The Renaissance applied itself to different places at different times and different speeds.

Week three: Friday 9th October: The Renaissance and The Enlightenment
This session moved our story of place on to the Renaissance which was interrogated as a period, not of ‘re-birth’ but of a flourishing of the arts. Perspective (eg Masaccio: Holy Trinity, Florence 1425) allowed buildings and cities to be drawn differently and architecture and planning became associated with geometry and order.
The Renaissance was a broad movement, often mistakenly associated only with Italy. It took hold across western Europe. Inventions such as the printing press (in modern Germany) show that it was not confined to Italy.
The city moved from being an organic, crowded sequence of medieval buildings and spaces within a defined wall to be a place of order and beauty (Pierro: The Ideal City.) The Renaissance city was measured, planned and laid out. The idea of the planned city and the ideal city was explained and the development of cities as places of beauty was explored. The development of art and the arts was an important part of the renaissance and its spread from the Mediterranean to northern Europe was be traced. There was not an overnight transformation of cities; many medieval buildings survived. The Renaissance applied itself to different places at different times and different speeds.
Architects became known by name and their influence on the large scale planning of place and the building of houses for wealthy patrons flourished.
Places mentioned in connection with the Renaissance
Rome (Pope and Michaelangelo), Valletta (Grid pattern), Florence (Duomo), London (St Pauls)
Artists/Architects and Urban Planners mentioned in connection with the Renaissance
Brunelleschi, Alberti, Piero Della Francesca, Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Raphael, Palladio
The growth of a middle / merchant class led to the exploration of ideas and the seeking of knowledge. These people had money and commissioned art and exploration. They built. The session explored this movement through, first, the case study of Dutch cities, Delft in particular, and the art of Vermeer (Het Straatje) and his contemporaries. Second, we also developed the concept of the interior as a space itself worthy of decoration. This was also happening in Germany and parts of England and Scotland.
During this period (16th and 17th centuries) Englishmen of wealth embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe to observe, measure, sketch and analyse classical architecture. They brought their ideas back to England where the Enlightenment, a time of questioning the accepted view of the world and gave space for the founding of learned societies, museums and the like. In the countryside man was ‘conquering nature’ and laying out parks and building ‘in’ rather than ‘on’ the landscape.
This period led towards the Georgian age, characterised by ordered architecture and planning and the examples of Bath were used to show the typical ordered street pattern.

Places mentioned in connection with The Enlightenment
Delft (Vermeer: Het Straatje,) Paris (Place des Vosges,) London (St Pauls, Covent Garden and Grosvenor Square) Bath (Georgian urban planning)
Architects / Urban Planners mentioned in connection with The Enlightenment
Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren

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