Close Reading

The exhibition at the Tulpenmanie Gallery in Milan shows a selection of recent results of formal analysis of masterpieces from Renaissance to contemporary architecture.

Alexander Porter, reading of Tempio Malatestiano by Leon Battista Alberti, Rimini, Andrew Holder’s class, Harvard GSD

The formal and syntactic ideas that support an architectural project can programmatically insert it into a system of relations with preceding projects, which become ideal interlocutors in a fruitful discourse among different periods and areas of research.

**Top:** Alexander Porter, reading of Tempio Malatestiano by Leon Battista Alberti, Rimini, Andrew Holder’s class, Harvard GSD.
**Above:** Kerry Garikes, Piazza del Popolo Comparison, Rome, Peter Eisenman’s class, Yale School of Architecture, 2016

The formal analysis of architectural works – i.e. in the developments that in English-speaking countries are based on the studies by Rudolf Wittkower and Colin Rowe to the most recent “Close Reading” by Peter Eisenman – performs a crucial role in composing this dialogue among architectural works through drawing, an anticipatory activity for designing new works as a continuous opportunity for the critique and study of architectural ideas.

Michael Young, reading of Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza by Francesco Borromini, Rome, Master thesis, Princeton University School of Architecture

The exhibition “Close Reading”, conceived by Lorenzo Degli Esposti and hosted by the Tulpenmanie Gallery in Milan, shows a selection of recent results of formal analysis of masterpieces from Renaissance to contemporary architecture, offering a comparison between Italian, British, and American research, through over 200 drawings.

Karen Stolzenbergy, reading of Vyborg Library by Alvar Aalto, Jeffry Burchard’s class, Harvard GSD

4 – 31 April 2017
Close reading. Formal analysis in architecture
curated by Lorenzo Degli Esposti
Galleria Tulpenmanie
via Mauro Macchi, 6 Milan

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