Descrizione della chiesa dei Santi Cirillo e Metodio a Marino, Roma

Progettazione di casa eco-sostenibile.

The age of stone architecture is timeless and has prehistoric roots; it reaches beyond all trends and tendencies; it avoids that sense of transience that marks most contemporary architecture; and, at the same time, it inspires our most varied reflections and experiments, whether of constructive elements or small architectonic works. This book seeks to give a logical and chronological order to those reflections. Through our contribution to the development of stone architecture, we wish to emphasis that there is much still to be investigated and invented with stone, whereby we mean the enthusiastic rediscovery of those techniques and processes that time has forgotten but that hold, nonetheless, promise for the future.

Proceedings of the 4th International Congress on Construction History

The vault of the Arles City Hall, or Hôtel de Ville, represents the architect’s revenge on the corporations of masons. Completed in 1676, the relationship of span to rise of the vault make it the boldest work of masonry in Europe, and while this complex vault appears to be a unitary structure, two vaults actually share the work, leaning against each other on the big arch. Bibliographic and archival research showed that surveys of the vault were missing; the only ancient survey was lost in the 1970s. A recent survey campaign made an analysis possible, leading to a hypothesis about the architect Mansart’s choices, based on hypothetical solutions to resolve the formal construction issues of the vault. A connoisseur of geometry and optics, Mansart knew that the human eye was unable to perceive the exact geometry of a surface. Knowing that he couldn’t control the intersections of vault portions and then the joints of the rows in the space, he introduced a solution that involved drawing the intersections in plan and then projecting them on the vault to obtain the spatial intersections. No further constructions of the bold type followed the vaulted space in the Hôtel de ville, because the spatial research that linked the new discipline (stereotomy) to the quality of architectural space had by then come to an end.

The construction of full scale architectural elements has the double purpose ofexperimental control for researchers and teaching resource for students. In the firstcase model allows to make an experimental verification, creating a reference point toconfirm or refute the starting hypothesis. The second function makes possible to stimulate students’ way of thinking, involvingboth abstract and concrete design aspects.This link between research, teaching and practice of construction is shown in variousexamples.This relation represents a necessary element in order to successfully proceed in theadvance of architectural experimentation.

In the XVI century the Mediterranean area was characterized bytwo contrasting imperial realities: on the one hand, the OttomanEmpire dominated the territories rom the south o the Balkanregion all the way to southern Spain; on the other hand, theEuropean monarchies were competing or the conquest o thenorthern territories. These two dierent socio-political identitiesgave rise to many priceless architectural works in which we 65 can identiy elements o continuity, signicant dierences, andreciprocal inuences.Important examples to be studied or this type o comparisoninclude:Mimar Sinan, chie architect o the Ottoman Empire: over aperiod o ty years he was able to construct many buildings,including around one hundred mosques based on a central domestructure.Philibert de l‘Orme in service to Henri II: his masterpiece o the Châteu d’Anet or Diane de Poitiers was designed on the basiso sterotomic stone vaults central the to the nascent “art du trait”tradition.Vandelvira: under the Spanish Empire o Phillip II he openedthe door to the construction o Escorial whose structure was richin architectural solutions through a skilul use o stereotomicstone building techniques.The work o each o these three architects has great value whenstudied alone, but acquires much more importance whencompared together. It is particularly interesting to identiy thestylistic inuences in these artistic productions, to compare thebuilding techniques and the technical inventions, as well as othersimilarities in the overall architectural solutions. The numerouscommon items – technical and aesthetic – are emblematic o ahigh mobility at that time.