The University of Melbourne
FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND PLANNING
705-117 CULTURE & HISTORY of URBAN PLANNING
Lecture Notes ©1999 C.M.Gutjahr
PART 5 RENAISSANCE IN ITALY Practice
PRACTICAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE RENAISSANCE
Although, the theoretical work of Ideal City designs pre-occupied Italian Renaissance architects during that period 1430-1590, practical contributions made during the time were of equal importance and from 1520 onward began to dominate urban activities.
Nature of Practical Contributions
- fragmented work which, inspite of its various manifestations, does not achieve complete concepts/overall schemes as suggested in the Ideal City work.
- concerned with individual works of architecture and urban design rather than with overall planning schemes - the accent being on the finite, localized environmental design problem rather than on the total urban scale.
- Renaissance planners became conscious of the interrelationship between spatial elements within the urban scene: they awakened to the notion of
CAUSE and EFFECT or
ACTION and REACTION in urban design
i.e. they soon realised that one could achieve a variety of spatial effects by judiciously applying the various planning techniques and principles that were being experimented with (some earlier urban cultures e.g. Greece did this more instinctively).
Scope of Practical Renaissance
In view of the existence of many towns and cities of medieval and even older vintage, the Renaissance in Italy presented relatively few opportunities for building entire new towns and, therefore, few chances to implement Renaissance urban design, let alone Ideal City projects; the exceptions being
1. the NEW TOWNS of
Palma Nova
Grammichele
and possibly Sabbioneta & Livorno
2. URBAN EXTENSIONS such as Lucca, Mantua, Padua, Modena etc.
3. NEW FORTIFICATIONS & GATEWAYS such as Parma, Ferrara.
4. PALAZZI for the great families, such as the Sforza, Visconti, Farnese, Este.
5. RELIGIOUS EDIFICES AND ART in general.
Example:
• Bramante's Tempietto in S. Pietro in Montorio, Rome, 1502-10 delightful Renaissance temple/pavilion (chapel) absorbed ideas and standards of classical architecture.
6. TOWN IMPROVEMENTS Urban Renewal/Rehabilation projects. The urban planning achievements of the Italian Renaissance, undoubtedly are to be found in the town improvements of the period.
These include the numerous projects carried out within the medieval or older urban fabric of existing cities; they were, in the main, single urban projects or developments aimed at adapting the medieval (or even older) urban form to the new Renaissance order:
1. Streets
- straightening and widening existing streets
- cutting new straight thoroughfares especially through slum areas
2. Piazza and the monument
- introduction and design of urban spaces and their monuments i.e. the principal buildings, elements of street furniture which are regarded as parts of the one architectural composition and which relate to each other.
- the fascination with the piazza and the monument in Renaissance Italy, becomes evident during 16th century.
- it is, in fact, the framework within which Renaissance planners were most able to work.
- the piazza and its associated elements: monuments and fountain, enclosing facades, pavements, towers, columns, loggiae, gates - become the principal theme of urban design from the High Renaissance on through the Mannerist phase into the Baroque era.
3. Landscape Design - introduction of trees, lawn, flowers into public places and streets, squares (previously unknown feature in urban development, inspired by contemporary ideas in formal design of parks and gardens).
Examples:
VIGEVANO 30 km SW of Milano
Lodovico il Moro, Duke of this little Lombardy town, launched a development plan that set a precedent for the dominating theme of Renaissance planning: the piazza.
In 1492, the medieval market was demolished and replaced, within two years, by a huge porticoed square, conceived with the help of Ambrogio di Curtis, Bramante and Da Vinci. It became the largest square in the city and a kind of external courtyard to the ducal palace.
The Piazza Ducale: indicates the 'form tendency' of the Renaissance and achieved complete spatial continuity and unification of all contributing elements.
a precisely rectangular shape: 40 x 124m (48 - 134m ?)
- enclosed on 3 sides by a continuous building facade:
• 3 storeys high of identical eave and roof lines
• identical windows of precisely similar size and shape, and at similar intervals; (well-matched porticoes), producing continuity and a strong enclosed space
• with tall arcades at ground level and upper storeys used for residence
• ground floor, undisturbed by entering streets and footways, is used for shops.
- emphasis on the horizontal effects of perspective
- decorative paving of formal design emphasized and echoed symmetry of facades; drain gutters in centre of sloping floor used to advantage in pavement design.
