ABSTRACT

The essays selected for this book, presented in chronological order, discuss various aspects of image-making technologies, geometrical knowledge and tools for architectural design, focusing in particular on two historical periods marked by comparable patterns of technological and cultural change. The first is the Renaissance; characterized by the rediscovery of linear perspectives and the simultaneous rise of new formats for architectural drawing and design on paper; the second, the contemporary rise of digital technologies and the simultaneous rise of virtual reality and computer-based design and manufacturing.

Many of the contributing authors explore the parallel between the invention of the perspectival paradigm in early-modern Europe and the recent development of digitized virtual reality. This issue in turn bears on the specific purposes of architectural design, where various representational tools and devices are used to visualize bi-dimensional aspects of objects that must be measured and eventually built in three-dimensional space.

chapter |17 pages

Alberti's Media Lab

chapter |18 pages

Sebastiano Serlio prospecttico

Stages in his artistic itinerary during the 1520s

chapter |10 pages

Sebastiano Serlio

Placing perspective at the service of architects

chapter |11 pages

"The eye of the Sun"

Galileo and Pietro Accolti on orthographic projection

chapter |10 pages

Pictorial versus intellectual representation

Teachin perspective to architectural students at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1824-1900)

chapter |12 pages

From rationality to utopia

Auguste Choisy and axonometric projection

chapter |11 pages

Project and projections

Some advantages of the principle of opacity

chapter |14 pages

Architectural embodiment

Prosthetics and parasites