The week after Venice was a strange week in that it lapped over Easter. Easter, being a National holiday in Catholic Italy, also included the Friday and Monday before and after it, making all four days chaotic for planning and travel. Therefore, our trips this weekend were varied by theme and location, nevertheless coming together to form a coherent narrative.
Friday morning began with a visit to a modernist church by Michelozzo. The Autostrada, named thus due to its location betwixt highways outside of Florence, was built in memory of the people who died building those highways. Though the reasoning and history might be confusing, the point of the architecture was clear: the building broke away from the norm and spoke the tongue of innovation. Most notable, upon entering anyway, was the way cement and steel were executed to look like wood. Also of note were the secondary circulations and pathways that lead to the baptistery and back. Michelozzo seemed fascinated with the labyrinth, rather than the maze: looking for oneself rather than for an end or a God. Hence, the crossing of religion and rationalism.
Below: lots of photos and drawings of the church… none of which really do it any justice. I am not a fan of modernism or the movement that Michelozzo belongs to, but, much like a forest, very little justice can be done to the space and feel of it with any mode of representation. So I do what I can.
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Light, air, and sculpture. The drawing at the top left is already of Certosa di Galluzzo.
We followed the church with a visit to a monastery, one where “modernism”, they say, took root. Le Corbusier visited Certosa di Galluzzo while on his first trip around Italy and Greece, and its simple architecture and the lifestyle it proposed inspired the housing projects Le Corbusier would later envision. Honestly, I can barely make the connection, but if other architects see reason to, so be it. What I know for certain, though: the monastery is considering closing its doors due to the sheer amount of people coming to see the “unit” of living, thereby disturbing the monks of solitude.
A beautiful space, the garden was the center from which individual “houses” were entered. Clean walls and shaded colonnades played out well in the afternoon sun. It was nice to sit there and enjoy the air whilst drawing. The sketches below depict the individual houses as related to the garden, their sections and programmatic elements. We were almost asked to think of the spaces as cubist compositions…
The winery closed out the day, and it was wonderful to watch the sun set against contemporary “sexy” architecture.
Antinori is famous for its wines, and our tour guide showed us how these are made in their “special” winery headquarters, explained different grapes, and finished with a wine-tasting session in a floating box overlooking the vats. The aura of the place was the best thing about it – hand-chosen materials, fresh air, and the nature of the valley that surrounded it. Also interesting was a spiral stair symmetric over only one diagonal, rather than perfectly vertical, axis.
The last photo above was taken from the same vantage point as one exactly a year prior by a friend of mine. The only thing that changed was the man, the sky and the sun :)
The next day, a rainy Saturday, found us on the steps of San Lorenzo in Florence. We entered the monastery of that church in order to explore the Laurentian Library, an interesting space designed by Michelangelo and featuring his staircase. After some technical and administrative difficulties, we were inside, drawing. The space was reminiscent of the New Sacristy, below us, where the striation of elements and parts of space was evident to an architectural eye. I was content drawing what I wanted to, delineating compositions and geometric elements that caught my eye. It was not really a sketching day for me, but sometimes it is nice to just draw and not think. We finished that day with a visit to the church itself, as seen in the last page.
A European Sketchbook 