- cathedral, built along 4th side in 17th century (i.e. Baroque) completes composition
Plan of Piazza Ducale, Vigevano
VENICE
Island city founded in 5th century A.D. developed in stages from a place of refuge to the strong maritime power of the Venetians (member of Hanseatic League).
Constraints of location
A unique kind of plan dictated by its situation in the shallow waters of the Adriatic sea and affected by
• sand, stone and pebble deposits (from rivers)
• water currents and conditions of navigation
• practicability of securing woodpile foundations
Venice's location is a compromise between communication with and defence from mainland. These and other factors determined the precise limits of the city as well as its layout, both of which were almost impossible to change and expand. They also determined the sweep of the Canale della Guidecca and the Canale Grande as well as the placing of minor canals and bridges.
Lack of stable foundations resulted in dense housing concentration within a closely knit and irregular network of canals and narrow lanes where air and water currents (so vital to health conditions) had only limited effectiveness. Venice was frequently visited by black death and plague; its population varied between 140,000 and 190,000 between the 14th and the 18th centuries and has never exceeded 200,000 inhabitants.
Unique Quality of Venice's Town Plan
Venice is the clearest example of a cellular unit of planning, organised by neighbourhoods or precincts. It was divided into six neighbourhoods each harbouring one of six city guilds. Each neighbourhood contained its own town centre or 'campo'[1] (including its own fountain, school, church, guildhall etc ...) which followed on a smaller scale the pattern of the dominant centre of the city, the Piazza San Marco.
The 'campos' and 'campielli' of Venice form a network of light-filled open spaces which provide unexpected relief from and contrast to the shadowy, narrow streets and passages, and in which each space is comprehensible only in relation to the others.
The canals, especially the Grand Canal, provide additional open space and represent, instead of the traditional wall, the urban container of the city. Water, then, serves as means of communication (177 canals), as protection, as visual relief, and as boundary between the city's major functional zones and as important urban design element in heightening the illusion of space.
Unlike other cities, Venice manages to express its structure very clearly in the differentiation and zoning of urban functions (administrative, communal, residential, industrial) separated by traffic ways and open spaces. In spite of its complex physical order, Venice preserved a strong unity as well as avoiding a static design: it allowed for growth, change, re-adaptation and needs of successive generations, and presents a living, flexible plan. Yet there is continuity in its change.
Perspective View of the Piazza San Marco and the Piazzetta
Venice
Plan of the Piazza and Piazzetta San Marco, Venice
PIAZZA SAN MARCO & PIAZZETTA
'Le plus beau salon de l'Europe' - Napoleon
"This square is the supreme European example of a communal organisation combining convenience of location and pictorial magnificence."
The Square consists of 5 spatial elements:
1. The piazza
2. The piazzetta
3. Small piazza north of the basilica
4. Spatial link bounded by 3 flagpoles, clocktower, & entrance portals of St. Mark
5. Interior courtyard of Doge's palace.
Detailed plan of Venice
Venetians' identification with this square is an expression of the total civic life of their city, while the local square of their neighbourhood, which provides a reflection of the total civic magnificence, remains the actual centre of their daily activities.
Evolution of Piazza S.Marco
"A self-conscious process and result of a long series of agonizing decisions, constantly aimed at perfecting the square."- Edmund Bacon
Site originally occupied by orchards of St Mark.
Plan of Piazza San Marco, early 12th century
827 Chapel of St Mark (originally built as private chapel of the Doge).
888 Campanile of timber construction
Doge's Palace.
976 Lodging houses for pilgrims to Holy Land established close to Campanile.
St Mark partially burnt down.
1042 St Mark's plan completely transformed to present shape
1085 interior dates to thisperiod
Piazza with market stalls takes shape 12th century:
1172 space is widened
1176 exterior of basilica of St Marks with its 5 entrance portals is formed. Most buildings fronting onto square have continuous development since that time.
1180 two columns - defining south side of Piazzetta
1309 Doges Palace rebuilt (first constructed at end of 8th century as a fortress outside 1429 walls of the early Venetian settlement). Expanded, altered and reshaped until 1578. Eastern enclosure to piazzetta, and anchor to entire composition.
Plan of Piazza San Marco, early 16th century
1329- Campanile, built of brick (connected to buildings on south side of Piazza).
