4 History of Contemporary Architecture AA 2016.-2017 Prof. Michela Rosso
4/index & biblio references The Eighteenth century and a New Architecture of EXPRESSION The SUBLIME and the PICTURESQUE The English landscape garden (BERGDOLL: 73-90)
The SUBLIME, an aesthetic principle Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses ( ) It is this sense which furnishes the imagination with its ideas ( ). Joseph Addison, The Pleasures of the Imagination, London 1712
Architecture, the senses and the architectural expression
the Sublime an aesthetic principle distinct from beauty a feeling of grandeur, awe, reverential respect or even fear produced by the sight of things or phenomena that are not always necessarily beautiful or comprehensible horror, disharmony, lack of symmetry,.can all generate the sublime and be sources of aesthetic pleasure
Design for the French National Library by Etienne Louis Boullée, 1785
INSIGHT: The Belly of an Architect by Peter Greenaway, 1987 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkhv8x_psp8
Emil Kaufmann, From Ledoux to Le Corbusier. The rise and development of an authonomous architecture, Vienna, 1933.
September 19, 1783, in Versailles a MONTGOLFIÈRE BALLOON flew for eight minutes in front of Louis 16th, his wife Marie Antoinette and the French court
In Blondel s terms, the BUILDING S CHARACTER, its repulsive style of heaviness would immediately declare to the spectators the confused lives of those detained inside, along with the force required for those in charge to hold them confined
The TASTE for MOCK RUINS 1751: William Chambers Section of the Prince of Wales s Mausoleum as a ruin (not built)
CASTLE HOWARD by John Vanbrugh Image published in Colen Campbell s Vitruvius Britannicus. Or the British Architect 1725
THE PICTURESQUE GARDEN Architecture as an accident in the landscape Louis de Carmontelle, Jardin de Monceau (Paris)
Some SOURCES for the PICTURESQUE 1645 c., CLAUDE LORRAIN, painting of a Pastoral landscape at Ponte Molle (Milvio) in Rome
GEOMETRY of the FORMAL GARDEN (also known as FRENCH/ ITALIAN) Plan and view of the Royal Gardens of the Palace of Versailles designed by André Le Notre from 1661 onwards for the King Louis 14th
GEOMETRY of the FORMAL GARDEN The gardens at Palais Royal - Paris
RICHARD MIQUE the Hameau of Versailles, 1780 c. Aerial view and plan Meaning of HAMLET : a small settlement, generally smaller than a village.
RICHARD MIQUE, the Mill in the Hameau of Versailles, 1780 A park in the form a Norman rural village, designed for the Queen and the Court, a place where she finds the pleasure of rural life, later a real agricultural farm run by real farmers
The hameaux/hamlets Versailles, Chantilly. The park is conceived as a succession of tableaux vivants, scenes of real life, almost in a pre-disneyan sense, as a theme park
The Picturesque A MEDIATING TERM BETWEEN THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME features & keywords Variety Intricacy, Irregularity Asymmetry Informality JAGGED PROFILES Contrasting scale and structures Composing in harmony with nature and from multiple points of view
STOWE, UK
THE ENGLISH LANDSCAPE GARDEN and the architectural follies Stourhead Notice the little Pantheon in the distance, designed by Henry Flitcroft in 1755 The Temple of the Sun
ITAL EXAMPLES OF PICTUREQUE GARDENS or giardini all inglese in ITALY English Garden, Giardino di paesaggio o all Inglese at the Reggia di Caserta, in the South of Italy designed by JOHN ANDREA GRAEFER, 1786 onwards
EXAMPLES OF PICTUREQUE GARDENS in ITALY Garden of the Castle of Racconigi, designed between 1787 and 1819 by Giacomo Pregliasco, FOLIES NEL PARCO DI RACCONIGI
ARTIFICIAL GROTTO AT RACCONIGI
FOLLY IN THE PARK OF RACCONIGI, GIACOMO PREGLIASCO 1820
CHINOISERIES WILLIAM KENT Twickenham GARDEN and the Temple of Shells 1736
CHINOISERIES WILLIAM KENT The octagonal chinese KIOSK at Esher place
WILLIAM KENT A study of landscape with a GOTHIC BELVEDERE and a HERMITAGE
WILLIAM KENT Study for a hermitage in a park v
WILLIAM KENT HERMITAGE in the park of Stowe
THE PRINCIPLE OF MOVEMENT in the DESIGN of LANDSCAPE Humphrey REPTON Plate taken from The Red Books 1792
FORMAL versus INFORMAL
The Picturesque SHARAWAGGI (sorowaji), The beauty of NON-INTENTIONAL IRREGULARITY without any order in the disposition of parts (William Temple, 1685) A natural aesthetics, based on the rejection of symmetry, close to the so called borrowed scenery ( incorporating background landscape into the composition of a garden ) as found in East Asian garden design, both in Japan and in China. Left: the Imperial Gardens of Kyoto Right: Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai