Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

There was a time when Modern Architecture tended to see itself as a radical break with past experience. This attitude has marked historical research, converting it into a mere search for referents and predecessors, in which anything that does not fall into line with established thinking is rejected.

Palazzo Lacellotti in Rome is the work of Francesco Capriani and Carlo Maderno, who restored several old buildings, giving them aristocratic unity and dignity. In a room on the first floor, created by restructuring the pre-exiting medieval fabric, is preserved an extraordinary fresco by Agostino Tassi, depicting a loggia over a portico, covered by elegant cross-vaults in the midst of a fertile and hazy Roman countryside. The spectator always has the illusion of depth, from any position in the room. The authors decided to apply the reverse perspective procedure to represent the painted architecture as if it were real and study its relationship with the solid architectural contenl. This, however, meant that first of all they had to decipher the painting's latent geometric code, whence the need to detemine the focal point and the vanishing points. It was therefore decided to make a study two of the frescoed walls by close-range photogrammetry, and to extend the images of the paraHel symmetrical edges on the model by computer, in an attempt to identify their point of intersection. But, against all expectations, they discovered a whole series of possible focal points, and found themselves faced with the impossibility of obtaining a photogrammetric model by adopting familiar well-proven methods. Tbey accepted the fact that the problem could not be solved and proceeded experimentally, ready to apply statistical methods if necessary.

Architectural drawings have greatly evolved over the centuries. One of the most important developments in this process was the discovery of the central perspective of the Renaissance. From that moment on, architectural space is humanized thanks to the representation of infinity (the horizon line) and therefore, of a relationship between what is near and what is far. Thus, the development of systems of representation responds directly to the ideas of the world that is represented as a function of the importance given to the person that inhabits it.

Today, it is becoming increasingly important to consider the strategic relationship between long and short term planning. The key issue of the debate is a conscious effort to set the limits for this strategy because the interventions that are necessary are oriented towards the granting of an identity that until recently had never before been considered so vigorously and which has led to exaggerated proposals flaunted under the banner of new ideas of centrality and emblematicism.

The present essay is dedicated to the study of the project drawings of the architect Juan de Villanueva, to whom the author attributes the sketches or previous draft for the design of the northern wing of the present-day Prado Museum.

Deprived of Paradise forever, man found it necessary to discover and become acquainted with new types of spaces. He was forced to experiment with new landscapes and came across the artifice of the garden as an abstract exercise in which the natural dream could be materialized at a human scale.

Comparisons of classical repertoire and grammar have always been made: and with classical architecture, the distinction made by the linguist Coseriu, between system and norm, can also be applied. But the purpose of classical architecture is to dignify and therefore, what is important is not the meaning, but the "accent" or the tone that things acquire with the respect to something like a gravity field that creates context: what is really important, more important that concrete norms, is that classical architecture have a good accent; i.e. elegance.

I ask myself: is it possible to represent the city? If so, how? With which procedures and what methods? With planimetry, cartography, axonometry, panormnic views, like the views of Toledo by El Greco? Can the city be represented at the moment of its birth, during its development and growth until the historic center is drowned by the horrible peripheries? And, more importantly, is it possible to represent and express in some way the spirit of the city, the very "being"' of the city, the character, the color, the smell, the soul, the silence...?

If, as Reyner Banham demonstrates, the majority of European avant-garde movements in architecture can be interpreted as consciously forming a part of machinist aesthetics, the same can be said regarding the development of constructivism in Russia.

The etymological root of the term "mannerism" is the word maniera, which is employed by Vasari in the preface of his Lives as one of the five norms that determine a work of art. However, what was considered during Vasari's day as a virtue was perceived by the critics of the following period as being harmful or noxious to artistic values.