scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Dissertation

The architectural image: space, movement and myth

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the role of human figures in human action: persuasive human figures Persuasive human figures Performing human figures, and performing human figures with human action.
Abstract: of human figures Persuasive human figures Performing human figures
Citations
More filters
01 Jan 2014

26 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Mar 1973-English

14 citations

Journal Article

14 citations

Book
01 Jan 1919

5 citations

01 Jan 2000

2 citations

References
More filters
Book
01 Jan 1982

21 citations

Book
01 Jan 1982

17 citations

Book
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: The art of the shop window cars and jars: L'Esprit Nouveau and a geometry of the city of Paris as mentioned in this paper is a classic example of shop window art.
Abstract: List of Plates Acknowledgements Introduction: Illusory cities Villes Lumieres La boutique and the face of modern Paris The art of the shop window Cars and jars: L'Esprit Nouveau and a geometry of the city Conclusion Select bibliography Index -- .

16 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In contemporary architectural drawing, the presence of the human figure, to give scale, is absolutely indispensable as discussed by the authors, and the body as reality becomes the unit of architectural production since it sets brick upon brick, and the abstracting of architectural representation in the modern movement is required by the alienation of human corporality from the business of building.
Abstract: In contemporary architectural drawing, the presence of the human figure, to give scale, is absolutely indispensable. This has not always been the case. In older representations, the scale relation between drawing and building itself was mediated by a design method in which the human figure was incorporated into the elements of architecture by simile and metaphor, by an organic use of stone and rendering. The goal was the transubstantiation of architectural artifact into human presence, and vice versa; it was possible because technology was understood as a productive system that operated simultaneously on two levels, the rhetorical and the physical one (Frascari 1985: 4). The world constructed by this twofold process of view thus became experience translated into a visual and tactile manifestation of thinking. The theoretical drawings developed by the Tuscan Renaissance architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1961) to illustrate his architectural treatises are ideal examples of such an interpretation of the world as a product of the twofold technology resulting from the projection of the human body. A building is as it is because it is both constructed by man and interpreted through the human form (fig. 1). The logic of the constructive technique is part of the technique of verbal logic, and vice versa. In this procedure the body is the most general and perfect means for arriving at a sizing of the reality of the architectural world. The body as reality becomes the unit of architectural production since it sets brick upon brick. It is also the formal basis for the, configuration from the elements of construction to whole cities (figs. 2, 3). Architectural anthropomorphism?the ascription of human characters and attributes to buildings and edifices?has a long tradition in architectural theory. Vitruvius, a rhapsodic architect from the first century B.c., describes the diverse forms it took in the Hellenistic-Roman tradition of his day. It was a practice suggested for the determination of both measure and proportion to stimulate the imagination of the designer and the builder. In our own time Leon Krier (1984), an aggressive postmodern architect from Luxemburg, returns to the metaphor and the anthropomorphic conception in his battle against the deleterious modernist city (fig. 4) and its poorly organized body, patched up as it is by mechanistic and functionalists proth?ses and the transplant of organs to improper sites (fig. 5). The abstracting of architectural representation in the modern movement is required by the alienation of human corporality from the business of building. Thus the elaborations of modern projects favor a Cartesian rationality; they produce mathematical constructions but lack human reality. If one compares drawings by Krier with those by Francesco di Giorgio, one can see how the decline in the anthropomorphic construct both has produced, and is produced by, a corresponding

14 citations