Design Theory, Project Diagram

Design Theory

Leon Alberti
Early Renaissance

 Humanism

 

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities

Who?

• Leon Battista Alberti

 

• Born in 1404, Genoa, Italy, into a Florentine noble family and lived in exile

 

• Died in 1472, Rome, Italy

• Italian author, artist, architect, poet, writer, a philosopher, and a cryptographer.

 

 

  What?

• Often characterized as an architect only

• Alberti regarded maths as a common ground of art and sciences

• Studied the “Ten books of Architecture” completed in 1452 and published in 1485. It is the first architectural treaties of the Renaissance.

• Wrote “The Book On Painting” in 1435.

“hold the eye of the learned and unlearned spectator for a long while with a certain sense of pleasure and emotion”

 

When?

 

  

• Studied Classic at GasparinoBarzizza School from 1414 – 1418

• Finished university studies in 1432 in Bologna and Padova

• In 1450 he commenced his work on the façade on the Santa Maria Novella Church in Florence.

• TempioMalastestiano in Rimini (1450) was the first building that Alberti designed based on his architectural principals

 

Where?

 

• The Ten Books of Architecture’ was written in Rome, when he had a lot of time to study ancient sites, ruins, and objects.

• The San Sebastiano (1460) located in Mantua, Northern Italy, was the only building that was entirely designed by him.

• Designed the façade of his family place located in Via dellaVignaNuova.

 

Why? + how

 

• Studied Vitruvius ‘De Architectura’  and wrote ‘The Ten Books of Architecture’

• He focused his works in written form rather than practical.

• Most of his work is dedicated to humanism

• Proportion, harmony, and geometry can be seen in his work.

• Imagined a picture surface as a window

Beauty is: “a harmony and concord of all the parts, so that nothing could be added or subtracted except for the worse.”