Ghost

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), Midway Gardens (1914, demolished 1929)

The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the word "ghost" appeared as early as 900 AD as gast. A gast is a spirit, or as the OED tells us, a "principle of life." "Agast" or "Aghast" thus signals a reaction upon seeing a "gast" -- white knuckles, quickened heartbeats, uncontrollable sweating become evidence that someone has taken fright at an apparition ... that someone has seen a ghost.

For his book Spectral Evidence (2005), critic Ulrich Baer explains how photography facilitates such a reaction. He notes how "In the photograph, time itself seems to have been carved up and ferried, unscathed, into the viewer's present". A photograph therefore does much more than provide evidence of something that happened a long time ago. A photograph is a record, yet it is also a form of transport, a conveyance that interrupts and forces the spectral traces of a forgotten past into a familiar present.

Architectural discourse has made similar use of photography. A photograph of a building in a book or magazine guarantees architecture's afterlife. A picture ensures that a tabled project, bombed-out residence, or failed city plan will live past its own death. A photograph also becomes the primary means for transmission of an idea for a building. A case in point would be the various photographs of Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House appearing in various publications in the 1950s -- these images would be an important point of reference for the Smithson's Hunstanton School (1949-1954). But consider a more controversial example -- Philip Johnson's Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut (1949) . Though Johnson was no doubt familiar with the photographs of the Farnsworth House in publications, he famously quipped that his house, with its abstracted frame and dominating central hearth was inspired by the ruins he saw in 1939, as a correspondent following Wehrmacht troops as they crossed into Poland. The Glass House then operates in a similar fashion as a photograph -- the building's imageability not only records a Miesian precedent, but also suggests the idea of something that happened before. But this is only to reaffirm that photography's promises are twofold: in addition to a guarantee of an eternal life of sorts for architecture, by preserving its forms and volumes for future consumption, photographs also help disseminate a rich visual record to be adopted by generations of future designers.

But an architectural photograph can also cause someone to take fright, to become aghast. A case in point would be the photographs of Frank Lloyd Wright's Midway Gardens (1914, demolished 1929). A few remaining photographs show Wright's European-inspired garden teeming with people. One of these captures a vibrant night scene (image at top). A throng of impeccably-dressed men and women sit around tables, laughing and talking. In the background, Wright's architectural gestures are visible. A series of flat-roofed buildings with large balconies act as framing devices. And this photograph was most likely taken from such a balcony. The Gardens become a series of overlapping landscapes. Planar surfaces and shallow-roofed follies give way to throngs of people. And in the distance, an orthogonal band shell covers a tuxedo-clad band as they play to the crowd. Yet this photograph has a touch of the spectral. A strange, glowing haze outlines the lightposts and buildings in the background. And if one looks carefully enough, behind these, a ghostly building with an arched facade can be seen emerging from the darkness.

Wright, Midway Gardens (1914, demolished 1929)

Another photograph shows the Midway Gardens from a different angle. Here, the photographer would have most likely been to the right of the bandshell, capturing images of a large structure that would have sat to the left of what the first photograph depicts. The second photograph, with its larger depth of field, captures more people and more architecture within a single frame. Here, however, there is very little night sky. As in the first photograph, lightposts create an eerie, incandescent haze, a diaphanous film that nevertheless manages to cast harsh shadows on the buildings in the rear of the photograph.

This is all, of course, secondary to what is perhaps the photograph's most glaring aspect: its obvious state of decay and disrepair. We know, of course, that supervening economic circumstance and dwindling public interest led to the demolishing of Wright's gardens. But there is something about the shoddy state of this photograph that really causes to take fright at such decay and disrepair. It is as if the careless folds and creases, the glue stains and water marks that delimit areas of neglect across the image suggest the Midway Garden's ultimate fate. Wright's building, much like this image, is a forgotten object, an architectural tchotchke folded, creased, and stuffed into some cobweb-ridden corner of an amnesiac mind.

