The Baroque

The Baroque period in both architecture and city planning was an exciting period. The word baroque in Portuguese means an "odd shaped pearl". This meaning is very descriptive of the Baroque period as it was a period in which the exactness of the ideas of the Renaissance mellowed. It was period in which the whimsical seemed more appropriate.

 The Reformation had splintered Christianity into many different religious orders or denominations. The Church now called the Catholic church was anxious to bring back the people who had aligned themselves with other religious denominations; this counter-reformation played a significant role in the Baroque period. The Catholic church creatively experimented as to how to structure this counter-reformation. Their major thrust of enticement was portraying the drama of the Biblical stories of both the old Testament and the New Testament. As part of the counter-reformation, the Catholic church organized a teaching order of monks who were called the Jesuits priests. These priests used the fabric of the city- the sidewalks, street corners and the porticoes of buildings - as the stages for their biblical plays. The city now had a new meaning or definition. The city was the stage not only for the Biblical plays but also the stage for the drama of life. The city became a great theater, and you and I , the city dwellers became the actors. As in every theater, the city as a stage became a place of mystical drama.

 The city of Rome is an excellent example of a city as a stage for the drama of life. For Rome, the period from the final century of the Roman Empire to the return of the pope from the exile in Avignon in 1376 was one of decline, retrogression, and in general dissolution. What was going on in these centuries was a transition from one civilization to another, a process that not only involved a spiritual readaptation to new ideas but also a shift of the center of gravity from the inner city to the periphery of the city. The final form of Renaissance Rome owes most to the five-year pontificate of Pope Sixtus V (1585-90). Though the time frame is still theoretically that of the Renaissance period, the ideas and principles of Pope Sixtus V are Baroque. In a relatively short time, he carried out an extensive program of works, mainly with the architect-planner Domenico Fontana as his executant. The power of Pope Sixtus V 's ideas was so strong that though not all of his ideas were executed during his life, their power remained and became a reality over a span of many years. His program was based on three main objectives:

*?To repopulate the hills of Rome by providing them with the direct water supply lacking since the cutting of the ancient aqueducts;

*?To integrate into one main street system the various works of his predecessors, by connecting the main churches and other key points in the city;

*?To create an aesthetic unity out of the often disparate buildings forming the streets and public spaces.

 Although other popes had restored water supplies to the lower parts of the city, they had failed to so for the hilly districts. In order to bring water to the Quirinal, Viminal and Esquiline Hills, Sixtus V constructed the Aqua Felice between 1585-89. This aqueduct was created in part from the ancient Aqua Marcia and Aqua Claudia; it supplied over four million gallons of water a day.

 The Rome that Pope Sixtus V inherited was a city of chaos; it was a city crowded with hundreds of Christian pilgrims visiting the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome - San Pietro in Vaticano ( St. Peter's), San Giovanni in Laterano, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Paolo fuori le Mura and San Lorenzo fuori le Mura. These were the five original churches; two other churches were given special veneration later - Santa Croce Gerusalemme and San Sebastiano.

 It is important to distinguish between the work of Sixtus V and the work of his predecessors. Sixtus V based Rome's new movement system on the Strada Felice - the main route from south-east to north-west which was constructed in the first year of his papacy. This street was to have linked the isolated Santa Croce in Gerusalemme directly to the Piazza del Popolo, some two and half miles away, by the way of Santa Maria Maggiore. However, he was defeated by the steep slopes of the Aventine and was forced to terminate the Strada Felice in front of Santa Trinita dei Monti. From this site, a magnificent flight of steps, the Scala di Spagna, was built between 1721 -25 down the hillside to the Piazza di Spagna on the Strada del Babuino. The obelisk in front of the church, terminating the Strada Felice, was erected in 1789.

Pope Sixtus V had inherited obelisks from antiquity. He strategically placed these obelisks as points in space in places that he knew would over time become significant urban spaces. He located four such obelisks: in the future Piazza del Popolo, at the intersection of the three routes; on the Strada Felice, immediately north-west of Santa Maria Maggiore; in front of San Giovanni in Laterano; and, most significantly in terms of its subsequent effect, in front of the still unfinished St. Peter's.

