4

History of Contemporary Architecture AA 2016.-2017

Prof. Michela Rosso

The Eighteenth century and a New Architecture of EXPRESSION The SUBLIME and the PICTURESQUE

The English landscape garden

(BERGDOLL: 73-90)

4/index & biblio references

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

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 or giardini all’inglese in ITALY

FOLIES NEL PARCO DI RACCONIGI

EXAMPLES OF PICTUREQUE GARDENS in ITALY

Garden of the Castle of Racconigi, designed between 1787 and 1819 by Giacomo Pregliasco,

ARTIFICIAL GROTTO AT RACCONIGI

FOLLY IN THE PARK OF RACCONIGI, GIACOMO PREGLIASCO 1820

CHINOISERIES WILLIAM KENT Twickenham GARDEN and the Temple of Shells 1736

WILLIAM KENT The octagonal chinese KIOSK at Esher place

CHINOISERIES

WILLIAM KENT A study of landscape with a GOTHIC BELVEDERE

and a HERMITAGE

v

WILLIAM KENT Study for a hermitage in a park

WILLIAM KENT HERMITAGE in the park of

Stowe

Humphrey REPTON Plate taken from The Red Books

1792

THE PRINCIPLE OF MOVEMENT in the DESIGN of LANDSCAPE

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