These two photographs of Midway Gardens are also startling in their depiction of people long dead and gone. Faces and body gestures invite speculation. These people could have been anyone. But notice how some of them look back at the camera, aware of the phosphorous flash that will forever freeze the image on a photographic plate. One person is even captured mid-bite. Another looks up momentarily as he reads a newspaper. If these images were taken a day, or even a second later, a totally different image would have been captured. These are captured moments as fleeting as the architecture that encloses them.

Antonin Raymond in Tokyo Golf Club (ca. 1930s)

Consider the ghosts in another photograph, taken sometime in the early to mid-1930's, inside the Tokyo Golf Club. The room is crowded, visible with wood framing and columning familiar to vernacular Japanese architecture. A group of well-dressed Japanese males stare confidently at the camera, drinking and smoking. Towards the middle of the picture is Czech-born architect Antonin Raymond (1888-1976), who would design the modern addition to the Club in 1931-32. Raymond worked with Wright for the designs for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, and his subsequent designs combined modernist volumetrics and surfacing with Japanese architectural detailing. And here, in this photograph, Raymond's downward gaze is remarkable and startling, perhaps capturing a moment of deep introspection or even shame. A little over 10 years later, in 1943, the U.S. Army's Chemical Warfare Service would hire Raymond to design a series of "Typical Japanese Structures" in the Utah desert. These buildings, known as "Japanese Village" would be used to test the efficacy of the Army's new line of napalm incendiary bombs. It would not be hard to imagine that the very people sitting around napalm would perish years later as part of the firebombing of Japan -- a project that, quite strangely, relied on Raymond's architectural expertise.

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) in the Overlook Hotel, from The Shining (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980)

The photograph certainly calls to mind an image from popular culture -- the last shots of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). As Al Bowlly's "Midnight, The Stars and You" plays in the background, the camera closes in on an image of the main ballroom in the Overlook Hotel, circa 1921. Jack Nicholson's face is immediately recognizable. His toothy stare is more shocking than Raymond's gaze. Moments before, the camera trained on Nicholson's dead body in the middle of a snowy garden maze, his face covered with layers of frost. The final image of the film -- an image replete with architectural extravagance -- certainly echoes the photographs of Midway Gardens and the Tokyo Golf Club. All of these images capture moments from a distant era. Unlike the image from the Overlook hotel (which uses musical accompaniment to nostalgic effect), the Midway Gardens and Tokyo Golf Club seem mute. All images, however, are unified in their ability to capture the stares and voices of the dead. Here, through the medium of architecture, we have seen a gast.

Your City, in Inkwash, Rapidograph, and Zip-A-Tone

Radiant City, from Vortex Comics' Mr. X (Source: Architects Journal)

Following up on its successful listing of Star Wars and Video Game Architecture, Architects Journal has just published Rory Olcayto's list of Top 10 Comic Book Cities. The list is by no means exhaustive, but the cities that did make this list are pretty fabulous:

10. Radiant City (from Mr. X)

9. Tintin's Inca City

8. Metropolis (from Superman)

7. Urbicand

6. Gotham City

5. Moebius' The Long Tomorrow

4. Daredevil's New York

3. From Hell's London

2. Chris Ware's Chicago

1. Mega City One

Accessorizing Your Aerial, Urban Future

Icon A5 Light Sport Aircraft (Source)

Here's a familiar image: you wake up early in the morning, read the morning news, drink coffee, and fly away to work. I call this image "familiar" in the sense that popular culture is teeming with images of people climbing into rockets, autogyros, helicopters, and other types of aircraft only to shuttle off to complete the day's errands. From The Jetsons to Blade Runner, personal air vehicles have been an almost necessary complement to popular visions of the future.

