9781108477987, 1108477984, 9781108745383, and 1108745385
Description:
xxx, 234 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), maps; 27 cm
Bibliographic Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index
Contents:
1. A sense of renaissance architecture -- The pluralism of William James -- New directions in scholarship -- Renaissance architecture and the great divide -- Architectural phenomenology -- The architectural historian and the senses -- A map to the book -- 2. Architecture and the imagination -- The renaissance understanding of the senses -- Interacting with environments -- Renaissance reverie -- Architectural reverie -- Material reverie -- The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili -- La Petite Maison -- 3. Movement in the built environment -- "Static and unchangeable form" -- Gender, movement, and the city -- Walking on chopines -- The pleasures of the paved surface -- City walls and gates -- Neighborhood boundaries -- On foot in renaissance Rome -- 4. The building of devotion -- The mystery of smell -- Intimate olfactory patterns -- Scenting three chapels -- Proximate to distant sensing -- Sensory ethics -- Scents of the imagination -- The ghetto and the senses -- 5. Sensations of health and illness -- Architecture and the medical treatise -- Sensing in public and in private -- Florence : Santa Maria Nuova -- Milan : Ospedale Maggiore -- Ottoman hospitals and the senses -- Sensory refreshment and the garden -- Malta : Sacra Infermeria
Summary:
"This is the first study of Renaissance architecture as an immersive, multisensory experience, combining first-hand experiences with historical analysis. Questioning the universalizing claims of contemporary architectural phenomenologists, David Karmon emphasizes the infinite variety of meanings produced through human interactions with the built environment. He reconstructs the Renaissance understanding of the senses, examines how architecture and the senses shaped daily practices and contributed to new forms of understanding, and presents literary and visual sources that provide abundant evidence for sustained attention to the multisensory experience of the built environment in the Renaissance world. By exploring how the 'experiential trigger' of architecture creates a multi- faceted dynamic experience between the object and the individual, Karmon's book offers a new and innovative approach to the study of Renaissance architecture"-- Provided by publisher