Reading Response #7: 2/28/11

This past week we have been discussing the "rules" of architecture in both the Eastern and Western world. One of these rules was Rule #3: layer groves and stacks when possible.  Some places from the textbook that fit this rule from the Eastern world are the Medici Palace and the Fucellai Palace, which are both in Florence, Italy.  The Medici Palace was designed by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi but it was influenced by Brunelleschi's principles.  The building followed the previous prototype of the three-story buildings that was established in the 14th century.  The first floor of the building is heavily rusticated to imitate the fortresses built by Emperor Frederick II in the middle of the 13th century.  Each floor of the building has a different amount of external material:

Medici Palace
Image from: http://etc.usf.edu/clipart
/45000/45064/45064_medici.htm

•   First floor = all of the bulky material is left showing on the facade
• First floor is separated from the second floor by a piano nobile 
• Second floor = smoother material is shown by the lines between the materials are shown very dark
• Third floor is completely smooth and you cannot see any of the material
• Third floor is topped with heavy cornice that seems to crush the top floor

This use of material also helps to show the separation of the different floors and their different uses.  The bottom floor near the dirty street is used for business, the second floor is used for  entertaining guests, and the third floor, which is furthest from the street is the private living space.  This building also borrowed the idea of having a courtyard at the center of the house from the architecture of Pompeii.  This courtyard was used to keep the residence from having their laundry hanging out for everyone to see and then there was a staircase that led up to the second floor.  This staircase was used so that guests could have direct access to the rooms on the piano noblie while avoiding the service areas below.

Rucellai Palace
Image from: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/
media/34815/Palazzo-Rucellai-designed-by-
Leon-Battista-Alberti-1452-1470

Another building in Florence that follows this "rule" of using groves and stacks when possible is the Rucellai Palace.  Although it does not use materials the same way as the Medici Palace does it still expresses this idea by using both stacks and groves on its facade.  All three floors of the building use the same materials and repeat the same pattern as the floor before it.  However, it mimics the use of piano nobiles to separate the first and second floor but then it also uses one to separate the second and third floor and then it mimics the same heavy cornice atop the structure just like the Medici Palace.  These dividers between each floor create the stacks in the structure and then the pilasters on each floor create the groves.

Piccolomini Palace
Image from: http://en.wikiarquitectura.com
/index.php/Piccolomini_Palace

A third building mentioned in the Ching textbook that uses this "rule" of using groves and stacks is the Piccolomini Palace in Pienza Italy.  The form of this building follows more with the Rucellai Palace than it does with the Medici Palace.  It has three floors that show the same amount of materiality as the floors in the Rucellai Palace and it also has the heavy cornice and the piano nobiles being used as a divider between each floor.  This palace also has the same general idea with the pilasters as sen in the Rucellai but instead they change in size and materiality as they go up.  The first floor is the biggest and shows the most materiality, the second floor it a little smaller and shows less materiality, and then the third floor has the smallest pilasters with no materiality.  The Piccolomini and the Rucellai have the most in common but all three structures mimic one another it a lot of ways.

Information from: A Global History of Architecture; Ching, Jarzombek, and Prakash