Cleaning the A5 (Source)

It continues to this day. I.D. Magazine recently gave the Icon A5 Sport Aircraft a "Design Distinction" award for its 2009 Annual Design Review. According to the company website, founder Kirk Hawkins wanted to create a new type of aircraft "designed to deliver an amazing and safe flying experience, but also to inspire us the way great sports cars do." The result, the tiny, sleek, compact ICON A5 "is a bold yet elegant design that communicates beauty, performance, safety, and most importantly… fun." A quick glance at the various renderings on the website communicate this point: we see family taking a plane to the beach, and in one image, a man hoses of his A5 in his own driveway. Although these images depict the A5 as a recreational vehicle (something like a ATV or personal watercraft), it would not be difficult to make a conceptual leap and see Icon's aircraft as a commuter vehicle.

Icon A5 Cockpit (Source)

Such a leap is no doubt helped by the fact that the Icon A5 is almost, literally, a car with wings. The various altimeters and airspeed indicators in the A5's cockpit echo those from an automobile dashboard ... and a contemporary one at that, for the GPS display in the A5's instrument panel is not unlike one you would find in many entry-level sedans. Icon's aircraft is also quite small, earning the FAA's new "light sport aircraft" designation. The A5 also has headlights, giving a more car-like appearance.

Republic RC-3 Seabee (Source)

There is nothing about the A5 that looks outright futuristic. In fact, the airplane comes in a familiar pusher-seaplane configuration with retractable lading gear. The A5's high-wing loading and cockpit-engine arrangements echo the Republic RC-3 Seabee Amphibian, a postwar entry into the realm of "personal aircraft." Aside from the obvious formal differences, cabin size, and engine capacity, there is still very little difference between these aircraft. A website dedicated to the Seabee asserts that Republic built the Seabee according to "conventional manufacturing methods." The A5, on the other hand, is built from advanced "lightweight and non-corrosive carbon fiber." The original product brochure even stated that "Republic engineers are evolving a plane for all-around personal, family or business use that has long been wanted by sportsmen for hunting and fishing use and by all types of private fliers who like the additional safety and flexibility of both land and water operation." This statement echoes many of the testimonials on Icon's website.

In this age of hub-and-spoke airline networks, frequent flier programs, code-sharing, Southwest, JetBlue, Virgin America, Ryanair, et cetera, we usually think of the airplane-as-conveyance. Yet Icon's website -- via renderings, images, videos and testimonials -- points to the airplane-as-accessory. It would not take much to see A5 featured in one of Monocle's lavish techno-luxury spreads. And for a suggested price of $139,000, the A5 is definitely an accessory for the wealthier set.

Icon's Hawkins explains on the company website how new FAA regulations inaugurated the idea of the airplane-as-accessory. Yet one could even say that Icon's goal is to show how the "light sport aircraft" is an accessory for modern living. And though this post began with an invocation of popular images of personal aircraft, the Icon A5 belongs to an important modernist trope: the airplane as an accessory of modern living.

Cityscape from Moses King's Dream of New York (1911) (top); and Maureen O'Sullivan and John Garrick in Just Imagine (David Butler, Dir., 1930)

The airplane was a familiar staple in popular visions of 20th century urban modernity and living. For example, the King's Views of New York, a series of souvenir books published by Moses King from 1908 to 1911, show airships and light-framed propeller aircraft flying through a dense urban fabric. David Butler's Just Imagine (1930) was a musical-comedy that depicted New York in the 1980s. Stephen Goosson's sets for the film show vast glass canyons and bridges connecting monumental skyscrapers. A giant pedestrian and vehicular thruway runs through the middle. Architecture historian Dietrich Neumann suggests that Goosson's sets show the influence of Hugh Ferriss's charcoal drawings depicting setbacks and Raymond Hood's "skybridges".¹

Erich Kettelhut, Set and Conceptual Drawings for Metropolis (1927) (Sources here and here)

More familiar, or course, are Otto Hunte's, Erich Kettelhut's, and Karl Vollbrecht's set designs for Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). The epitome of their well-known designs is the massive skyscraper with petal-like cantilevers -- the building the serves as the headquarters for Johann Fredersen, the film's villainous industrialist. In Metropolis, this babel-tower-like building dominates a canyon made of smaller skyscrapers. At the bottom, cars and bodies clog the streets. Higher up, the colors lighten: bridges connect buildings lightly, delicately. Small propeller monoplanes circle the brilliantly-lit sky above. The differences in shadow and light between the top of Fredersen's skyscraper and the glass canyon below are vital. This contrast emphasizes a key theme for Metropolis: the division of dark and light, congestion and freedom, ground and air become metaphors for the city's stark division of labor. The airplane therefore becomes the proper means for conveyance in Metropolis. In fact, one of Kettelhut's early designs for the set shows a giant airport sitting atop Fredersen's skyscraper.

