On Bramante

A new interpretation of the work of Bramante, suggesting an agenda for contemporary architectural practice

In On Bramante, architect Pier Paolo Tamburelli considers the work of the celebrated Italian Renaissance architect Donato Bramante and through this reappraisal suggests a possible agenda for current architectural practice. Bramante, Tamburelli argues, offers an excellent starting point to imagine a contemporary theory of space, to reflect on the relationship between architecture and politics, and to look back—with neither nostalgia nor contempt—at the tradition of Western classicism. 
 
Starting from a discussion of the difference in the work of Bramante in Milan (1481–1499) and Rome (1499–1514), Tamburelli highlights the peculiarities of Bramante’s architecture, especially in comparison to that of his predecessor Leon Battista Alberti and successor Andrea Palladio. This in turn opens up new possibilities for appreciating his spatial experiments, and to derive from Bramante’s abstraction and disassociation of form from function a revised theory of space for contemporary architecture. Such a theory might even advance a newfound political understanding of classicism, and a model—perhaps more valid now than ever before—for a public architecture. 

 

The text is bookended by a series of color photographic plates of Bramante’s works by photographer Bas Princen.



 

Pier Paolo Tamburelli is an architect. One of the founding partners of baukuh and a former editor of San Rocco, he currently holds the Chair of Design Theory at the Technical University of Vienna.
 

Introduction VIII
PART I: LOGICAL WORK
INDIFFERENCE 2
1 Rome, wie ich sie vorfand 3
2 As a snake sheds its skin 7
3 La bella maniera degli antichi 10 
4 No style 16
5 Architecture implies the city 20
6 Pantheon + Basilca of Maxentius 25
UNIVERSALISM 30
7 Universal language 31
8 Architecture non parlante 34
9 Text envy 39
10 Architecture as painting 41
11 Order of all the orders 46
12 Against Roman architecture 50
13 Eclecticism and classicism 52
14 Classicism, colonialism 54
ABSTRACTION 58
15 Distance 59
16 Difficulta grandissima 61
17 Remote future 65
18 The object is simple 69
19 Form follows function 71
20 Abstract architecture is public 73
INTERMEZZO: DANTE, GIOTTO, PIERO, BRAMANTE 77
PART II: POLITICAL WORK
REALISM 96
21 After seeing the cathedral 97
22 Angeborener kritischer Verstand 101
23 Prevedari Engraving 107
24 Opportunities and propaganda 111
25 Tempietto 117
26 Kolossal 121
27 The conquest of Beauty 124
SPACE 128
28 Walls 129
29 Spectacle of pace 135
30 Space and images of space 144
31 Evidence of space 151
32 Experience of space 155
33 A brief and not all that complicated theory of space 157
34 Form of the void 158
COMMUNITY 162
35 Public work 163
36 Impresario 166
37 Work is exhausting 172
38 Public space 174
39 Public architecture is abstract 176
40 Architecture as art 181
41 Demolishing St. Peter's 184
42 Rebuilding St. Peter's 193
43 Ninety-five theses 202
Notes 206
Index 268