This ambitious book is about a way of building that for centuries dominated the making of monumental architecture - yet now not only is it lost as practice, but knowledge of its very existence is consigned to oblivion. In pre-modern Europe, the architect built not just with imagination, brick and mortar, but with time, using vast quantities of duration to erect monumental buildings that otherwise would have been impossible. Not mere medieval muddling-through, this entailed a sophisticated set of norms and practices. ...
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This ambitious book is about a way of building that for centuries dominated the making of monumental architecture - yet now not only is it lost as practice, but knowledge of its very existence is consigned to oblivion. In pre-modern Europe, the architect built not just with imagination, brick and mortar, but with time, using vast quantities of duration to erect monumental buildings that otherwise would have been impossible. Not mere medieval muddling-through, this entailed a sophisticated set of norms and practices. Virtually all the great cathedrals of France and the rest of Europe were built under this regime, here given the name 'Building-in-Time'. In particular, the major works of pre-modern Italy, from the Pisa cathedral group to the cathedrals of Milan,Venice and Siena, and from the monuments of fourteenth-century Florence to the new St Peter's - the apotheosis of the practice - are thus cast in an entirely new light. Even as 'Building-in-Time' was flourishing, the fifteenth-century Italian architect Leon Battista Alberti proposed a new temporal regime whereby time would ideally be excluded from the making of architecture ('Building-outside-Time'). Planning and building, which had formed one fluid, imbricated process, were to be sharply divided, and the change that always came with time excluded from architectural facture. Ironically, it was Brunelleschi, as creator of the cupola of Florence cathedral and one of the supreme practitioners of Building-in-Time, who was the lynchpin of Alberti's turn to the arts in the mid-1430s. That he arrived in Florence just at the moment Brunelleschi's dome was being completed was crucial to Alberti's subsequent career in visual culture. Yet his relationship to Brunelleschi was conflicted; first praising and attaching himself to Brunelleschi, later Alberti silently sought to banish him from history's central stage. In telling this story, Marvin Trachtenberg rewrites the history of medieval and Renaissance architecture in Italy and recasts the turn to modernity in new terms, those of temporality and its role in architectural theory and practice. Recovering this lost element of the deep architectural past allows us also to see the present in a new way: that temporality is not any neutral or secondary factor in modern architecture culture, but an epistemic condition that silently affects all production and experience of the built environment.
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Add this copy of Building-in-Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern to cart. $157.50, very good condition, Sold by Mullen Books, Inc. ABAA / ILAB rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Marietta, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2010 by Yale University Press.
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Seller's Description:
VG+: Very clean copy, appears seldom read. Has its dust jacket. A black hardcover book with the title in gold on the spine. A glossy pictorial dust jacket in excellent condition. Illustrations on the front and back end papers. (9), X-XXV, 1-490 pp., 315 mostly-color illustrations and diagrams. In the pre-modern age in Europe, the architect built not merely with imagination, bricks and mortar, but with time, using vast quantities of duration as the means to erect monumental buildings that otherwise would have been impossible to achieve. Virtually all the great cathedrals of France and the rest of Europe were built by this deliberate practice, here given the name "Building-in-Time". It places an entirely new light on the major works of pre-modern Italy, from the Pisa cathedral group to the cathedrals of Milan, Venice and Siena, and from the monuments of fourteenth-century Florence to the new St Peter's. Even as this temporal regime was flourishing, the fifteenth-century Italian architect Leon Battista Alberti proposed a new one for architecture, in which time would ideally be excluded from the making of architecture ("Building-outside-Time"). Planning and building, which had always formed one fluid, imbricated process, were to be sharply divided, and the change that always came with time was to be excluded from architectural making. Contents: In Modern Oblivion: Rethinking Architecture, Time, and History; Regimes of Time Consciousness in Architectural Lifeworlds; Premodern Regimes of Architecture and Time; Building-in-Time in "Pre-Albertian" Italy; The Art of Building in Time: Florentine Practice; Reflections of Practice Aggrandizement and Authority in Building-in-Time; Cohabiting Temporalities of Architectural Practice in Brunelleschi; Alberti and Brunelleschi; Renaissance Temporalities After Alberti; Afterword: Crypto-Albertianism and the Oblivion of Building-in-Time.
Add this copy of Building in Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern to cart. $299.95, very good condition, Sold by HPB-Movies rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2010 by Yale University Press.
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Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Add this copy of Building in Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern to cart. $304.68, good condition, Sold by Midtown Scholar Bookstore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Harrisburg, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2010 by Yale University Press.
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HARDCOVER Good-Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name-GOOD Oversized.
