ERIKA NAGINSKI: So what was this first ideal city of the Renaissance?

Where does it come from?

Where does it appear?
It was invented by an architectural theorist-- he was also a sculptor-- by the name
of Filarete.
He wrote a treatise on architecture which was actually never published.
It remains in manuscript form, but was hugely influential on his generation and the
generations
that followed.
What he invents here is a fictitious city, and what you're looking at, in fact, is
a
page from that treatise describing the contours of his city.
It's an eight-pointed star-- there's the principle of eight, again-- enclosed in a
circle.
The fact that we have an eight-pointed star makes clear that he's recuperating the
Vitruvian
objection to the eight prevailing winds and the idea of the hygienic city which is
counteracted
in this case by streets and canals which alternate-- he tells us in the text.
The circles in the drawing are defensive towers.
The context for this, or the context for the treatise here, is the fact that, at
this moment
in the 1460s, Filarete was, actually, in the employ of the Duke of Milan-- a man by
the
name of Francesco Sforza, therefore the name of the city: Sforzinda-- and the
fiction here,
which is described in the treatise is that Filarete's patron, the Duke of Milan,
has
asked him to design a city, to imagine a new city with a name that honors him.
So Sforzinda here is described in plan and described in terms of institutions, in
terms
of materials that are necessary, and in terms of the general organization of the
city.
What's curious about the treatise is that it doesn't proceed in terms of
principles,
in terms of ideas, in terms of the orders, but rather it relays... it unfolds as a
fiction,
much like More's own novel.
It relates that as the construction of the city port of this Sforzinda began a kind
of
archaeological discovery was made: a golden book is unearthed, which described an
ancient
mythical city.
This is what we call a kind of "mise-en-abîme" or a kind of fictional ploy: a book
in a book,
and this mythical city, of course, becomes, in turn, the model for the planning of
Filarete's
Sforzinda.
What Filarete, essentially, was doing was emulating the ancients, inventing an
ancient
authority with which to legitimate his own design, and this is where the key role
of
illustration of the image emerges in a textual context.
In other words, again this exchange between words and images, or architectures
relationship
to language and its own visual codes.
So the images here become a way to carry or illustrate the principles.
Here we see, clearly, the triumph of the kind of diagrammatic imagination that,
ultimately,
Ledoux will carry forward in his city of Chaux.
Sforzinda is composed of a walled circle which encloses intersecting quadrangles at
its center.
You'll see that in one of the illustrations it's actually hovering like an abstract
shape
over this undulating landscape.
So it's clear that the plan, highly geometric, isn't actually integrated into the
topography.
It then reappears as a second larger, more geometrically determined form, an
abstract
diagram with a double circumference, and, finally, we come to the most
authoritative
plate, the most detailed illustration, which is most like a city plan.
Here you have two squares, which create a star, and, if you look closely at the
drawing,
you can see the pencil lines which will then be emphasized in ink.
The star is emphasized and enclosed in a circle.
Both the circle and the star are forcefully delineated.
The wall of the city is, in fact, that star shape, and it follows a pattern that
touches
the circle, which is a moat.
The texts describe how canals and streets converge on the city center, but,
actually,
this part is not made explicit in the plan.
Well, we do see, however, at the center of the star is the beginning of a city
fabric.
So here a kind of multi-focal city planning is just beginning to show inside this
abstract
diagram.
So think of this as a kind of encounter between ideal geometries and the beginnings
of thinking
through how institutions will find their place in the city fabric.
It's worth mentioning here that Vitruvius was not the only source, however, for
this
kind of abstraction or diagrammatic imagination.
the idea of enclosing the city in a circle is also interestingly based on the
medieval
image of the world and the universe.
The ideal city here is automatically compared to the shape of the cosmos, and you
have the
pretense of the architect alluding to the cosmos or having some kind of
cosmological
intention for the design of his city.
Let's think a little bit more about the shape of Sforzinda and the kind of planning
that
it's beginning to suggest.
We see the moat in the circle; we see the angular wall of the ramparts with their
angular
circuit; we see one circular ring street and then the central core.
That central core is actually following the ancient Roman model of the public forum
or
the public market, which is a central square and marks the kind of center of
business,
judicial affairs, power, and also spiritual authority.
In the text, Filarete describes the kind of grandeur of this public space.
He describes colonnades, and that the fact that the main thoroughfares are going to
lead
from that central space to the outlying city districts.
In other words, he's beginning to develop, for the first time, a kind of notion of
ordered
and triumphant public space.
But if we focus in on the layout of the center, we'll see that he's, actually,
incorporating
three squares.
There's the central one, which is a main piazza, and then just to the north and to
the south
are smaller squares.
If you look at the organization, you'll see a Greek cross set in a square that is a
sure
signal that this is where the church is-- a central plan church.
Opposite the church, on the other end, is the prince's palace.
On the southern end, we have a kind of activity of the market; we have a bank; we
have merchants.
And to the north, we have judicial authorities.
So there's a very clear symbolic marking in this central square of the kinds of
institutions
that make up a society: spiritual, political, economic, and judicial.
This is the germinating idea of what will, ultimately, be called multi-focal urban
planning
in the modern city.
This insertion of institutions in the fabric of the city is remarkable and to be
noted.
Not only does Filarete's city include a palace, many churches, a hall of justice,
and banks;
he, also, envisioned separate schools for boys and girls, which was very forward-
looking.
He was also interested in the perfection of the citizenry, and says so in his text,
which
is why he comes up with what you see here a "House of Vice and Virtue."
I want to point out, formally, that this drawing is strange; it is an attempt at
perspective.
It's not in any way systematic or precise or mathematically determined, but instead
an approximation.
But what's so curious about it is the way it combines and confuses multiple visual
conventions.
If you look at the ground floor, you see the line of plan traced out as a circle.
If you look at the side wings, you'll see that he's actually cut through the
building
and is showing a section.
And then the bulge of the tower-- perspectival, not properly orthographic-- is, of
course,
an attempt at perspectival elevation, in this case.
This building is defined by the ring of ten stories that is mounted on a base and,
ultimately,
crowned by a statue of virtue-- again this emblematization of the importance of the
morality
of the social body.
It functions on the principle of ascension.
As you climb up the stairs, you move from the world of the mundane to the world of
the
intellect in the soul, and you'll find at the top, of course, an astronomical
observatory,
as a way to emphasize that our path through life, inevitably, will lead from the
physical
to the intellectual.