BAROQUE & (POST) MODERN

From what we have been looking at what Bernini & Borromini had done, there were some sense of connection as well as principle that has transmitted to modern and post modern architecture. Bernini added and showed the expression through his sculptures and buildings. The expression can be seen not only in the color and materials used, but also in the figure where sense of "living" has been shown. While Borromini, who was in the same period as Bernini, somehow put expression on his work. But his works are monochrome and he added the principle of geometry and measurement into his works.

Then, if we look at modern and post modern buildings, the purpose of the buildings has changed from church to residence, museum, office building, etc.. These new buildings seem to be completely different to Borromini's works or Bernini's buildings, which are very religious. But the use of expression and geometry still exist and have been adapted to be working with current movement. For example, Le Corbusier used applied the geometry from his painting to the design of plan and Frank Gehry who uses expression through forms and materials.

"Sacred" in Classical & Late Renaissance

Personally, I think the architecture in classical period is based mainly on the belief of people. The architecture were built in massive scale to represent the scale of god which could be perceived as "sacred". This idea of "sacred" still appeared in late renaissance period. Although the main idea survived, the content behind this idea seemed to change over time. In late renaissance the idea of "sacred had been combined with "humanity". The invention of logics and theories such as symmetry, balance and geometry had come up and these things were used as references to support the make the sense of sacred to be even stronger. In conclusion, humanity had made the idea of sacred become more reasonable than it was in the past when people seemed to rely mainly on "belief"

How is history used?

History is like the evidence that shows the innovation from the past. The history can be used not only in physical terms, but also in ideal and conceptual terms. By looking at Brunelleschi, Le Corbusier & Venturi, I feel that we can get the idea of how history had been used differently.

Brunelleschi, Renaissance architect, who worked on dome at Duomo of Florence studied from the history by looking at Pantheon, which has lasted since Roman period, in terms of construction and structure in order to see how it was built as well as how it stayed up.

In modernism when those architectural principle from the past was replaced by minimal form, Le Corbusier somehow used history with his architecture. In this case, what he brought was not about the how the building itself stayed, but it was about how human fits into the building. Corbusier came up with "Modulor" which has to do with "scale & proportion" and could relate back to Vitruvius and Vitruvian Man of Leonardo da  Vinci.

Then when modernism came to an end, Verturi went beyond by bringing the principle of modernism as a history and change some of it to be different and more suitable to people's lifestyle as we can see from "Learning From Las Vegas". In this case, Venturi tried to make sense of "hybrid" instead of "pure". Also,  he rather focused more on the expression on exterior form than functions of the building.