This course will provide an overview of the debate surrounding the term Baroque and its contemporary implications. The term Baroque is the subject of many debates ranging from its etymological origin to disputes on the emergence of an aesthetic “style” post-Council of Trent in the seventeenth century by historians such as Heinrich Wölfflin and the more current and most broad application of the term as a recursive philosophical concept suggested by Gilles Deleuze to “Fold” through time. Although elusive and as dynamic as the work itself, students will become familiar with how the term Baroque has been associated with specific characteristics, attitudes, and effects or, more specifically, the architectural consequences it has produced.
In addition, students will be introduced to the techniques of 3D laser scanning (no prior experience required). The seminar works with an unprecedented collection of scanned baroque churches from the Baroque Topologies research by Andrew Saunders. The scanned point clouds offer precise and fully articulated digital surveys of the work of Francesco Borromini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Pietro Da Cortona, Carlo Rainaldi, Guarino Guarini, and Bernardo Vittone. In parallel to formal analysis of specific Baroque works, the course will study analytic drawings and modeling techniques exercised by architects and historians including Sebastiano Serlio, Guarino Guarini, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, August Choisy, J.N.L. Durand, Rudolf Wittkower, Colin Rowe, Peter Eisenman, Robin Evans and Scott Cohen to understand how the bias of different analytical reconstructions compliment the discursive motivation of their authors (and their instruments of representation). Continuing this lineage, students will develop innovative representational techniques to reassess the Baroque through the lens of contemporary design discourse.
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