Download - LECTURE 6 BAROQUE CITIES 15TH TO 18TH CENTURIES PROF. DR. NACIYE DORATLI ARCH 354 CULTURE OF CITIES

LECTURE 6

BAROQUE CITIES 15TH TO 18TH CENTURIES

P R O F. D R . N A C I Y E D O R AT L I

ARCH 354CULTURE OF CITIES

BACKGROUND

The monastery, the guild and the church served as formative elements of the medieval town.

More effective than were Cos, Delphi and Olympia- Greek Civilization as they shaped every quarter and molded a common life.

Voluntary co-operationContractual obligationsReciprocal duties partly replaced Blind obedience & one-sided pressure

BACKGROUND

Red SiennaBlack & White GenoaGray Paris all archetypal

medieval citiesColorful Florence At the end of the Middle Ages, one city in

Europe stood out above every other because of its beauty and wealth.

BACKGROUND

Florence was above all (13th – 16th centuries):

A hub of art and intellectual life.

BACKGROUND

Venice:A diagrammatic formThe ideal composition of a medieval urban

structure.

BACKGROUND

Venice was a creation of a group of refugees from Padua during the fifth century.

At the core of Venice: Piazza San Marco

BACKGROUND

Piazza San MarcoAn open space in front of its

ancient Byzantine Church.In 976, close to where the

CAMPANILE (the bell tower) was first built in the 12th century, a lodging house for pilgrims to the Holly Land was established.

This was the beginning of the later hotel quarter.

As early as 12th century: A piazza-filled with market stalls (1172 it was widened.)

BACKGROUND

The plan of Venice was not a STATIC DESIGN.

Arbitrarily ruled out the

possibilities of growth, re-adaptation, and change. Unity has emerged from a complex order.

It should be noted that the pattern of St. Mark’s is repeated on a smaller scale in each of the parishes of Venice.

Each has its campo & square

(often trapezoidal shape, with its fountain, church, school, guildhall).

City divided into six neighborhood (one of the six guilds in each).

There are 177 canals.

BACKGROUND

MEDIEVAL SURVIVALS AND MUTATIONS In the 16th and 17th centuries certain fresh URBAN

FORMS came to existence:

They characterized neither the diminishing Middle Ages;

nor the ongoing mercantile economy and absolutist government.

These new urban forms were not TRANSITIONAL, since they led to their own direction, towards their further goal.

BACKGROUND

Towards the end of the medieval period, the power of the Church and the medieval city has declined.

After the 16th century, the medieval town tended to become a SHELL.

The better the shell was preserved, the less life was left in it. (Carcassonne)

BACKGROUND

Pressure of populationNew economic measures

altered

EXTERNAL FORM

BACKGROUND

Sometimes the old town mirrored the new life through the adaptation of the facades of the buildings: (A change of the facade)

- brick faces of the old burgher houses –coated with plaster;- enlargement of windows/ classical decoration for cornice, lintel

or doorway. (ie. Elegant quarter of Bruges)

BACKGROUND

From the 16th century on the trade activities (monopolies) became dominant. The growing importance of international commerce, took the advantage of the WEAKNESS of the craft guild and the walled town.

Weakness: local

THE STRUCTURE OF BAROQUE POWER

Some medieval institutions renewed themselves in the 16th century by adopting the style of their time:

Monasticism took on a new life by reorganization on military lines.

Architectural Content: No real break between gothic building and neo-gothic building.


Between the 15th – 18th centuries, a new complex of cultural qualities took shape in Europe.

FORM & CONTENT of urban life had radically changed.

New Ideological form: derived from mechanistic physics.

New political framework: centralized despotism/oligarchy (embodied in a NATION STATE)

New economy: Mercantilist Capitalism

New pattern of Existence


Until the 17th century, all these changes were:

confused and tentative;restricted to a minority;effective only in patches

In the 17th century the focus sharpened. Medieval order began to break up and

religion, trade and politics went their own way separately.


Post medieval town:Before directly focusing on Baroque, one must first

remember Renaissance as a movement towards FREEDOM AND THE REESTABLISHMENT OF HUMAN DIGNITY.

For the real Renaissance of European Culture, the great age of city building and intellectual triumph, was that which began in the 12th century.

Between that revival and the Classical Revival of 15th century a great natural disaster had taken place:

Black Death of 14th century – loss of 1/3 or 1/2 population– social disorganization.

POWER came into the hands of those controlling the army, trade routes and great accumulation of capital.


