HARTAIXX2016-V012700

Summary

The Renaissance's first ideal city, Sforzinda, was conceptualized by architect and sculptor Filarete. His treatise, though unpublished, influenced urban planning with its eight-pointed star layout, inspired by Vitruvius's hygienic city principles. Filarete's design, featuring a central public forum, integrated institutions like a church, prince's palace, and judicial authorities, pioneering multi-focal urban planning. The city's diagrammatic imagination and cosmological intentions reflect a blend of ancient authority and forward-thinking societal structure.

Takeaways

• 🏛️ The first ideal city of the Renaissance was conceptualized by the architectural theorist and sculptor Filarete, who wrote an influential treatise on architecture.
• 📜 Filarete's treatise was never published but remained in manuscript form, impacting his generation and those that followed.
• ⭐️ The city, named Sforzinda, was designed as an eight-pointed star enclosed in a circle, reflecting the Vitruvian principles and the concept of a hygienic city.
• 🏰 The city's design was commissioned by the Duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza, and Filarete used the treatise to imagine a city that honored his patron.
• 📖 The treatise unfolds as a fiction, with the narrative of an archaeological discovery of a golden book describing an ancient mythical city, serving as the model for Sforzinda.
• 🏗️ Filarete emulated the ancients by inventing an ancient authority to legitimize his design, highlighting the importance of illustration in a textual context.
• 📐 Sforzinda's layout features a walled circle with intersecting quadrangles at its center, showcasing a triumph of diagrammatic imagination.
• 🌐 The city plan is highly geometric but not integrated into the topography, suggesting an abstract approach to city planning.
• 🛣️ Canals and streets in Sforzinda converge on the city center, although this is not explicitly shown in the plan.
• 🏙️ The city's central core begins to show a multi-focal city planning approach, with institutions finding their place within the city fabric.
• 🌀 The city's design compares the shape of the cosmos to the ideal city, with the architect alluding to cosmological intentions in the city's design.
• 🏛️ Sforzinda's central core follows the ancient Roman model, featuring a public forum or market as the center of business, judicial affairs, power, and spiritual authority.
• ✝️ The city plan includes a central plan church, a prince's palace, market activities, a bank, and judicial authorities, symbolizing the institutions of society.
• 🏫 Filarete envisioned separate schools for boys and girls, showing forward-thinking in educational planning.
• 🏢 The 'House of Vice and Virtue' represents Filarete's interest in the perfection of the citizenry and the importance of morality in society.
• 🎨 The illustrations in the treatise attempt perspective but combine and confuse multiple visual conventions, showing an approximation rather than a systematic approach.

Q & A

Who is Filarete and what was his contribution to Renaissance architecture?

Filarete was an architectural theorist and sculptor during the Renaissance period. He invented the concept of an ideal city, Sforzinda, through a treatise on architecture that, although unpublished, was highly influential in his time and for future generations.

What is the significance of the eight-pointed star in Filarete's city design?

The eight-pointed star in Filarete's city design symbolizes the Vitruvian principles of addressing the eight prevailing winds, suggesting a hygienic city layout that is counteracted by alternating streets and canals.

What was the context for Filarete's treatise on architecture?

Filarete was employed by the Duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza, during the 1460s. The treatise was a fictional narrative in which the Duke asked Filarete to design a city that would honor him, hence the name Sforzinda.

What is the concept of 'mise-en-abîme' mentioned in the script?

The 'mise-en-abîme' is a literary device where a story within a story is used, creating a 'book within a book' scenario. In Filarete's treatise, an archaeological discovery of a golden book describing an ancient mythical city serves as a model for Sforzinda's planning.

How did Filarete use illustrations to support his architectural principles?

Filarete used illustrations as a means to carry and illustrate the principles of his design. The images served to visually communicate the abstract concepts and the relationship between architecture and its visual codes.

What is the significance of the walled circle and intersecting quadrangles in Sforzinda's design?

