Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture

281 Pages·2020·9.504 MB·English

by  Kim Sexton (editor)

Architecture and the Body,
Science and Culture
The relationship of architecture to the human body is a centuries-long
and complex one. This book opens a space for historians of the visual arts,
archaeologists, architects and digital humanities professionals to reflect upon
embodiment, spatiality, science and archit ecture in premodern and modern
cultural contexts.
Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture poses one overarching
question: How does a period’s understanding of bodies as objects of science
impinge upon architectural thought and design? The answers are sophist i-
cated, interdisciplinary explorations of theory, technology, symbolism,
medicine, violence, psychology, deformity and salvation, and they have
unexpected and fascinating implications for architectural design and history.
The new research published in this volume reinvigorates the Western survey-
style trajectory from Archaic Greece to post-war Europe with scientifically
framed, body-centered provocations.
By adding the third factor – science – to the architecture and body equation,
this book presents a nuanced appreciation for architectural creativity and its
embeddedness in other sets of social, institutional and political relationships.
In so doing, it spatializes body theory and ties it to the experience of the built
environment in ways that disturb traditional boundaries between the archi -
tectural container and the corporeally contained.
Kim Sextonis an Associate Professor of Architectural History at the University
of Arkansas, USA. Her research focuses on the architecture and urban
space of Italian city-states in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. She is
the author of articles published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians and The Art Bulletin, and the upcoming book, The Loggia: Living
on Stage in Early Modern Italy.
Routledge Research in Architecture
The Routledge Research in Architecture series provides the reader with the
latest scholarship in the field of architecture. The series publishes research
from across the globe and covers areas as diverse as architectural history
and theory, technology, digital architecture, structures, materials, details,
design, monographs of architects, interior design and much more. By making
these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims
to promote quality architectural research.
A full list of titles in this series is available at: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Research-in-Architecture/book-series/RRARCH. Recently published
titles:
Assembling the Centre: Architecture for Indigenous Cultures
Australia and Beyond
Janet McGaw and Anoma Pieris
Architectural Temperance
Spain and Rome, 1700–1759
Victor Deupi
Space Unveiled
Invisible Cultures in the Design Studio
Edited by Carla Jackson Bell
Architectural System Structures
Integrating Design Complexity in Industrialised Construction
Kasper Sánchez Vibæk
Towards an Articulated Phenomenological Interpretation of Architecture
Phenomenal Phenomenology
M.Reza Shirazi
An Architecture of Parts
Architects, Building Workers and Industrialisation in Britain 1940–1970
Christine Wall
Architecture and the
Body, Science and
Culture
Edited by Kim Sexton
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Kim Sexton
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material,
and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification
and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sexton, Kim Susan, editor.
Title: Architecture and the body, science and culture / edited by Kim Sexton.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017020537| ISBN 9781138188822 (hardback : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9781315642055 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Architecture—Human factors. | Architecture and science. |
Architecture and society.
Classification: LCC NA2542.4 .A71815 2017 | DDC 720.1/03—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017020537
ISBN: 978-1-138-18882-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64205-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
Contents
List of figures vii
List of contributors x
Foreword by Alberto Pérez-Gómez xiii
Introduction 1
Kim Sexton
1 Architecture before the body? Articulation and proportion
in Archaic and Classical Greece 8
Lian Chikako Chang
2 Healing in motion: locotherapy and the architecture of
the Pergamene Asklepieion in the second century CE 27
Ece Okay
3 The crafted bodies of Suger: reconsidering the matter
of St-Denis 45
Jason R. Crow
4 Gothic skins: penitents at the cathedral 67
Laura H. Hollengreen
5 Hybrid bodies move to center stage on a brothel in medieval
Languedoc 86
Catherine J. Barrett
6 Visceral space: dissection and Michelangelo’s Medici Chapel 106
Chloe Costello
7 Soaking in architecture: Montaigne, thermal baths and
sixteenth-century medical treatises 125
Lisa Tannenbaum
vi Contents
8 Academic bodies and anatomical architecture in early
modern Bologna 139
Kim Sexton
9 The eye of modernity: form, proportion and rhythm in
German architectural history of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries 157