(For 4-5 centuries) From

To

Medieval universality ………………………………..Baroque Uniformity

Medieval localism ………………………….. ….. Baroque centralism

Absolutism of God & Holy Cath. Church………. Absolutism of the

temporal sovereign &

National state


Openness & ClarificationRenaissance : Re-birth

Aside from planned walled cities during the late Renaissance period, there is no Renaissance city.

There are patches of Renaissance order, opening and clarifications (modification of medieval city).

The theme itself remained medieval; but new instruments were added to the orchestra and both tempo and the tonal color of the city were changed.


Symbols of this new movement (Renaissance): STRAIGHT STREETS UNBROKEN HORIZONTAL ROOF LINE ROUND ARCH REPETITION OF UNIFORM ELEMENTS:

cornice, lintel, window, column etc.However, in the beginning the pattern of the

old city was not substantially altered. Most of the palaces in Florence were erected

on narrow Roman and medieval streets.


New planners of the 16th century was limited and modest in terms of ambition.

Since there were many old buildings still standing, the new buildings created a rich, complex order (more satisfying aesthetically than the uniform compositions of the later period.)

In small measures the new order of renaissance design added to the beauty of the medieval city.


In 17th century: Strict rules of composition Endless avenues Uniform legal regulations

Concept of Baroque, as is shaped in 17th century, holds two contradictory elements of the age:

Abstract mathematical and methodological side: expressed to perfection in—

. its accurate street plans, . its formal city layouts

. its geometrically ordered gardens and landscape design In the paintings and sculpture of the period: Rebellious,

extravagant, anticlassical expressions in cloths etc.


Between 16th and 19th centuries these two elements existed side by side.

Early renaissance forms can be regarded in

its PURITY as proto-baroque.

NEO-CLASSIC FORMS (VERSAILLES, ST. PETERSBURG: Late- baroque.

(We have to think that baroque is not a single moment in the development of architectural style.)


In terms of CITY:

THE RENAISSANE FORMS are the mutants

THE BAROQUE FORMS are dominants

Neo-classic forms are the persistents in this cultural transformation.


TERRITORY AND CITY

From the beginning of the Middle Ages two powers struggled for leadership:

Royal Municipal

When royal power was strong (England, Austria): Kingdom

When royal power was weak (Italy): City fully independent as a political entity.


During the 14. Century in great monarchies (England and France):

As population and territory increased in size, direct personal supervision became impossible: Impersonal Administration and delegated authority became necessary.

Thus, the modern state began to shape itself in the 14th century. Reflected as:

Permanent bureaucracy Permanent court of justice Permanent archives and records Permanent buildings (mostly centrally located)

When the power was consolidated in the political capital, the smaller centers lost power and initiative.


As the great states of the modern world took shape, population of the capital cities increased. During the 18th century, Cities reached population of 200 000, 100 000 etc.

In contrast to the medieval regime, power and population were no longer scattered and decentralized.

City building was no longer for a rising class of small craftsmen and merchants, but a means of consolidating political power in a single national center directly under the royal eye.


INSTRUMENTS OF COERCION (BASKI REJIMI)

In the growth of state, capitalism and techniques and warfare play an important role.

How did the modern doctrines of absolute political power arise?

Why did political despot emerge so easily out of the concentrations of economic capital and political authority that took place in the 14th century Italian city?

Gun power had played an important role.


WAR AS CITY BUILDERThe development of the art of fortification

shifted the emphasis in building from architecture to engineering (from aesthetic design to material calculations)

Alternation of the urban picture from the short range world of the medieval city (walking distance, closed vistas, patchwork spaces) to long range world of baroque (long distance gunfire and wheeled traffic.


THE IDEOLOGY OF POWERThe two arms of the new system are the army

and the bureaucracy: they are temporal and spiritual support of a centralized despotism.

The change from the goods economy to a money economy greatly widened the resources of the state.

To increase the boundaries of the state was to increase the taxable population: to increase the population of the capital city was to increase the rent of the land.


Capitalism in its turn became militaristic: it relied on the arms of the state when it could no longer bargain to advantage without them: the foundation of colonial exploitation and imperialism.

The new merchant and banking classes emphasized method, order, routine power mobility, all habits that tended to increase effective practical command.

Behind the immediate interests of new capitalism, with its abstract love of money and power, a change in the entire conceptual framework took place.


A new conception of spaceIt was one of the great triumphs of the

baroque mind to organize space, make it continuous, reduce it to measure and order, and to extend the limits of magnitude, to associate space with motion and time.

These changes were first formulated by the painters and architects, beginning with Alberti, Brunelleschi, Uccello and Serlio.


The distance was not correlated with intensity of color and quality of light, but with the movement of bodies through the projected third dimension.

This putting together of unrelated lines and solids within the regular baroque frame (much different than medieval painting), was contemporary with the political consolidation of territory into a coherent frame of the state.

