romanesque Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela
Authors: Watson Christabel
Published: April 2006

In the last two decades, it has generally become accepted that the Romanesque Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela was left unfinished after the death of Archbishop Gelmírez in 1140. Not until Master Mateo was given his contract in 1168 was the building finally completed. It is said that the whole of the west end was designed by Mateo as a homogeneous entity. This overturns Kenneth Conant's hypothesis that the cathedral was raised in one building program, from the mid-1070s to 1140. The aim of this paper is to propose a reassessment of the western parts of the cathedral. By a detailed study of the standing fabric, the author has discovered that major portions of the Romanesque church existed at the west end before the advent of Mateo. The enigmatic west crypt has always provoked discussion. Here it can be shown that there is a division between the work of the beginning of the twelfth century and the additions undertaken by Mateo from 1168. That the towers existed from an early date is verified by a study of ground plans revealing a bend in the nave, and confirmed by measurements and the orientation of the cathedral. The west façade belonging to Mateo is contrasted with an earlier one created during the episcopate of Gelmírez. Similarly, by comparing aspects of the interior, it can be appreciated that the original Romanesque building was altered by Mateo. At gallery level two dissimilar archways indicate that the masons of Gelmírez were faced with problems that also troubled Mateo half a century later. Features at roof level demonstrate that the nave was already joined to the west end and did not have to wait for Mateo to complete the cathedral. These peculiarities are explained by an analysis of the architecture and from visible changes in the stone coursing and masonry. It will be shown that Mateo had to develop his new work within the constraints established by a preexisting building.
Anachronism in the Roman Architecture of Gaul: The Date of the Maison Carrée at Nîmes
Authors: Anderson, James C.
Published: April 2006

The Maison Carrée is dated to the reign of Augustus primarily from its dedicatory inscription. However, no text of the inscription remains in situ; only clamp holes, without countersunk letter patterns, attest to what letter may have belonged where. The patterns are more or less consistent with the various restorations proposed for them; none is definite, secure, or proven. The dating of the temple cannot be based on such a phantom inscription, which provides no chronological evidence whatsoever, as has also been shown for the arch at Orange and the Roman temple at Vienne. The basic unit of measurement used in the ground plan of the Maison Carrée is the pes Drusianus, otherwise not securely attested prior to the early second century A. D. Use of this measurement module suggests a date at least a century after Augustus's reign. Similar problems arise in analyzing the proportions, Corinthian order, and decoration of the temple; all such problems are resolved or relieved by assigning the temple as we know it to a second-century A. D. restoration. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that a restoration of an Augustan temple at Nîmes during the first half of the second century A. D., possibly in the reign of Hadrian or of Antoninus Pius, with the text of its earlier inscription reset on the façade, may be more consistent with the extant remains of the Maison Carrée.
The Topography of Prostitution in Renaissance Ferrara
Authors: Ghirardo Diane Yvonne
Published: April 2006

Although prostitutes and courtesans flourished in most Renaissance Italian cities, little research has documented the presence of such women outside of the major centers of Rome, Florence, and Venice. This study focuses on the spaces occupied by the prostitutes of Ferrara in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Spatially controlled both by legislation and by common practices, prostitutes navigated in a circumscribed world riven by conflict and competing interests. Neither the modalities of these spatial practices nor the houses and structures the women used or inhabited have received scholarly attention. The article includes previously unknown information about the establishment, location, and operation of the city's public brothels, about spatial control, and about the ways in which the city was structured to restrict women believed to be unruly.
The "Solar Eye" of Vision: Emergence of the Skyscraper-Viewer in the Discourse on Heights in New York City, 1890-1920
Authors: Wigoder Meir
Published: April 2006

This article explores the social and urban circumstances that made it possible for Alvin Langdon Coburn, the celebrated American Pictorialist photographer, to turn his camera upon Madison Square in 1912 from the vantage point of the Metropolitan Life Tower, and thus to create the first abstraction of a city viewed from above. The paper defines how the birth of the modern skyscraper-viewer corresponded to a period of urban transformation in New York City between 1890 and 1920. By extrapolating the terms of discourse regarding the skyscraper-viewer that appeared in a range of cultural, industrial, and architectural journals, we are able to discern how periods of social upheaval affect individualism and mass identity, which in turn conditions the way artists and writers define their artistic vision in relation to daily life in the city. This rudimentary discourse on heights and everyday life was later taken up by writers such as Michele de Certeau and Roland Barthes, who wrote about seeing a city from great heights and how this vision creates the illusion of power and knowledge in the observer.