German Renaissance Architecture

The Description for this book, German Renaissance Architecture, will be forthcoming.

These essays consider both architecture and urban planning in late medieval and Renaissance Italy, and French and German Renaissance architecture, stage designs and the relationship of architecture with the other arts. The works are analyzed historically from the viewpoint of both the humanist Renaissance theories and of modern critical reappraisals. Reproducing and describing numerous designs, projects and manuscripts by Brunelleschi, Alberti, Michelangelo and Bramante among others, this volume presents a panorama of civil and religious masterworks by those who created European architecture.

"The paragons of the Italian Renaissance - Brunelleschi, Alberti, Michelangelo, Bramante among them - were almost without exception architects, not only in practice but also in the private spheres of their imaginations. Their architectural plans, fantasies and models, as much as the finished buildings, are the records of their extraordinary creative endeavours." "Published in conjunction with a major exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, this book presents a panorama of civil and religious masterworks and the ideas behind them, by the geniuses who changed the face of European architecture, in the form of their fascinating models, plans and designs. Essays by Carl Frommel, Richard Krautheimer, James Ackerman and other distinguished contributors consider architecture, architectural modelling and urban planning in late medieval and Renaissance Italy, reaching as far back as ancient Rome to uncover the roots of this great tradition. The works are analyzed historically from the dual viewpoint of Renaissance humanism and modern critical reappraisal. The essays cover French and German Renaissance architecture as well as Italian, and also consider architecture's relationship with other arts, such as stage design, painting and sculpture. Numerous designs, projects and manuscripts, some never before published, are reproduced and described." "Architecture provided a medium for some of the greatest minds of the Italian Renaissance, and their work set the pattern for all subsequent development in Europe. The idiom they created is here given expression in the most complete and detailed corpus ever published on the subject."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A completely new approach to the history of Renaissance architecture, encompassing the entire continent and dealing with the work of well-known architects such as Michelangelo and Andrea Palladio alongside lesser known though no less innovative designers such as Juan Guas in Portugal and Benedikt Ried in Prague and Eastern Europe.

Style-Architecture and Building-Art is Hermann Muthesius’s classic criticism of nineteenth century architecture. Now published for the first time in English, this pivotal text represents the first serious effort by Muthesius to define the elements of early modernist architecture according to notions of realism and simplicity. Although Muthesius is known best in Anglo-American architectural literature for his studies of the English house, his scholarship constituted a wide-ranging modernist polemic emanating from the German realist movement of the late 1890s. Notions that were introduced in Style-Architecture and Building-Art became common in later modernist historiography: disdain for the nineteenth century’s artistic eclecticism and lack of originality; appreciation of the material and industrial aspects of building technology, and, above all, a simpler approach to design. Muthesius' critique of stylistic architecture is not only linked to the development of the Deutsche Werkbund movement, but also can be viewed more broadly as a cornerstone of the modern movement. In his introduction, Standford Anderson situates Muthesius and his work in turn-of-the-century architectural discourse and analyzes his vision of a new form of architecture. Anderson also discusses the rationale underlying the call for cultural renewal, the role of English architectural models in Muthesius’s thought, critical differences between the first and second editions of Style-Architecture and Building-Art, the influence of the Jugendstil and Art Nouveau movements on Muthesius and, in turn, the influence of Muthesius on the Deutsche Werkbund movement.

As the first comprehensive encyclopedic survey of Western architectural theory from Vitruvius to the present, this book is an essential resource for architects, students, teachers, historians, and theorists. Using only original sources, Kruft has undertaken the monumental task of researching, organizing, and analyzing the significant statements put forth by architectural theorists over the last two thousand years. The result is a text that is authoritative and complete, easy to read without being reductive.

The author uses a range of published and unpublished sources, and covers Italy, France, Britain, Spain, Germany and The Netherlands to explore the ethics, aesthetics and vanities of ambitious building.