Tobias Teutenberg
10 Body and space, Gothic and Cubism: a Czech avant-garde
between empathy, aesthetics and science 177
Frank Bauer
11 Rehabilitating the invalid body: architecture and citizenship
in Jaap Bakema’s design for a Dutch postwar village for
the disabled 196
Wanda Katja Liebermann
12 Sacred fortresses: the church of Ste-Bernadette of Banlay
and the mechanized body in postwar France 217
Paula Burleigh
Epilogue 234
Kim Sexton
Bibliography 236
Index 255
Figures
1.1 Greek metrological relief, c. fifth century BCE. Ashmolean
Museum 9
1.2 A visualization of Plato’s analogia, or proportion, with
pebbles representing the relationship a2: ab :: ab : b2 with
a = 3 and b = 5 14
1.3 Geometric period terracotta krater, attributed to the
Hirschfeld Workshop, c. 750–735 BCE 16
1.4 Mycenaean Cyclopean wall at Mycenae, Greece, c. fourteenth
century BCE 21
2.1 The Asklepieion, Pergamon, Turkey, second century CE,
SketchUp model of the sanctuary by the author 29
2.2 The Pergamon Asklepieion, SketchUp model by the author
showing the Via Tecta, the Colonnaded Street and the
Covered Passageway with a rendering of the Colonnaded
Street 33
2.3 The Pergamon Asklepieion, plan of the Propylon, annotated
by the author to show zones of pause and motion 37
2.4 The Pergamon Asklepieion, plan of the sanctuary courtyard,
annotated by the author to indicate two triangular pockets
of Aristides’ movement 39
3.1 The façade of the Abbey Church at Saint-Denis 47
3.2 The center portal of St-Denis, c. 1137–1140, heavily
restored 1805–1845, below, showing the ordered
ecclesiastical and celestial hierarchies, and above
a detail of Christ enthroned 50
3.3 The choir of St-Denis, 1140–1144 53
3.4 The bronze door of the central portal of St-Denis, c. 1137,
detail of a reconstructed panel depicting the Abbot Suger
offering a cabochon-shaped loaf of bread in the supper
at Emmaus scene 61
4.1 Cathedral of Notre Dame at Chartres, France, north
transept porch, c. 1194–1220 68
viii Figures
4.2 Chartres Cathedral, north transept porch, Old Testament
portal, c. 1210–1215, with the Temptation of Job on the
tympanum and the Judgment of Solomon on the lintel 71
4.3 Chartres Cathedral, Old Testament portal, detail of the
Judgment of Solomon lintel. 75
4.4 Cathedral and Cloister of Notre Dame at Chartres,
site plan 77
5.1 Maison du Grand Ecuyer, early fourteenth century,
Cordes, France, jamb figure 90
5.2 Maison du Grand Ecuyer, façade diagram with numbers
keyed to sculptures mentioned in the text 93
5.3 Maison du Grand Ecuyer, siren 97
5.4 Maison du Grand Ecuyer, vielle player; bagpipe player 98
5.5 Maison du Grand Ecuyer, hybrid figure 100
6.1 Michelangelo, Medici Chapel, 1521–1534, Florence,
overall view of chapel from the altar 107
6.2 Écorché of Jesus Christ, from Berengario da Carpi,
Commentaria, fol. 519v 111
6.3 Medici Chapel, view from chapel altar upwards toward
coffered dome and lantern 114
6.4 Medici Chapel, entrance tabernacle and corner of chapel 117
6.5 Detail of entrance tabernacle volute; scaled volutes
above tomb and framing corner pilasters 118
6.6 Vesalius, Fabrica, title plate, 1543 121
7.1 The Baths of Plombiere, woodcut from De Balneis omnia
(Venice, 1553) 126
7.2 Bagno Vignoni, in the Val d’Orcia in Tuscany, sixteenth-
century tank 131
7.3 Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Fountain of Youth, 1546 134
7.4 Bagno alla Villa, Bagni di Lucca, Italy 135
8.1 Palazzo Bocchi, Bologna, 1546–1560 141
8.2 Palazzo Marsili, Bologna (via D’Azeglio 48), 1653–1681,
rebuilding of an earlier palazzo on the site 145
8.3 Antonio Levanti, the Spellati, 1638–1649, the skinned
atlas figures in the Anatomy Theater in the Palazzo
dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna 147
8.4 Casa Nascentori, Bologna (via Drapperie, 8),
c. 1527–1550 149
8.5 Obstetrical models made between 1734 and 1746/1750
by Anna Morandi and Giovanni Manzolin, as installed
in the Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Bologna 151
9.1 Pestalozzi in observation lesson (1803);
triangular plants and animals 160
9.2 The law of circle graduation in nature;
the portal of Heidelberg Castle 163
Figures ix
9.3 The rhythm of human walking; nave elevation of the late
Carolingian basilica (the ‘Basse Oeuvre’) at Beauvais, France 168
9.4 Adolphe Appia, Espace rythmique(1909); Rhythmic
gymnastics exercise in Hellerau, photo 1912 171
10.1 Vlastislav Hofman, Interior Drawings,1912 185
10.2 Vlastislav Hofman, Linolcut to Dˇáblice Cemetery, 1913 187
11.1 Van den Broek and Bakema, Het Dorp, Arnhem, Netherlands,
1963–65 197
11.2 Het Dorp, view of shops from plaza; residents in road
among low housing units near the top of the site 198
11.3 Het Dorp, sectional elevations of building phase 4
(‘Het Dorp: A Village’); Jachtweg (Hunt Way), the first
completed street/phase, with brick floor 205
11.4 Het Dorp, site plan 207
12.1 Architecture Principe (Claude Parent and Paul Virilio),
Church of Ste.-Bernadette of Banlay, Nevers, France,
1963–1966, façade 218
12.2 Ste-Bernadette of Banlay, floor plan, ink on tracing paper,
Collection Frac Centre-Val de Loire 220
12.3 Ste-Bernadette of Banlay, section, ink on tracing paper,
Collection Frac Centre-Val de Loire 224
12.4 Ste-Bernadette of Banlay, interior 228