CONTINUITY IN ARCHITECTURE

Work by CiA year six students at this year’s Archaeology’s Places and Contemporary Uses Workshop, created in collaboration with students from the schools of architecture in Barcelona and Venice, and the School of Archaeology in Catania.

More pictures 

Archaeology’s Places and Contemporary Uses: Website

I looked forward with great excitement to the recent production of Euripide’s Andromaca at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. Not necessarily for the performance itself, which is a bit of a grim story especially for a non-Italian-speaking visitor, but for the manner in which the magnificent fixed stage set was to be utilised. The classical street scenes could surely be interpreted as the mythical Greek world.

However, a temporary, naturalistic and organic installation had been placed in front of the permanent set. It did have the aura of a barren and hot land, but, oddly, the drama made no reference to Palladio’s masterpiece.

Via The Footnotes of Mad Men, glimpses of the Casa Malaparte in Le Mepris

The 10 CiA students (with staff members Sally Stone and Eamonn Canniffe) participating in the international workshop at IUAV in Venice have had a busy first week. A briefing day was followed by two days of fieldtrips to significant archaeological sites and the project sites at Caldonazzo, Riva del Garda and Concordia Sagitarria. International design teams were formed with the other students from Barcelona, Catania and Venice and the projects will be presented in exhibition to a prestigious jury next week. The workshop’s homepage can be visited at THIS LINK…

The B.Arch. studio presentations are being held on 22 September 2009. If you would like a preview/reminder of the CiA studio proposal go to THIS LINK

Sally Stone and Eamonn Canniffe are currently participating in a joint architecture/archaeology workshop with schools of architecture from IUAV, Barcelona and Palermo. If you are interested in their architectural and gastronomic adventures, you can follow their Twitter feeds:

Sally Stone Eamonn Canniffe

CiA staffer Sally Stone has successfully obtained Erasmus Intensive Programme funding for a student project studying the relationship between architecture and archaeology in north-east Italy. The experimental workshop, run in partnership with IUAV (Venice) and ETSAB (Barcelona), will focus upon the protection of key archaeological sites in the territories of the Veneto and Trentino.

The project will kick-off the CiA BArch programme for the autumn term at Manchester School of Architecture and will result in proposals for shelters, buildings and other interventions that relate directly to the sites of archaeological interest. Staff and students will be on site in Italy for two weeks in late September.

Sally Stone coordinated the Manchester School of Architecture application collaborating with Margherita Vanore from IUAV and Pilar Cos from ETSAB for the Erasmus Intensive Programme funding. Sally and Pilar have previously worked together on the Interventions Project, an international project for students from Manchester and Barcelona.

Illustration from ‘Venice for Modern Man’ published by Italia Nostra

James Robertson, doctoral candidate at the Manchester School of Architecture and Rome Scholar in Architecture, is participating with fellow Fine Arts Scholars in the group exhibition at the British School at Rome 14-21 March. James’s contribution will feature his research on Jack Coia.

See Notes from Rome and Compare & Contrast

If the commentators on this early photograph (1850s) of the Roman architect Luigi Canina (1795-1856) ascribe his discreet ‘horn’ gesture to superstition regarding the Evil Eye, what might be the meaning of Andrea Palladio’s right hand in his portrait by El Greco (1570s) currently on display at the Royal Academy in London?

A film made by a group of Manchester School of Architecture students as part of the History of Architecture course.

More fieldtripfilms

James Robertson, the Rome Scholar in Architecture, is approximately half way through his period at the British School at Rome. His research on the ecclesiastical architecture of Jack Coia has revealed many parallels in the twentieth century churches of Rome. James writes

“I have been getting together a fairly comprehensive list of churches contemporary with Coia, and up to about 20 years earlier, as some of these earlier Italian buildings seem to have some similarities to those by Coia. There seem to be several distinct groups, or types of church, starting with a kind of brick neo-Romanesque, through to the neo-Classical, semi-rationalist / fascist, full-blown rationalist and then a group which does not seem to fit properly into any of the above! There is one in this group by a rather obscure architectural historian called Bruno Maria Appolonj-Ghetti. He designed a church in Rome called Ss. Martiri Canadesi, which Fellini used in his film ‘La Dolce Vita’.”

The church interior, then recently completed, is used in the film as the setting for an encounter between Marcello and his intellectual friend Steiner, who plays Bach’s Toccata and Fugue on the church organ.

James is also researching at the Scots College, searching for evidence of the influence of Rome-trained clergy on the architectural direction of the Archdiocese of Glasgow and their commissioning of Coia.

Basilica Palladiana: Geometry studies by Sophie Corkhill, BArch student Manchester School of Architecture.

Andrea di Pietro della Gondola, born 30 November 1508.

The Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza. The red plan is Palladio’s design as depicted in his Quattro Libri. The black plan is the structure as built, incorporating elements of the previous buildings on the site.

Graphic by Denis of CiA BArch Studio, Manchester School of Architecture.

Our other Palladio posts.