The walled circle enclosing intersecting quadrangles at the center of Sforzinda's design represents a highly geometric plan that is not integrated into the topography, suggesting an abstract, idealized city layout.

How does Filarete's city plan reflect the ancient Roman model of the public forum?

The central core of Sforzinda's plan, which includes a main piazza and smaller squares, follows the ancient Roman model of the public forum or market, serving as the center for business, judicial affairs, power, and spiritual authority.

What is the significance of the three squares in the layout of Sforzinda's city center?

The three squares in the city center symbolize the different institutions of society: the central one for spiritual authority with a central plan church, the northern one for judicial authorities, and the southern one for economic activities like markets and banking.

Why did Filarete envision separate schools for boys and girls in his city?

Filarete envisioned separate schools for boys and girls as a forward-looking idea, reflecting his interest in the perfection of the citizenry and the importance of education in shaping virtuous individuals.

What is the 'House of Vice and Virtue' and how does it relate to Filarete's concept of morality?

The 'House of Vice and Virtue' is a building designed by Filarete to emphasize the importance of morality in the social body. It functions on the principle of ascension, moving from the mundane to the intellectual, culminating in an astronomical observatory.

How does the drawing of the 'House of Vice and Virtue' attempt to use perspective?

The drawing attempts to use perspective in an approximation rather than a systematic or mathematically determined way. It combines multiple visual conventions, such as a plan circle on the ground floor, a section cut through the building, and a perspectival elevation of the tower.

Outlines

00:00

🏛️ Renaissance Ideal City: Filarete's Sforzinda

This paragraph introduces the concept of the first ideal city of the Renaissance, Sforzinda, designed by the architectural theorist and sculptor Filarete. His treatise on architecture, though unpublished, was influential. Filarete's city is an eight-pointed star enclosed in a circle, drawing inspiration from Vitruvius' principles and the idea of a hygienic city. The city's design features alternating streets and canals, defensive towers, and is named after the Duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza. The treatise unfolds as a fiction, with an archaeological discovery of a golden book describing an ancient mythical city, serving as the model for Sforzinda. Filarete uses this to emulate the ancients and legitimize his design, with illustrations playing a key role in conveying the principles of the city's layout, which is highly geometric but not integrated into the landscape. The city is composed of a walled circle with intersecting quadrangles at its center, symbolizing the triumph of diagrammatic imagination in city planning.

05:03

🌐 Sforzinda's Urban Planning and Cosmological Significance

The second paragraph delves into the urban planning of Sforzinda and its cosmological significance. It discusses the city's central core, which follows the ancient Roman model of a public forum or market, serving as the center of business, judicial affairs, power, and spiritual authority. Filarete describes the grandeur of this public space, including colonnades and main thoroughfares leading from the central space to the city districts, developing a notion of ordered and triumphant public space. The city's layout includes three squares, with the central one being the main piazza, flanked by smaller squares to the north and south, incorporating institutions like a church, prince's palace, market, bank, and judicial authorities, symbolizing the multi-focal urban planning of modern cities. Filarete also envisioned separate schools for boys and girls and introduced the 'House of Vice and Virtue' to emphasize the perfection of the citizenry. The paragraph also touches on the drawing's attempt at perspective, combining multiple visual conventions, and the building's design, which symbolizes the ascension from the mundane to the intellectual, culminating in an astronomical observatory.

Keywords

💡Renaissance

The Renaissance was a period of cultural, artistic, political, and economic rebirth in Europe, spanning roughly the 14th to the 17th century. It marked a transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. In the video, the Renaissance is the era in which the first ideal city was conceptualized, reflecting a renewed interest in humanism and classical antiquity.

💡Filarete

Filarete was an Italian architect and sculptor known for his theoretical work on architecture. In the video, he is credited with inventing a fictitious city, Sforzinda, which is a significant example of Renaissance architectural theory and the embodiment of the period's ideals.

💡Treatise

A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on a particular subject, often presenting an argument with supporting evidence. In the context of the video, Filarete's treatise on architecture, though never published, was influential and detailed his vision for the ideal city of Sforzinda.

