In pre-modern Europe virtues were often mentioned in texts on architecture. The goal of this panel is to gain a better understanding of the relationship between architecture and virtues. Should we consider virtue as a guiding principle for architectural design? Is moral virtue perceptible in the architectural design? Or is virtuous design in the eye of the beholder and in rhetorical fireworks?
To address several of these questions we propose two complementary papers in which we confront late medieval architectural discourses from continental europe with 17th architecture from England. In late medieval texts on virtuous building, texts on architecture are often a means to address the exceptional morality of an individual, whereas by the 17th century, architecture was increasingly seen as a means towards virtue, or at least the display thereof.
By examining this shift this panel gives insights in how architecture was perceived and how it functioned in society. More specifically it allows us to comprehend more fully references to moral virtue in architectural texts, while it also suggests research tools and modalities for the critical reading of early modern architectural descriptions.
This meeting will take place on Tuesday 12 November, 16-18 CET. The zoom link provided below is open and freely accessible to everyone.
DocTalks is an informal, peer-to-peer, weekly online forum by and for PhD students, postdocs and early career researchers in architectural history and theory. It is organized by a team of researchers from ETH Zurich, The University of Manchester, IE University Madrid, Hong Kong University, McGill University, MIT, METU, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Wenzhou-Kean University.
We meet every week to present work-in-progress, exchange feedback and discuss matters of methodology, writing, narrative, terminology and periodology to draw links between different topics and areas of expertise. Meetings are structured around the canonical twenty-minute presentation, followed by a Q&A open to everyone attending. The format is designed so as to afford useful and direct feedback in a low-pressure environment. You may present anything that is useful for you according to the stage you are in: from the outline of your entire project to the draft of individual papers and/or chapters; from broader historiographical hypotheses to specific case studies.
