Palazzo Lancellotti | Giuseppe Strappa

5. SPECIAL BUILDING LEARNED LANGUAGE

Giuseppe Strappa

5c – The genesis of the Roman palace, one of the most fruitful events in the entire history of European architecture, indicates a different path to the formation of modern architectural organisms. A phenomenon that can be read clearly in its manifestation as the becoming of the manifold to form unity. As for the Venetian palace, the process that is at the origin of its particular character is not due to the contribution of a small group of architects, but constitutes the collective, living result of the transformations operating in the fabric. It comes to light from successive mutations of the housing aggregates of medieval origin and from the permanence of that ancient substratum which, in Rome, has always constituted an inexhaustible source of renewal.

Its formation process began with the recast, in the 14th-16th century, of simple single-family dwellings to satisfy the need of building new large-scale residences for the emerging political and economical classes.

In the context of an already densely built city, the only one possibility was the progressive acquisition of fabric units, linking them together through a common private, inner path.

Thus, around the central space of the courtyard that brings together the original pertinent areas, a sort of “reversed” fabric is formed, a small introverted city that takes its characters from the external city. The transition from aggregate to building is expressed by unifying the external facades into a single wall merging the single buildings in a common rhythm of openings. The process also establishes a hierarchy between the different parts: ………………..

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Translated from G.Strappa , Architettura come processo, Franco Angeli, Milano 2015

Chapter 5. LEARNED LANGUAGE / EVERYDAY LANGUAGE

5a – The modern idea of a masonry language, both local and international, was born with the decline of the consolidated stereotype of a Mediterranean landscape that painters and poets had for a long time idealized in the transparent airiness of colonnades and trabeations used in basically trilithic structures, of wooden derivation.

This landscape, instead, reveals to the travelers, when the geographical and cultural barrier of Rome is overcome, its own nature of plastic, organically man-made territory. It consists of churches, monasteries, even ancient ruins, but above all of urban fabrics of great massive strength. A world of powerful walls and houses with small windows, organized in solid and continuous volumes.

The other side of classicism was also discovered: that of the large uninterrupted walls, where the openings are simple flat-arched holes that don’t interrupt their architectural continuity. Reality begins to shake off, in the European imagination, the aristocratic museum of literary representations which, on the basis of the classic tradition, had superimposed itself on the truth of the built landscape……..

click to continue reading 5. Chap. 5 Translation from -Architettura come processo-

urban morphology and architectural design