Contemporary Rome:

 In the diagram below, the principal structures that were built after the death of Sixtus in 1590 have been added in blue. These buildings were directly influenced by the over-all design structure he created and were complementary to it. While the total extent of this work may not seem impressive, the impact it makes on the ground is very great indeed. This is because the buildings surround and dominate large open spaces, Since these spaces are part of a controlled sequential experience ( provided by the movement-system design structure), the individual design impacts build up into a powerful force and the connecting frame-work dominates the visual image of a large part of Rome.

At the northern end of the city (at the top of the map), the block dot of Sixtus's obelisk in Piazza del Popolo becomes surrounded by structures defining its location, and eventually by a cross-movement connecting the Tiber River with the gardens of the Pincio high above. The church of San Girolamo degli Schiavoni at the Tiber River, with the Porta di Repetta before it, becomes the terminus from the Via Flaminia, the Spanish Steps being the terminus of the other.

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The Spanish Steps also serve as the substitute for the projected extension of Strada Felice; they receive the northern thrust of the space of Strada Felice, direct it downward to the lower plane of Via del Babuino, which in turn conducts it to Piazza del Popolo, an objective of the Sixtus V design. These steps are a splendid connector in three dimensions of a system which functions in two planes.

 The Palazzo Barberini (in blue), with its Piazza Barberini and the Bernini Triton Fountain, is much influenced in its position and design by the Strada Felice, which it faces, and the piazza is a rhythmic element in the progression to the four fountains at the Strada Pria crossing. The formalization of Piazza Quirinale (center of the map) and the resetting of the on each side of the obelisk (erected in the eighteenth century) carry forward the enrichment of the old Strada Pia. The rebuilding of Santa Maria Maggiore is another change directly influenced by the Sixtus plan, and together these works show what architecture and city planning can do when these two elements are interrelated." Edmund Bacon, Design of Cities.

 The Baroque period is period which is in sharp contrast with the quiet restful ideas of the Renaissance. It is period in which the concept "as if but not quite" dominates. What this concept means is that the elements of architecture and planning appeared to be perfect but in fact were slightly off. For example, the many obelisks placed by Pope Sixtus V and others appear to be absolutely in the center of the space but are in fact slightly off center. The Baroque wanted to tantalize and stretch your intellect by making you wonder if this modestly off centerness is purposeful or merely an act of clumsy construction, or is it an optical illusion. The Baroque architect consistently uses the oval as an urban form. The oval is a deformed circle, a form without the geometrical perfection of the circle - almost a circle but not quite. The oval again challenges the intellect - by its implied perfection in the context of an imperfect form. The Capitol Hill, the best known of the seven hills of Rome, was the seat of the Senate, the ancient Roman governing body, and the city's original religious sanctuary. Following the destruction of the ancient buildings between the eighth and twelfth centuries the market, and with it the seat of the prefect of the city, was transferred from the Forum Holiforium to the Capitol. As a result, the Capitol became the political center of medieval Rome. The Palace of the Capitol was rebuilt in 1299. in the early years of the fifteenth century, the Capitoline Palace was so dilapidated that the municipal authorities were forced to meet in the near-by church of Sta Maria in Aracoeli. In 1429, Pope Nicholas V as part of his building agenda converted an existing medieval design into the Palazzo dei Conservatori. This building ,an arcade medieval design, was immediately to the north of the Palazzo del Senatore. These two buildings formed a sharp angle at their nearest corners. Despite these improvements, the Capitol Hill was still in disarray. The famous hill had no form, it had been ploughed up by horsemen, and bushes grew at random over the uneven terrain. Edmund Bacon, Design of Cities.