Le Corbusier, Maps and Section of South America, from Precisions (1930)

The airplane became a familiar staple in some notable projects by architects in the early 20th century. More often than not, the presence of the airplane was something like a guarantee of foresightedness, sophistication, or even of technological savvy. Before writing Aircraft (1935), his paean to flying machines, Le Corbusier gave a series of lectures in Buenos Aires about the state of architecture and urban planning in the Americas. Collected in a single volume called Précisions sur un État Présent de l'Architecture er de l'Urbanisme (1930), several of the lectures feature Le Corbusier's famous exhortation about the aerial view. His drawings showing how a Plan Voisin-like series of cruciform towers could be transplanted to South America feature aircraft. Here, again, the airplane is an indicator of modernity.

Ivan Leonidov (1902-1959), Narkomtiazprom (Commissariat of Heavy Industries) (1934)

Other architects looked to the polemical implications of an airplane. Ivan Leonidov's rendering of his Commissariat for Heavy Industry (1934) is the exact opposite of a bird's-eye view. The vantage point (more like a worm's eye view) here is slightly above grade -- it is as if the viewer is craning his neck at an unnatural angle to see Leonidov's steel and glass fantasy reach into the sky. The various antennae jutting out of the sky read as a much more sparse ornamentation than that on Kettelhut's design for Metropolis. They suggest airplane parts -- the various struts and guy wires that bind a biplane's wing to the fuselage.

Tupolev ANT-20 "Maxim Gorkiy"

Yet the focus of attention is in the sky -- a single Tupolev ANT-20 aircraft (with two smaller Polikarpov I-15 fighters attached to its wingtips) lumbers in the air above. The ANT-20 is an unusual aircraft. Designed as a flying propaganda machine, the airplane (nicknamed the "Maxim Gorkiy") featured a printing press, radio station, movie screening room, and photographic developing equipment. It is the perfect complement to Leonidov's building.

Helicopter-like vehicles flying above Wright's Broadacre City

Although there are many other examples, it is worth noting that personal aircraft were an important part of these modernist visions. For example, Frank Lloyd Wright's drawings for his Broadacre City project (1932-1958) always feature small, helicopter-like devices hovering over the landscape. Such a vision suggests how personal aircraft are an important means of conveyance for a low-density urbanism like Broadacre City.

Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958), Concept Model for a Flying Car (1945) (Source)

But the project that most closely resembles the Icon A5 is Norman Bel Geddes' 1945 concept for a flying car. This hybrid vehicle is quite literally a car with wings. The most familiar image shows the car flying over a low-density Broadacre-like landscape. But another image of the concept model reveals more about the nature of Bel Geddes' project. Here, the flying car is parked on a quiet residential street -- its folded wings suggest a carrier fighter plane transplanted to the suburbs for everyday use.

Bel Geddes, Concept Model for a Flying Car (1945) (top); Grumman F4F Wildcat with Folded Wings (bottom)

The flying car has been a familiar concept ... for a long time. And in the 1930s, converting cars for aerial use could have made a certain amount of sense. If the automobile became an important aspect of American and European urbanisms, then it follows that the flying car would perform a similar function in the future city. And as the Icon A5 demonstrates, this idea is still very much alive.

¹ Dietrich Neumann, Film Architecture: Set Designs from "Metropolis" to "Blade Runner" (New York: Prestel, 1996), p. 112.