In line with the aesthetic preference of Baroque, grand avenues have been designed, which at most have an obelisk, an arch, or a single building to terminate the converging rays of the cornice lines.


The long approach and the vista into unbounded space (those typical for the baroque plan) were first discovered by the painters.

The social mode of baroque time is fashion, which changes every year.

Its practical instrument was the newspaper, which deals with scattered events from day to day.

The abstraction of money, spatial perspective, and mechanical time provided the enclosing frame of the new life.


THE NEW FORMSIn Art: PERSPECTIVE AND ANATOMY

In Architecture: AXIAL SYMMETRY, FORMALISTIC REPETITION, THE FIXED PROPORTIONS OF THE FIVE ORDERS

In City Planning: the ELABORATE GEOMETRICAL PLAN


In Art: PERSPECTIVE AND ANATOMY


In Architecture: AXIAL SYMMETRY, FORMALISTIC REPETITION, THE FIXED PROPORTIONS OF THE FIVE ORDERS


In City Planning: the ELABORATE GEOMETRICAL PLAN


During Baroque period, power politics and power economics reinforced each other.

Cities grew; customers multiplied; rents rose; taxes increased.

Law, order, uniformity were products of the baroque capital:

Law exists to confirm the status and secure the position of the privileged class;

The Order is a mechanical order: It didn’t base upon blood or neighborhood, but upon the subjection to the ruling Prince;

Uniformity: Uniformity of bureaucrat with his numerous devices for regulating and systematizing the collection of taxes.


The external means of enforcing this pattern of life lies in: The army; Mercantile capitalist policy (economic arm).

The most typical institutions: The standing army; The Bourse; The bureaucracy; The court.


MOVEMENT & THE AVENUE

The avenue is the most important symbol and the main fact about the baroque city.

It was not possible always to design a whole city (the city as a whole) in the baroque mode. But in the layout of half a dozen new avenues, or in a new quarter, its character could be re-defined.


In the linear evolution of the city plan, the movement of wheeled vehicle played a critical part.

The general geometrizing of space (characterizing the period):

facilitating the movement of traffic and transport. An expression of the dominant sense of life.

During the 16th century: The use of carts and wagons became usual within the city. However at the beginning there were reactions and protests against this.


The other face of the avenues: They were needed for military movement as well. Straight

streets were important for military movement.

The new town planners had always considered the needs of the army. (Alberti, then Palladio, later Hausmann’s boulevards).

The uniform oversized streets in the new cities had purely a military basis.

Think about Paris:

Napoleon III ordered the demolition of narrow streets and cul-de-sacs to open boulevards to prevent revolution.


In the medieval city people from upper and lower classes used the streets in the same way without any difference.

But during baroque, and especially on wide avenues, the rich drive and the poor walk.

The daily parade of the powerful becomes one of the principal dramas of the baroque city.


POSITION OF THE PALACE

Baroque city building was an embodiment of the prevalent drama and ritual.

The palace faced two ways: From the urban side came rent, tribute, taxes,

command of the army, and the control of the state;

From the rural side came the well-built, well exercised men and women who formed the body of the court.


INFLUENCE OF THE PALACE ON THE CITY

The baroque court (SALTANAT) had a direct influence upon the town in every aspect of the life.

One must not think of the dominance of the palace in terms of a single building with its courtly functions: The palatial style of life spread everywhere. Palatial, in

baroque terms, stands for spaciousness and self-sufficient power.

(Before it was vertical). From 15th century onwards, horizontal spaciousness was emphasized: power spread itself.


The theater has taken its form during this period. The new baroque spatial perspective first manifested itself, not in the actual city, but in a painted street scene in the theater (Serlio).

The new city was an essay in formal scenic design: a backdrop for absolute power.

Pleasure and recreation of theatrical display and showmanship were all the result of the influence of the palace.

During the nineteenth century the older baroque elegance disappeared.

However, pleasure was an essential part of the urban culture.

As part of these culture, Museums, Art Galleries etc. became an indispensable part of the urban life.


Extension of the broad landscape park in the heart of the city was perhaps the most felicitous contribution of the palace to urban life.


INTERIOR SPACES (BEDROOM AND SALON)

Not only cities but also the households (at all events, in the houses of the middle classes and their economic superiors) were influenced by the court. The habits of the court good or bad eventually prevailed.

For the bad: A new domestic despotism grew up. For the good: the aesthetic improvement in manners.

There was also a change in the composition of household: Separation of home (a place for eating, for entertaining and

rearing children) from workplace; A household became a consumer’s organization. Private house emerged. (private from business).

