JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

There seem to be few designs for Very Tall Buildings in the Renaissance that weren’t churches or towers–I mean, structures with storys, and ninth floors, and small glazes, and so on. 

That is why this design for an eleven story building  by the architect Jacques Perret de Chambery (in his book Architectura et perspectiva des fortifications et artifices, which was printed in Paris in 1601) bursts into the brain as being so remarkable. 

Describing this building and quoting the bookseller site Martayan Lan, Inc. “One extraordinary pavilion would seem to have its
ultimate source in the fifteenth-century Temple of Virtue and Vice
designed by Filarete. It is eleven stories in height, with huge expanses
of glazed openings. Its site plan, the last plate in the publication,
is a beautiful ornamental geometrical design in the manner of du
Cerceau, composed of such elements as gardens, moats, and fortifications
that frame the square, towering pavilion.”

The “Temple/House of Virtue and Vice” referred to above is the work of Antonio di Pietro Averlino (c. 1400 – c. 1469),  and also known as”Averulino”and  “Filarete” (Greek for “lover of excellence”), a Florentine architect and designer, who produced real and imagined works, a highly-skilled thinker engineer, and who is also remembered for his contributions to the development of urbanism and ideal communities, seen here in his design for the city of Sforzinda, below:

(It is interesting to note that “sforzinda” is awfully close to “sforzado”, a musical term meaning “sudden” or “sharp”, which this design must have seemed to be, back there in the high Renaissance.) [Text and illustrations: Gallica .]  The House of Virtue and Vice was a nine story building to be located in Sforzinda, a structure with the highest floors devoted to learning, and the lowest to a house of prostitution.  Perhaps the floor placement was reversed.