Spatial visualization of architectural drawings
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome
The case study examines the role of architectural drawing in the architectural planning process of the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. The use of three-dimensional drawings (CAD models) and interactive animations is now an essential prerequisite to understand and critically visualize the spatial conception inherent in the drawings and sketches of the period. Bird's eye perspectives, the control of visual axes with the help of sketches, or the checking of how the layout of a villa or country house is perceived from a moving object, such as a travelling coach, are just some examples of how - as in Filippo Juvarra - a multi-perspectival planning process dissolved the central perspective of the Renaissance and came close to the new perception of space in natural philosophy.
This perception of space was characterized by dynamic alterations in perspective. It can now be reconstructed in its full range with present-day imaging techniques and 3D visualization. In particular, 3-D reconstruction shows what spatial questions were posed and solved in the drawings or where a drawing remained two-dimensional. In a pilot and feasibility study Hermann Schlimme, using the resources of CAD, has spatially visualized Juvarra's design for a church dating to 1707, which was produced as an academic project and never intended to be executed. The study has succeeded in elucidating aspects of Juvarra's spatial thinking and in documenting the peculiarities of his "paper" architecture. For 3D-Bridge it is now planned to produce, in a CAD model, a 3D visualization of the design for a palace layout with park for three persons of the same royal rank, with which Juvarra won the Clementino Competition of the Roman Academy in 1705. On the basis of this project Juvarra developed his design method and transmitted it to the students at the Academy. Indeed the plan was placed on display for centuries in the Roman Academy and became in this way a model for generations of European architects, who were sent to Rome to complete their education. The wooden model commissioned by Juvarra for the partially realized palace project in Rivoli in the environs of Turin will be cited as a comparison. To understand the design methods of the exceptionally influential Juvarra has long been a desideratum of art history. 3-D technology now creates the basis for it. Apart from the models themselves, the research findings will also be visualized in the form of commentaries and virtual architecture teaching paths and made accessible on the web password-free.