💡Eight-pointed Star

The eight-pointed star is a geometric figure with eight extensions, each of which intersects the center at equal angles. In the video, the eight-pointed star is the central plan of Filarete's city, symbolizing the Vitruvian principles of design and the harmony of the city's layout.

💡Vitruvius

Vitruvius was a Roman architect and engineer whose work 'De Architectura' has been a fundamental text in the field of architecture for centuries. The video references Vitruvius's influence on Filarete's design, particularly in the consideration of prevailing winds and the hygienic aspects of city planning.

💡Sforzinda

Sforzinda is the name of the fictitious city designed by Filarete, named in honor of his patron, the Duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza. The name and the city's design reflect the Renaissance fascination with creating ideal urban spaces that combine aesthetics with functionality.

💡Mise-en-abîme

Mise-en-abîme is a literary device in which a story includes a smaller story within itself, creating a recursive effect. In the video, the archaeological discovery of a golden book within Sforzinda's construction serves as a mise-en-abîme, providing a narrative layer that models the city's planning on an ancient, mythical city.

💡Diagrammatic Imagination

Diagrammatic imagination refers to the creative process of visualizing and planning complex structures or systems through diagrams. The video discusses how Filarete's design of Sforzinda was driven by this kind of imagination, leading to the creation of a highly geometric and abstract city plan.

💡Public Forum

A public forum is a central gathering place in a city, typically used for business, judicial affairs, and social interaction. In the video, the central core of Sforzinda follows the ancient Roman model of the public forum, indicating the city's focus on communal spaces and civic life.

💡Multi-focal Urban Planning

Multi-focal urban planning is an approach to city design that incorporates multiple centers or focal points for different activities or institutions. The video explains how Filarete's Sforzinda introduced this concept, with distinct areas for religious, political, economic, and judicial functions, laying the groundwork for modern urban planning.

💡House of Vice and Virtue

The House of Vice and Virtue is a concept in Filarete's Sforzinda that represents the importance of morality and the perfection of the citizenry. It is a building designed to ascend from the mundane to the intellectual, symbolizing the journey of life from the physical to the spiritual.

Highlights

Filarete, an architectural theorist and sculptor, invented the first ideal city of the Renaissance.

The treatise by Filarete on architecture, though unpublished, was influential on his generation and subsequent ones.

Filarete's fictitious city, Sforzinda, was designed with an eight-pointed star enclosed in a circle, reflecting the Vitruvian principles.

The city's design incorporated canals and streets to counteract the eight prevailing winds, emphasizing hygiene.

Defensive towers were depicted as circles in the city's illustrations, adding to its strategic planning.

Filarete's patron, the Duke of Milan, inspired the name Sforzinda and the city's design to honor him.

The treatise described Sforzinda in terms of plan, institutions, materials, and general organization, rather than architectural principles.

An archaeological discovery within the treatise, a golden book, served as a model for Sforzinda's planning, a 'mise-en-abîme' technique.

Filarete emulated ancient authority to legitimize his design, using illustrations to convey principles.

Sforzinda's design featured a walled circle with intersecting quadrangles, showcasing a triumph of diagrammatic imagination.

The city plan was not integrated into the topography, indicating a focus on geometric abstraction over landscape.

The city's central core followed the ancient Roman model of a public forum, signifying the center of business and power.

Filarete developed a notion of ordered public space, with main thoroughfares leading from the central space to city districts.

The city's center incorporated three squares, symbolizing spiritual, political, economic, and judicial institutions.

Filarete envisioned separate schools for boys and girls, showing a forward-looking perspective on education.

The 'House of Vice and Virtue' was introduced as a symbol of the importance of morality in the social body.

Filarete's drawings attempted perspective, combining and confusing multiple visual conventions.

The 'House of Vice and Virtue' was designed with ten stories, each representing an ascension from the mundane to the intellectual.

The city's design alluded to cosmological intentions, comparing the ideal city to the shape of the cosmos.

Transcripts

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.