 In 1537, Michelangelo, painter, poet, sculptor and architect was commissioned. As part of his proposal, the statue of Marcus Aurelius was erected on a pedestal designed by Michelangelo. The total proposal for the Capitoline Hill was published in 1550 but its final completion did not occur until 1664. The use of a statue as a free standing element in space was new. It was a concept not too dissimilar to Sixtus V's placing of obelisks in space. The piazza is not a completely enclosed space. The three buildings form a trapezoid with the fourth side open along the edge of the hill. At the hill's edge a monumental flight of steps accesses the space. As one moves up this flight of ramped steps, there is clue as to sort of space one is entering.

The actual piazza is a small space, 181 feet across at its widest and 133 feet at its narrowest, between the flanking buildings.

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 This effect of forced perspective gives the illusion of a space of much greater depth. The oval ground plane with its two dimensional star-shaped pattern also creates a sense of illusion. At times the space in its ground plane appears to concave, at other times it appears convex. The space in reality is flat. The Capitoline Piazza is a space of tension and illusion, a brilliant rendition of the Baroque concepts.

 In the restless world of the Baroque period, there was a desire to create space which was both in tension and simultaneously animated. In Michelangelo's painting of the hands of God and Adam in the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the space between the two fingers, that of God and that of man is charged with tension. Will the hand of God grasp the hand of man or will the hand of man simply sleep into the darkness? The space is charged with that question. Baroque architecture and planning always sets up a similar tension, a tension in which the spatial components have not been clearly rationalized.

 Baroque space is space filled with emotion and drama. A drama that worked well in the political and religious arena of the counter-reformation. As part of the drama, the Baroque period attempted to make space appear animated, space in constant fluctuation. Water was a device for animating space.

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WATER, AN ELEMENT OF NATURE:

 Familiar and simple, yet enchantingly complex, water is endlessly appealing. Water has always fascinated man.

From lost tea gardens to overgrown Umbrian villas to glitzy hotel-lobby fountains, we have persisted in using water in our built environment. A significant American architect, Charles Moore, stated that " to understand the water of architecture is to understand the architecture of water - what physical laws govern its behavior, how the liquid act and reacts with our senses, and most of all how its symbolism relates to us as human beings." The poet, Muriel Rukeyser, wrote that " the universe is made of stories, not of atoms," so too is water composed of stories above and beyond its molecular fusion of hydrogen and oxygen. From the beginning of time, the artist, inclusive of the architect, has incorporated water into their compositions. Our association with water has been shaped by legends and allegories.

 Water, chemically, is an oxide of hydrogen and covers about two-thirds of the Earth's surface, with nearly two-thirds of all fresh water frozen in the polar ice caps. Atmospheric -, surface-, and groundwater are critical factors in our planet's weather systems: humidity and dew point maintain our atmosphere, ocean currents cool and warm continental temperatures, and the freeze-thaw cycle locks and releases moisture in the soil.

Water becomes a solid at 32 ° F ( 0° ) and becomes a gas at 212° F (100° C ). As atmospheric pressure rises or falls, the freezing and boiling temperatures of water adjust themselves in proportion. When water freezes, it distinguishes itself from most other liquids by expanding, approximately one-eleventh of its volume; water as a liquid is nearly incompressible. When water moves, its dynamics are controlled by complex interactions of forces, displacements, and energies. Trickles, drops, sprays and deluges are all kinetic performances choreographed by the invisible master, nature. Ice, liquid and steam are the forms of water available to the designer. Though chemistry and physic dictates the action of water, the perception of water has been shaped by profound poetic interpretation and inspiration. ?

 Along with earth, air and fire, water is regarded as one of the four basic elements of the universe. The history of water is rich with metaphors but most importantly water is a source of life and a symbol of life. All life depends upon water. Physically, nothing escapes its influence, and nothing lives without it. Spiritually, water has been a common thread in the religion, literature and art of every culture. Even though water is a common denominator of life, it also seen as a symbol of death. Water is relentless - it drowns, it spoils, it rots, it wears away and it floods.

 In conclusion, the Baroque was a period in which architecture and planning was a rendition of:

*?Emanating tension

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Read pages 386-409 in Mumford

Do certain aspects of the city of Philadelphia remind you of some of the ideas of the Baroque period-if so, where and how?