A neo-

medieval
approach to
architecture
by
Marco Frascari
 A neo-medieval
approach to
architecture
I am going to present a gentle
manifesto for
neo-medieval architecture…
 A Neomedieval Paradigm
This
Manifesto Neomedieval Architecture
is based on a conjectural paradigm established in
micro-history
and
to the winkling out the small details
capable of challenging our established views of
architectural thinking
The proposed method aims to detect the large in the
small
and to combine an understanding of the abstract
driving forces in architectural making with the
analysis of seemingly chancy and insignificant
incidents. This method belongs to a paradigm of
clues reading.
 The proposed methodology aims to detect the large
through the small and to combine an understanding of
the abstract driving forces in architectural making with
the analysis of seemingly chancy and insignificant
incidents.
This method belongs to a paradigm of clues reading
that ends in Tectonic Liturgies.

In other words, it deals with the essence of a

knowledge that cannot distinguish between intelligible
and imaginable.
Great architectural changes can only be fully
understood when analyzed at the micro-level, where
the consequences of major constructive powers always
make themselves felt In Wonder.
Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch
But it is not a question of return to the Middle Ages …
Neomedievalism is a
neologism coined by
Umberto Eco
– In short essay entitled
• "Dreaming the Middle Ages,"
• Eco says
"..we are at present witnessing,
both in Europe and America, a
period of renewed interest in the
Middle Ages, with a curious
oscillation between fantastic
neomedievalism and responsible
philological examination.."

• Umberto Eco, in Travels in Hyperreality, transl. by W. Weaver, NY:

Harcourt Brace, 1986, 61-72.
 Why a Neo-Medieval
Approach to Architecture?

What
Neo-Medieval
really means from an
Architectural point of view?
 Let’s do a little bit of
terminological and historical
• Medieval
clean up
• Gothic
• Neo-Gothic
• Maniera Toesca
• Why we persist in the curious usage of calling
European architecture of the twelfth through
fifteenth centuries after a barbarian tribe of late
antiquity?
• Why we call that period dark ages?
• Who did turnoff the light?
 neo-medieval modernism
• Following Marvin Trachtenberg, I would like to
propose that we should give to late medieval
architecture a name more descriptively accurate than
Gothic. The name would be medieval modernism;
consequently, by revealing the hidden meaning of the
terminology, my locution will be neo-medieval
modernism
– Marvin Trachtenberg, Gothic/Italian "Gothic": Toward a
Redefinition The Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians, Vol. 50, No. 1. (Mar., 1991), pp. 22-37.
• French medieval modernist methodology was deeply
antihistoricist. Italy was never antihistoricist but, to the
contrary, always extremely historicist, deeply and
irrevocably bound to its vast ancient heritage that was so
much richer, more pervasive and culturally omnipresent,
than else in Europe.
• This play was based on anywhere active choices as
demonstrated by the ability of Italian architects to
reinterpret and to play with antique forms, and even to
disregard them on occasion at will The source material of
Italy’s gothic works was open to virtually all directions:
the classical past, the wider Mediterranean world of
Byzantium and Islam, and vernacular types, as well as the
inventions of northern medieval architecture. In other
words, Italian architecture in the Gothic period was in
method the very antithesis of purist, idealizing French
modernism
Teodoricus a King of the
Goths
A Neo Gothic View of Alaric
The Goth
 • The presence of WONDER in Neomedievalism
Albertus Magnus,
•
in his Metaphysicorum tell us:,

