Wunderkammer-a (Wunderkammer + kamera)

Abstract

The histories of the 17^th and 18^th century Grand Tour and 16^th century Wunderkammer offer perspective on the connections between foreign travel and collecting. These histories also assist in positioning the role of narrative in the development of a collection’s identity, and its influence on the evolution of the contemporary museum. As the Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities, shrank in scale transitioning from a room to a cabinet within a room, its function also shifted from displaying to concealing what might be deemed hyper-collecting or hoarding. The contemporary scale has decreased even more as the Wunderkammer is now digital existing in small handheld devices with increased privacy. The Wunderkammer-a project hybridized the histories of the Grand Tour and Wunderkammer in a contemporary context seeking to document ranges of authorship in the vault. Consistent photography of nearly 100 European church, basilica, and cathedral ceilings developed into a virtual Wunderkammer where illustrative relations were fostered through juxtaposed curation. Results identified normative proportional conditions for various vault types, as well as anomalies responding to abnormal conditions in alignment, dimension and/or timeframe.

KEYWORDS:

• Wunderkammer
• Grand Tour
• Gothic
• vault

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brian M. Kelly

Brian M. Kelly, AIA, is an NCARB-certified, licensed architect in the State of Nebraska and an associate professor in the College of Architecture at the University of Nebraska. Brian teaches studios at all levels of the curriculum ranging from design thinking in the introductory core to design research studios in the Master’s program and his teaching focus is in the areas of beginning design, design thinking, and architectural representation theory. His previous teaching experience includes Drury University’s Hammons School of Architecture in Springfield, MO and the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. His students’ work has been featured in academic journals, exhibited in galleries, and honored in international competitions. Brian’s research focus is broadly investigating the agency of authorship in the design process, specifically interrogating copyright and appropriation within software applications. In 2009, he co-founded ATOM as a design research collaborative focusing on small-scale investigations, of which several have won national design awards. Email: [email protected]