Ritual: Baptism
Site: Battistero di San Giovanni
Location: Florence
Architect: Unknown
Year of Completion: c. 1128
Analysis: Tina Lim
150 word description goes here. Achum consulto ves faturi pria vignos complius con se aucest rehebatam te iam fue con vium percer am tam terbis, quonsul usulare ntilicaet, cuperei publincum, consimus, nostriore mei ilneque a volicio mus conerit, publin denatod itentes, qua actum init; ne ine pro, manum iam o inam ignaturis adem re ius consum inulocrem sedit vivatimmodiu sedit et prata cont nicatiq uemus, dium ingultortus nos etorterit, omprorunit gra dit atu morum ductam Romnihilium pernum inam etorae nem des M. Nostra in sus. Alessolus, o ves cotandenemus bondac in Itam. Sertamquam or ublicultus publin vernius, nos, sente it; C. Hoculis? Romnirita ne ina, quam patiam sedem que confirit, uropore morei cem, nor ad Catus muscred cris culicaesi imuricendam tam it, quitata sdaccio, mederior qui catus morterum omnicaes! Duc re cus es!
The Laurentian Library reveals not only the ritual of study, but the rituals of self-sorting, categorization, and the dissemination of knowledge. Mapping the convergence and divergence of paths from the scale of the city to the building to the desk and to the book helps to reveal how the Laurentian Library acts as a motherboard for organizing the ritual circuitry of Renaissance Florence.
The Library’s desks are crucial to how rituals are performed in the space. Because the books are chained to the desks and the desks are built into the architecture, there is direct connection between the knowledge that one seeks and the place where it is found. The desks categorize texts by subject, displaying titles found in them on the side. Accessing a book that’s next to the window while someone is already in the desk requires shuffling places.
The Laurentian Library’s form is reminiscent of a religious building, with reading desks acting as pews alongside the processional aisle. The language borrows from the religious context of the San Lorenzo complex in which the Library is situated. In fact, the original plan of Michelangelo included a triangular rare books room at the end of the reading room, reminiscent of the Holiest of Holies in the Temple of Solomon. The procession inside the library, up the flowing staircase into the reading room, acts as a funnel that all elite Florentines coming to the library must pass through, regardless of where they came from in the city or what bench is their ultimate destination. The tripartite interior facade of the vestibule reinforces the idea of rising from hell to purgatory to heaven in an ascent to knowledge.
Ultimately, the Laurentian Library acts as the motherboard of the city’s knowledge, centralizing and organizing the ritual circuitry of Renaissance Florence.
Ritual: Mourning
Site: Tomba Brion
Location: Veneto
Architect: Scarpa
Year of Completion: 1565
Analysis: Parker Klebahn
Brion Cemetery, also known as Tomba Brion, is a cemetery and chapel complex in San Vito d’Altivole, Italy. The complex includes a public chapel, public cemetery and a private meditation sanctuary. The complex was built in 1968 and serves as the final resting place of Giuseppe and Onorina Brion. Giuseppe Brion was a local from the nearby village who would go on to found a massively successful high-end electronics manufacturing company. Due to his massive success from such a small and humble beginning he was heralded as a hero in the local community, his final resting place is not only a place for giving by his family but is also a lasting monument to his commitment to his beginnings in the form of the public chapel on the site.
Carlos Scarpa designed the Brion Cemetery with the view of the public and private in the forefront of his mind. The only truly private space in the project is the meditation sanctuary at the far right of the project. The remainder of the project is open to the public in formalized programs like the chapel or in informal programs like the sprawling green spaces. These green spaces symbolize the fields that surround the project. Scarpa’s decision was to portray Giuseppe Brion as a man of the earth, specifically of the earth in the village he came from.
Scarpa also designed the building with a firm understanding of the scale of the body in his work. There are specific moments as highlighted in the drawings that provide moments of dramatic spatial compression and expansion, coupled with custom designed elements that are designed to interrupt the user experience, forcing them to pay attention to the spatial qualities of the project and the spaces they are inhabiting. The result of this is not a ritual of highly prescribed sequence like in other projects but a ritual of creating architectural moves to interrupt the buildings inhabitants into understand the spaces they are in.