• Wonder is defined as a constriction and suspension of the

heart caused by amazement at the sensible appearance of
something so portentous, great, and unusual, that the heart
suffers a systole.
• Hence wonder is something like fear in its effect on the
heart.
• This effect of wonder, . . . springs from an unfulfilled but felt
desire to know the cause of that which appears portentous
and unusual.
• Albertus Magnus, Metaphysicorum, tract 2, chap. 6, in Opera omnia, vol. 6, ed. Auguste Borgnet (Paris, 1890), 30: “Admirationem autem vocamus
agoniam et suspensionem cordis in stuporem prodigii magni in sensum apparentis, ita quod cor systolem patitur. Propter quod etiam admiratio aliquid
simile habet timori in motus cordis, qui est ex suspensione. Hujus igitur motus admirationis . . . est ex suspensione desiderii ad cognoscendam causam
entis quod apparet prodigii.” The translation is that of J. V. Cunningham, Woe or Wonder: The Emotional Effect of Shakespearean Tragedy (Denver:
Denver University Press, 1951), 79.
Let’s begin within a contrast
of Wonderland
Let’s go to the beginning of Neomedievalism …
that is Medievalism
and then
let’s then move to contemporary “wonderlands”
powerful expressions of a never dying
Medievalism
to reach the Real Nature of Neomedievalism
 Augustus Welby Pugin,

Contrast or a parallel between the

architecture of the 15th and the 19th
centuries, 1841
19th century 1841
15th century,
 Carlo Aymonino,
Origini e sviluppo della città moderna,
Padova, Marsilio editori, (1965) 1971
Giotto

VS.

Philip Johnson
 A.W. N. Pugin, Frontispiece
"The Present Revival of Christian Architecture."
(1843)
 Little Nemo by
Winsor McCay

Slumberlan
d
Wonderland
In his essay "See You In Disneyland," Michael
Sorkin writes:
• At Disneyland one is constantly poised in a
condition of becoming, always someplace that is
"like" someplace else. The simulation's referent
is ever elsewhere; the "authenticity" of the
substitution always depends on the knowledge,
however faded, of some absent genuine. . . .
The urbanism of Disneyland is precisely the
urbanism of universal equivalence. In this new
city, the idea of distinct places is dispersed into a
sea of universal placelessness as everyplace
becomes destination and any destination can be
anyplace. (216-7)
Michael Sorkin is describing the medieval dream
of the new Jerusalem the Heavenly Jerusalem
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Sacro Monte di
Varallo
Sacro Monte di Santa Maria Assunta, Serralunga di
Crea Cappella del Paradiso
 Sacro
Monte di
Ossuccio
Certaldo near San Giminiano
San Gimigniano
• Some scholars
have argued
that Kahn got
his inspiration
for the Richards
Medical
Research
Building at the
University of
Pennsylvania
from the Italian
hill-town of San
Gimignano
 The New Jerusalem
(Tapestry of the Apocalypse 14th century)
also called the tabernacle of
God, holy city, city of God,
celestial city, and heavenly
Jerusalem,
The
New Jerusalem

is a literal or figurative
city that is a physical
reconstruction, spiritual
restoration, or divine
recreation of the city of
Jerusalem
 The Materiality
of the new
Jerusalem
The angel measures the
New Jerusalem with the
rod or reed. Note the
Lamb of God and the
twelve sets of figures,
gates, and stones.
Revelation 21:21—

The twelve gates were

twelve pearls, each
gate being made from a
single pearl.
Jacob's Ladder; from the Speculum Humanae
Salvationis, Augsburg 1477
 Saint Aubert's third dream.
Avranches, Bibliothtque Municipale
E. Le Hiricher, MS 210, fol. 4v

"By a dream in a vision by

night, when deep sleep
falleth upon men, and they
are sleeping in their beds:
then
[God] openeth the ears of
men, and teaching instructeth
them in what they are to
learn" (Job 33:15-16).
Gunzo’s
Dream
Thomas Cole's Medieval Imagination
at Work in the Architect's Dream
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
Cavalier view of castle during restoration in 1858

(aquarelle by Viollet-le-Duc)
 William Morris (1834-1896)

•
Jacobus de Voragine . Legenda Aurea.
• London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1512.
• William Morris's copy.
 William Morris,
"Brer Rabbit" block printed furnishing cotton,
manufactured by Morris & Co., 1882, England.
Hammersmith: Kelmscott
Press, 1894
Ginevra
Königin
by
Walter
Morris
1858
Billiard Room, Wightwick
Manor, Staffordshire
Red House
(Bexleyheath, Kent), 1860,

William Morris
owner
Philip Webb
Architect
 A further historical background
• The Renaissance condemned Italy for having been too
Gothic, modern scholarship has tended to fault it for not
having been Gothic enough
• Italy was never really "Gothic" at all,
never a colony of a Parisian architectural empire-the
way it is commonly regarded-but an independent culture
with an individual architecture that used Gothic for its
own purposes.