As a result of the increasing interest in domesticity, public interest among the middle class weakened.


Furniture has been assigned with a different meaning (from the previous periods).

It can be claimed that furniture is a re-invention of the baroque period.

Instead of producing something (weaving of carpets, embroidery of garments, the making of useful household preserves, perfumes etc), taking care about the furniture, cleaning curtains etc. became the work of housewives.

The form of the house has also changed: Number of private rooms increased and supplied with wood, coal and water. The height of the dwellings has increased as well.

Separation of functions within the house, separation of functions within the city as a whole.

Space became specialized room by room. Rooms were not opened into each other.


Privacy was a new luxury of the well-to-do.

Only gradually did the servants and the shopkeepers’ assistants and industrial workers have a trace of it.

There was a big gap between classes.


Three functions of producing, selling and consuming were separated in three different institutions, three different set of buildings, three different parts of the city.

Transportation to and from the place of

work was a privilege of the rich merchants in big cities.

It was only in the 19th century it filtered

down to the other classes.


DISAPPEARANCE OF THE BATHThe invention of the water-closet by Sir

John Harington in 1596 made an important sanitary improvement in the house. It didn’t spread fast but gradually to France etc.

As a result the medieval baths begun to fall out of use in 16th century.


BAROQUE DOMINANCE AND DISPLAY

Apart from the overseas colonization, the main new cities built from 16th to the 19th century were ‘residence cities’ for kings and princes, like Versailles, Karlsruhe and Potsdam;

Or garrison towns, residences of royal power in absentia, like Londonderry etc.

Only in such towns the baroque theory of planning could be carried out fully in every department.


In the existing cities, in the interest of mechanical efficiency and outward aesthetic conformity, the engineer ignored the social structure of the city.

This is what Baron Hausmann did in Paris.


A general evaluation:

There was a despotic, military approach to the planning of the city.

A new plan distinguished itself from the older medieval informality by the use of STRAIGHT LINES and REGULAR BLOCK UNITS, as far as it is possible of uniform dimensions, except where diagonal streets changed the blocks into regular polygons.


During this time defense became important and control of soldiers and princes became dominant. This has been reflected to the development of the cities and the result was FORTIFIED PLANNED CITIES (XVI. CENTURY).

Examples to the fortified planned cities: SFORZINDA: STARSHAPE 8 POINTED REGULAR

STAR VITRUVIAN CIRCULAR PLAN (response to the wind in the street layout);

SCAMOZI: A NEW TOWN with straight forward GRID.


The Ideal city of Sforzinda by Filarete An Ideal city plan –Scamozzi


Plan of Ideal cities, 1451-1464, Fransesco di Giorgi Martini


URBAN FUNCTIONS AS LEFTOVERS

The city was sacrificed to the traffic in the new plan: the street, not the neighborhood or quarter, became the unit of planning.

The uniform avenue brought movement and confusion into parts of the town that had been quiet and self-contained.

It tended to stretch out the market along the lines of traffic, instead of providing local points of neighborly concentration where people could congregate and meet.


Living space, in the baroque plan, was treated as a leftover, after the avenue determined the shape of the house plot and the depth of the block.

With the neglect of the urban functions other than traffic went an over-valuation of the geometric figure.

The abstract figure delimits the social contents instead of being derived from them.

The institutions of the city no longer generate the plan:

The function of the plan is rather to bring conformity to the prince’s will in the institutions.


Another limitation of the baroque plan:Its failure to deal with any mode of

existence except that derived from the court.

In the neighborhood nothing was done.

The local market and the school were not given special sites on the plan.


THE LESSONS OF WASHINGTON

Design of Versailles: the greatest of the palatial ‘new town’

A century after (1791) Major L’Enfant planned Washington.

During this time, political order of the Western Society had been shaken to its foundation (three revolutions).


On the surface, Washington had all the aspects of a superb baroque plan:

The siting of the public buildingsGrand avenuesThe axial approachesThe monumental scaleThe enveloping greenery.


The framework was there, but the contents were absent. Power to execute the plan by building was lacking. The order existed on paper, but not in fact.

L’Enfant began by siting the essential public buildings, in order to establish the civic cores, the points of attraction. Only after he made the major dispositions of the buildings

However after all, Washington must count as a classic example of baroque planning.


By the 17th century, capitalism had altered the whole balance of power.

From this time onwards, the motivation for urban expansion came mainly from the merchants, the financers, and the landlords (who served their needs).

Only in the 19th century, these forces came almost together by the pressure of mechanical invention and large scale industrialism.

With the extension of the wholesale market, engaged in long distance operations by means of both money and credit, a new attitude towards life began.

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