Simultaneous Double Notions: Mannerist Elements in Contemporary Architecture

Abstract

There is no complete description of either the term “mannerism” or its associated features. Contradiction, paradox, and ambiguity may have been the terms most referential for mannerism since the 1950s, but this article poses a unification of opposites as another important feature, specific to modern and contemporary architecture. We analyse three series of works by Andrea Palladio against another three pairs of opposing concepts—absence versus presence, frontality versus foreshortening, and grid versus assemblage. An analysis of each pair of concepts using commonly accepted examples from late twentieth-century architecture, following Venturi in the way of “both-and,” allows us to argue how this merging of opposites in the same element, blends into, and participates in both characterisations. The pairings of opposites maintain their features, becoming simultaneous complementary characters. These mannerist characterisations are less common in current architecture, but they can, we claim, be easily detected in various recent projects.

Keywords:

• Absence
• assemblage
• foreshortening
• grid
• mannerism

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Nikolaus Pevsner, “The Architecture of Mannerism,” in The Mint: A Miscellany of Literature, Art and Criticism, ed. Geoffrey Grigson (London: Routledge, 1946), 116–38; Anthony Blunt, “Mannerism in Architecture,” RIBA Journal 3, no. 5 (March, 1, 1949): 195–201; Walter Friedlaender, Mannerism and Anti-Matterism in Italian Painting (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957); 3–46, presenting work first published in the 1920s; Gustav Rene Hocke, Die Welt als Labyrinth. Manier und Manie in der europäischen Kunst. Beiträge zur Ikonographie und Formgeschichte der europäischen Kunst von 1520 bis 1650 und der Gegenwart (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1957); Arnold Hauser, Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of Modern Art (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965). For an account of this historiography, see Dirk De Meyer, “Mannerism, Modernity and the Modernist Architect, 1920–1950,” Journal of Architecture 15, no. 3 (2010): 243–65. For recent reviews of this theme, see Gonzalez de Canales, El manierismo y su ahora: una aproximación optimista para un presente incierto (Seville: Vinok book, 2020); and Lina Malfona, La condizione manierista (Siracusa: LetteraVentidue, 2021).

2 Colin Rowe, “Mannerism and Modern Architecture,” Architectural Review (1950): 289–99; Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966). On the relationship between these two authors and potential mutual influences, see Denise Costanzo, “Text, Lies and Architecture: Colin Rowe, Robert Venturi and Mannerism,” Journal of Architecture 18, no. 4 (2013): 455–73.

3 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2004). See, also, de Canales, El manierismo y su ahora, 109 n38.

4 Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 28.

5 C. Ray Smith, “The Permissiveness of Supermannerism,” Progressive Architecture (October 1967), 169.

6 Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 23.

7 Kersten Geers, Jelena Pančevac, and Andrea Zanderigo, The Difficult Whole: A Reference Book on Robert Venturi, John Rauch and Denisse Scott Brown (Zurich: Park Books, 2016), 207.

8 Geers, et al., The Difficult Whole, 208.

9 Rowe, “Mannerism and Modern Architecture,” 292.

10 Colin Rowe, “Even the Villa Schwob,” unpublished lecture, Yale School of Architecture, date unknown, probably in the mid–1990s. A manuscript and notes were found in a private archive in August 2012 and published on the occasion of Colin Rowe’s centenary (2020), colinrowecentenary.wordpress.com/2020/05/08/even-the-villa-schwob.

11 Fernando Pérez Oyarzun, Alejandro Aravena, and José Quintanilla, “Escalera biblioteca laurenziana: la arquitectura como cuerpo,” in Los hechos de la arquitectura (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones ARQ, 1999), 137, our trans.

12 Wylie Sypher, Four Stages in Renaissance Style: Transformations in Art and Literature 1400–1700 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), 124–25; cited in Maarten Delbeke, “Mannerism and Meaning in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture,” Journal of Architecture 15, no. 3 (2010), 272.

13 Rudolf Wittkower, “Michelangelo’s Biblioteca Laurenziana,” Art Bulletin 16, no. 2 (1934), 213, italics in the original.

14 Wittkower, “Michelangelo’s Biblioteca Laurenziana,” 213.

15 Federico Soriano, Sin Tesis (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, 1999), 90.

16 Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 3^rd edn (New York: Random House, 1965), 89–96.

17 Julius Lange, Billedkunstens Fremstilling of Menneskeskikkelsen I dens aelste Periode indtil Hojdepunltet of den graeske Kunst (Copenhagen: F. Dreyer, 1892).