• … but “ the nature of gothic”

John Ruskin’s Venice
(1819-1900),
 John Ruskin
Self-Portrait, 1861
Manuscript leafs from Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice
Liberty London
 Liberty Style in the Giudecca, Venice
Palazzo called tre oci (three eyes) designed by
Mario de Maria 1910
Mulino Stucky Venice
Jappelli’s Caffe Pedrocchi &
Pedrocchino Padova
 Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871-1949)
converted this grand Gothic palace which belonged to the Pesaro family into a comprehensive studio for painting,
photography, set design and the creation of fabrics.
Giuseppe Torres
Carlo Scarpa & Castelvecchio
in Verona
a case
for Neomedievalism
 Radical Orthodoxy as future
• Carlo Scarpa is a
• Every neo- radical orthodox
mediaeval architect architect
is a radical
orthodox
 When my time comes, cover me with
these words, because I am a man of
Byzantium who came to Venice by way of
Greece.'
Carlo Scarpa
The accidentally familial and Neo-gothic origin of
Carlo Scarpa’s Architecture
in a Bassano Church (called Tempio Ossario)
designed by Francesco Rinaldo (1906)
 A necessary anti-Cartesian digression
against the SEPARATION OF MIND AND BODY
 FIVE
SENSES
Medieval representation of the senses

You cannot
walk within the
buildings
designed by
Scarpa with
your hands in
the pockets
(Arrigo Rudi in a seminar at UP)
Drawings by blind children
Converging railrod tracts & a moving wheel
Brion’s Cemetery San Vito D’Altivole
Scarpa’s Neomedievalist setup
 AD 1957
An exhibition on
Medieval Veronese Art
entitled
“Da Altichiero a Pisanello”
is the beginning of Scarpa’s never
ending intervention on
Castelvecchio
 3 building campains
ｬ Museo di Castelvecchio (1A phase)
1957-1964
ｬ Museo di Castelvecchio (2A phase)
1968-1969
ｬ Museo di Castelvecchio (3A phase)
1973-1975

However the idea goes back to Antonio Avena

 Altichiero da
Zevio (also called
Aldighieri da
Zevio)
c. 1330 - c. 1390)
 Pisanello (or Antonio di Puccio Pisano or Antonio di
Puccio da Cereto), or erroneously called Vittore Pisano
by Giorgio Vasari, (c. 1395- probably 1455)
Castelvecchio before WWI
The Restoration After WWI
Castelvecchio after the bombing of
the WWII
Antonio Avena Medievalist Set up
of Castelvecchio
House
& Tomb
of
Juliet
Cangrande della Scala
The importance of Cangrande
Peter Eisenmen's intervention

into Scarpa's Caselvecchio

STAIRS CASTELVECCHIO
 Venetian Chimney
The Palazzetto in Monselice
The nature of Neo-medievalism
• The ultimate truth of any real piece of architecture is
not contained in embryo in an original inspiration;
but after the first facture in any other instance of it it
is continuously defined and redefined by a constantly
evolving meaning that constructs itself in accordance
to itself and in reaction to itself.

• Every building element in Scarpa’s neo-medieval

architecture follows this process of configuration.
There is no ultimate truth in his buildings but a
reoccurrences of pieces elaborated in the same
manner
 The Neomedieval approach to
Architecture is that built artifacts are
not the result of vague or empirical
poetics, but of a philosophical
investigation carried on in a parallel
way with
the processes of architectural
formativity.
The approach is by no means
normative and prescribes no method
of procedure.
Habitus
Carlo Scarpa’s favorite maxim
…
nullo dies sine linea (do
not let a day pas by
without line),

Is the statement of an habitus

==============
====

The sharpening of the

pencil is a liturgy
Turin a recently built Hotel by Gabetti & Isola
Gabetti & Isola
palazzo fidia by aldo andreani
The Habitus generates Tectonic
Liturgies
It is a promise to good architecture

That is it folks
a Neo-Medieval view of the
future of Architecture