1415
1480- Old Procurator's Hall (Procuratie Vecchie) Northern enclosure to
1517 Piazza. State magistrates with representative functions.
1505 Three flagpoles erected in front of Basilica.
1536 Library, by J. Sansovino (completed after his death by Scamozzi), provides
1584 western enclosure to the Piazzetta
Positioned beyond general building line of the Riva degli Schiavoni, along the Grand Canal, to terminate vista and draw attention toward squares.
1584 New Procurator's Hall (Procuratie Nuove) designed by Scamozzi and completed in 1640 by Longhena.
In redeveloping the southern side of the piazza and the western side of the piazzetta, the widths of the spaces was increased, leaving the campanile as a free-standing vertical element, providing a perfect 'hinge' between the two spaces
1722- Paving treatment of the spaces, constitutes unifying design element.
1735
1810 Napoleon ordered the demolition of the Church of S. Geminiano which formed western enclosure of piazza, and replaced by the Procuratie Novissime (Fabrica Nuova).
1902 Campanile collapsed - successfully restored in 1912.
CHURCHES OF S. GIORGIO MAGGIORE & IL REDENTORE (by Andrea Palladio ,1518-1580)
The design and orientation of these two churches reflect the idea that the urban environment is not only composed of built form (solid structures) but also the urban space in between.
Built during the second half of the 16th century, they marked a turning point in the concept of the size of urban space. The natural space, in this case water and sky, which separates these churches from the St. Mark's Square composition is part of a visual relationship: both churches lay across the basin of San Marco and were designed to serve as backdrop to the view from the Piazzetta.
The facades of the two churches were in keeping with classical concepts yet the overriding design consideration was the visual link with the greatest Venetian basilica, San Marco itself; the shape and colour of their pearl grey domes, their white facades, and their pink curtain walls echo the basilica San Marco and the cityscape with its essential colour scheme. The facades of both churches face S. Marco rather than their own neighbourhood.
FLORENCE
Established in Republican Roman times at the crossing point of the Via Cassia with the river Arno and named Florentia. It was destroyed by Consul Sulla during the civil war of 82 B.C., and rebuilt nearby.
Although now predominantly associated with the Renaissance, Florence remains substantially a medieval city. It is a very fine example of a medieval radio-concentric plan, in which two medieval walls enclosed the original Roman Castrum. The city enjoyed rapid growth during the 13th and early 14th centuries, its urban area increasing from 197 acres to about 1500 acres by 1340.
The Florentine urban planners of the Renaissance applied their energies to bring about clarification within the disorder and clutter of the medieval city: old houses and sheds were torn down, new straight streets and rectangular open squares were carved out of the crowded quarters and crooked alleys of the dense urban form.
The Renaissance attempts at regularizing and clarifying the structures of (mainly northern Italian) medieval cities resulted in new urban space, more light and many embellishments, first in Florence and eventually in Bologna, Siena, Milano, Vicenza, Brescia, Livorno, and Lucca.
Edmund Bacon has suggested that it was in Florence that the Renaissance first found its full expression. It was there that a growing network of interconnecting streets and squares provided the beginning of a city-wide design structure on a new scale - the Renaisssance Scale - which was later to reach its fullest magnificence in the development of Rome.
One of the key elements in the Renaissance transformation of Florence is the building of town palaces or palazzi, which sometimes occupied a whole insula or street block of the early Roman grid plan, as did the Strozzi Palace. The palazzo became the classical device in the unification of the street facade and while not many were able to be complemented by suitable spatial openings and settings, the wealthy despotism of the age gradually encouraged and facilitated the clearance of large areas of land in front of a palace the perimeter of which was rebuilt with suitably unified buildings to form a piazza worthy of the palazzo.
View of Renaissance Florence,
dominated by Brunelleschi's dome of S.Maria dei Fiori
There are, at least, two piazzas of great significance to Renaissance urbanism in Florence:
the PIAZZA DELLA SANTISSIMA ANNUNZIATA
Florence cathedral, known as S. Maria dei Fiori, provided the city with a spiritual and visual centre which became the orientation point of much Renaissance and later work. From the late 13th century on the cathedral became the focal point of a process of urban surgery and re-development as streets around it were straightened and remodelled, purely for aesthetic reasons. One such street was the Via dei Servi, a new straight street laid out by Servite monks to connect the cathedral with their church, the S.S. Annunziata, to the north.
This project was, ultimately, to result in one of the Renaissance's finest urban spaces embodying its spirit in the equilibrium of its dimensions and the serenity of its balance: the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata which provides a forecourt to the church, the loggia of which terminates a long vista from the cathedral.