18 Thomas Schumacher, “The Palladio Variations: On Reconciling Convention, Parti, and Space,” Cornell Journal of Architecture 3, The Vertical Surface (1988): 12-29.

19 Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture (Paris: G. Crès, et al., 1923), 143.

20 Peter Eisenman, “From Object to Relationship II: Casa Giuliani Frigerio,” Perspecta 13–14 (1971): 36–65.

21 Rowe, “Even the Villa Schwob.” The original quotation reads: “La dimensión de profundidad, sea espacial o de tiempo, sea visual o auditiva, se presenta siempre en una superficie. De suerte que esta superficie posee en rigor dos valores: el uno cuando la tomamos como lo que es materialmente; el otro cuando la vemos en su segunda vida virtual. En el último caso la superficie, sin dejar de serlo, se dilata en un sentido profundo. Esto es lo que llamamos escorzo. El escorzo es el órgano de la profundidad visual; en él hallamos un caso límite donde la simple visión está fundida con un acto puramente intelectual.” José Ortega y Gasset, Meditaciones del Quijote. Meditación preliminar. Meditación primera (Madrid: Residencia de estudiantes, 1914), 83.

22 Bart Verschaffel, “Add a Little More: A New Mannerism in Recent Flemish Architecture,” in Flanders Architectural Review 12, Tailored Architecture (Antwerp: Vlaams Architectuurinstituut, 2016), 131.

23 Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (New York: Pantheon Books, 2000), 120.

24 W. J. Mitchell, The Logic of Architecture. Design, Computation and Cognition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 152–79.

25 Danielewski, House of Leaves, 120.

26 See fig. 5 in Francesco Benelli, “Rudolf Wittkower versus Le Corbusier: A Matter of Proportion,” Architectural Histories 3, no. 1 (2015), http://doi.org/10.5334/ah.ck. The drawing is in the RBML archives, series IV, box 44, Avery Architecture Library, Columbia University.

27 See page 19 of Andrea Palladio, I Quattro libri dell’architettura (Venice: Appresso Bartolomeo Carampello, 1616), archive.org/details/quattrolibridell00pall/page/n3/mode/2up.

28 In later years it was modified to 0.356 m.

29 For more on the evolution and transformations during the construction of the Villa Rotonda see Andrew Hopkins, “Neither Perfect Nor Ideal: Palladio’s Villa Rotonda,” Architectural History 65 (2022): 155–194. The article analyses the differences between Palladio's original drawing in i quattri libri and the plan of the finally constructed building, drawn by Francesco Muttoni from 1740, indicating four phases of transformations. However, in Palladio’s original drawing, this difference between the four access corridors to the central rotunda already appears like this, and in what was executed it remains the same. The article does not go directly into this topic.

30 Hauser, Mannerism, bk 1, 13.

31 Venturi and Scott Brown, Architecture as Signs and Systems, 74.

32 Irina Davidovici, “Abstraction and Artifice. Ornament. Decorative Traditions in Architecture,” Oase 65 (2004), 106.

33 Wittkower, “Michelangelo’s Biblioteca Laurenziana,” 213.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Federico Soriano

Federico Soriano is an architect (ETSAM-UPM 1986; PhD UPM 2002) and professor at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). In 1991–93 and 2017–22 he was director of Arquitectura COAM, the magazine of the Official College of Architects of Madrid, and is editor and director of Fisuras de la Cultura Contemporánea. His professional office, operating since 1986 with Dolores Palacios, has won the Enric Miralles Architecture Prize (2001) and Via Arquitectura Prize (2007). Its built works include Euskalduna Jauregia, Bilbao; Urban Hall in Bilbao; MEGA Estrella Galicia Museum; and his projects include the Málaga Music Auditorium; CEXMA Headquarters in Mérida, Badajoz; and the Gogora Bilbao Pavilion.

Maria Dolores Palacios Díaz

Maria Dolores Palacios Díaz is an architect (ETSAM-UPM 1987, PhD UPM 2012) and professor at the Universidad Alfonso X el Sabio (UAX). She is director of Via Arquitectura magazine and editor and director of Fisuras de la Cultura Contemporánea. Her professional office, operating since 1986 with Federico Soriano, has won the Enric Miralles Architecture Prize (2001) and Via Arquitectura Prize (2007). Its built works include Euskalduna Jauregia, Bilbao; Urban Hall in Bilbao; MEGA Estrella Galicia Museum; and her projects include the Plaza Puerto Canfranc, Madrid; CEXMA Headquarters in Mérida, Badajoz; and Fuente Santa Spa on the island of La Palma.