Aesthetics of Material and Work in Early Modern Architecture

This research project examines the depiction of materials and construction processes as visual sources in early modern architecture.

In the early modern period, particularly from the 14th century onwards, the depiction of architecture in painting grew increasingly significant and became more precise over the course of the following centuries through the incorporation of buildings and urban contexts: from the symbolic evocations of medieval fresco cycles in central Italy to the examination of measurable spaces in the wake of the development of perspectival techniques. On the long and not always straightforward path towards the establishment of modern science, the representation based on geometry and calculation received direct support from optical studies applied to drawing. These predominantly theoretically oriented investigations touch only marginally upon scientific research into the nature of light and belong to the broader field of optics and the study of the visible spectrum, which, particularly since the second half of the 16th century, has accompanied the most advanced hypotheses regarding the nature of matter. The invention of photography not only represents a high point in the endeavours of an era shaped by the perspectival construction of space but is also the result of a specific conception of the nature of materials that emerged from the chemical achievements of the 19th century.

Parallel to the establishment of new modes of representing space, one can observe an increasing prevalence of graphic and pictorial representations of the physical properties of building materials, both in painted and built architecture – in the former through graphic and chromatic imitations, in the latter through the use of substitute materials in building practice.

The representation of architectural space through geometry and calculation thus follows a developmental path that runs parallel to the rendering of the physical properties of matter. The iconology of building materials, which has only recently become the subject of specific studies, therefore appears to be linked to the developments of an abstract scientific rationality.

During the same period, the image of the building site gained increasing significance: as a ceremonial representation of the start of a building project, as a promise of its completion, or simply as a reminder of what already exists. A clear parallel can be found in the depiction of ruins as a symbol of the process of decay. The depiction of incompleteness and architectural unfinishedness thus brings architecture in its historical development to the fore and, at the same time, makes the work on the building visible.

Making architecture in transition visible thus puts the pursuit of formal perfection – which shapes the conceptual world associated with Humanism – into perspective, whilst simultaneously undermining the assumption that the value and significance of materials can be derived exclusively from their intrinsic physical properties, by shifting the focus to the labour required for their transformation.

This research project therefore explores the extent to which depictions of materials and construction processes function as visual sources and how they – just like antiquity and geometry – constitute an important source of inspiration for the development of modern architecture.