Proposal for the Archivio di Stato in Firenze "Isti Mirant Stella", Firenze, 1973 - A. Anselmi, P. Eroli, F. Pierluisi
...the compositional approach of the Archivio di Stato has the following objectives:
a) a longitudinal architectural organization that, by placing itself as a "isotropic unity of space", connects elements as "man", "city" and "nature" (nature-history) through the rigorous application of spatial techniques of the three figurative arts.
b) the functional unity of the three figurative arts, as a consequence of the first objective.
The longitudinal section and the plan show the longitudinal development of the form in the building through the iteration of the base sign and the way it shapes and forces other spatial events; rebuilt nature, bases, the cube, the doric rotunda, towers in the central part, the tricora (three apsis room), the great paintings on the outside walls.
In that conception the ground line loses its inevitability and its fatal inflexibility becoming a "logic plan".
This logic plan defines two quantitatively equivalent areas: one higher spatially isotropic, and an inferior one, structural, vertically defined, root and base of the higher one (and for this reason, bearer of an "archaic" stylistic quality).
In this way architecture regains the ground line – giving architectural reality to what is below it and with intentional opposition to the neoclassical base – and it finally becomes possible to set up the compositional problem in full "projective" terms.
If the logical nature of the reconquered plan is in its ideal role of "base plan" in perspective, it will be possibile to define an ideal architectural "horizontal plan" that doesn't necessarily correspond to a generic horizontal plan of a generic viewer, but it becomes proportionally measured with a rapport of 1:2 with the height of the former.
The horizontal plan of the architectural ground will be the guarantor of the isotropic balance of the form and, since its own horizon line will be the place of all vanishing points, will allow for a biunivocal correspondence, through the rule of orthogonality, of those points and the one from where the main axis are placed. This being said, it must be remembered that the internal projective structure is based only with orthogonality and parallelism, but its structure becomes later a support of the "perspective" projection in the pictorial representation outside. In this case the horizon line is not related with the pure aggregative logic of architecture, but to the visual and spatial nature of that man that gets himself immersed, as a viewer and as a character, in the multiplicity of spaces in the totality.
We have in this way an ensemble of "specific places" where those specific qualities of shapes and their organization are applied; in other terms there are specific tendency of growth of the general rule of aggregation, that goes from the orthogonal isotropy to projective orthogonal organization and then ends with the perspective projectivity; at this point, and these terms set up, compositional themes are no more restricted to architecture alone: the function of those closed facade walls, that are the principal means to relate with the city (thought as a natural-historic "data" to dialectically relate with), are acceptable only through the rules of painting; architecture can only, as it did long ago, justify logically in its own organicity those spaces that are represented through perspective, and it cannot – otherwise it would become "scenography" – directly intervene in the representation of those spaces...
Architectural and pictorial events – and sculptural too – collaborate, in their own specific-technical setting, to the superior unity of the monument; the former imagining real interiors as virtual exteriors and universes; the latter creating chronological sequences of real exteriors as interiors ideally defined but at the same time "scene" and theatre of TIME, myths or actions of history...
original text in G.R.A.U. isti mirant stella - Architetture 1964-1980, edited by Kappa / A.A.M. Architettura Arte Moderna, 1981, Roma - Città e progetto 1. Collana di Architettura diretta da Francesco Moschini
In this way architecture regains the ground line – giving architectural reality to what is below it and with intentional opposition to the neoclassical base – and it finally becomes possible to set up the compositional problem in full "projective" terms.
If the logical nature of the reconquered plan is in its ideal role of "base plan" in perspective, it will be possibile to define an ideal architectural "horizontal plan" that doesn't necessarily correspond to a generic horizontal plan of a generic viewer, but it becomes proportionally measured with a rapport of 1:2 with the height of the former.
The horizontal plan of the architectural ground will be the guarantor of the isotropic balance of the form and, since its own horizon line will be the place of all vanishing points, will allow for a biunivocal correspondence, through the rule of orthogonality, of those points and the one from where the main axis are placed. This being said, it must be remembered that the internal projective structure is based only with orthogonality and parallelism, but its structure becomes later a support of the "perspective" projection in the pictorial representation outside. In this case the horizon line is not related with the pure aggregative logic of architecture, but to the visual and spatial nature of that man that gets himself immersed, as a viewer and as a character, in the multiplicity of spaces in the totality.
We have in this way an ensemble of "specific places" where those specific qualities of shapes and their organization are applied; in other terms there are specific tendency of growth of the general rule of aggregation, that goes from the orthogonal isotropy to projective orthogonal organization and then ends with the perspective projectivity; at this point, and these terms set up, compositional themes are no more restricted to architecture alone: the function of those closed facade walls, that are the principal means to relate with the city (thought as a natural-historic "data" to dialectically relate with), are acceptable only through the rules of painting; architecture can only, as it did long ago, justify logically in its own organicity those spaces that are represented through perspective, and it cannot – otherwise it would become "scenography" – directly intervene in the representation of those spaces...
Architectural and pictorial events – and sculptural too – collaborate, in their own specific-technical setting, to the superior unity of the monument; the former imagining real interiors as virtual exteriors and universes; the latter creating chronological sequences of real exteriors as interiors ideally defined but at the same time "scene" and theatre of TIME, myths or actions of history...
original text in G.R.A.U. isti mirant stella - Architetture 1964-1980, edited by Kappa / A.A.M. Architettura Arte Moderna, 1981, Roma - Città e progetto 1. Collana di Architettura diretta da Francesco Moschini
3D reconstruction