Have Book, Will Travel

Just a quick note to let you know that the Museyon Film/Travel guides are out. Each guide features a "curated" tour of cities and regions ... with a specific "filmic" twist. I contributed essays to the North/South America and Europe volumes (see above images). For the former, I wrote a little bit about film production studios, facilities, and locations in D.F.. For the latter, I gave a more panoramic snapshot of the various film offerings in Scandinavia (and yes, I do include the Faroe Islands!).

In Re Dürer

Montage of Ramparts and Plan of Dürer's fest schloß (fortified citadel), after his Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloß und Flecken (1527) [Source: Juan Luis González García, “Alberto Durero, Tratadista de Arquitectura y Urbanismo Militar”, in Alberto Durero, Tratado de Arquitectura y Urbanismo Militar (Madrid: Ediciones Akal, 2004), p. 39].

In 1527, Albrecht Dürer published his treatise on military architecture, the Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloß und Flecken ("Various Instructions in the Fortification of Cities, Castles, and Towns"). Though Dürer’s works are numerous, and though the artist’s work inspired an expanding field of interpretative work for centuries, the Etliche Underricht nevertheless remains a curious cipher, a footnote in Dürer’s work and legacy. Thus William Martin Conway, in his Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer from 1889, claims that the Etliche Underricht “presents few matters of interest” to the student of art. Erwin Panofsky’s influential The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer (1943) makes no mention of the Etliche Underricht. The artist fares much worse when analyzed by military historians and historians of science. Simon Pepper, in his study of military architects and aristocrats, tells us that “despite its excellent illustrations and specialist content,” Dürer’s treatise “did not evidently exercise great influence outside the German-speaking world.” Christopher Duffy, in his study of siege warfare, tells us that Dürer’s treatise “remains an isolated, North European attempt to meet the challenge of problems that were already finding more convincing solutions in Italy.” Historian of science Jãnis Langins declares that the Etliche Underricht “was more of an architectural fantasy than a practical manual for fortifiers.” The list of less-than-favorable references continues.

When considering its architectural merit, however, we can detect some initial, yet productive confusion as to the actual innovations of Dürer’s “architectural fantasy.” Hanno-Walter Kruft, for example, declares that the Etliche Underricht is the first printed treatise dealing exclusively with fortifications. Yet Dürer’s manual was not the first treatise on military architecture. A distinction must be made between print and manuscript. Thus in 1482, Francesco di Giorgio Martini circulated his own illustrated treatise on military architecture, the Trattato di Architettura, Ingegneria e Arte Militare, but only in manuscript form. The Etliche Underricht’s status as the first printed treatise devoted solely to architecture using original images also deserves some interrogation. This category is constructed carefully: though Fra Giocondo published his illustrated version of Vitruvius’ Ten Books in 1511, it useful to bear in mind how that treatise did not originally feature images. Nor was it a treatise that dealt exclusively with architecture. Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria, though published in 1482, did not appear with illustrations until Cosimo Bartoli’s 1550 translation. The Etliche Underricht preceded the next great architecture treatise, Serlio’s Regole Generali d'Architettura by 10 years.

Albrecht Dürer, Geschützrondellen (“Rounded Fortification”), plan, section, elevation, woodcuts from Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloß und Flecken (1527)

But when it comes to issues of architectural convention, we are on firmer ground. Mario Carpo observes how the Etliche Underricht was the first treatise to show a complete set of plans, sections, and elevations for an individual project, anticipating Bramante’s designs for the cupola at St. Peter’s by 13 years. Yet Renaissance art and architecture historian John Pinto’s study of the origins of ichnographic city plans points out parallel developments between Leonardo da Vinci’s plans for the city of Imola from 1503 and Raphael’s distinguishing between plan, section, and elevation in his letters to Leo X from 1513-1521 , stating that both of these are the foundations for a “new form of architectural drawing.” Considering that Dürer also resorts to the architectural convention of depicting projects in plan, section, and elevation, and further considering that it is unclear whether the author of the Etliche Underricht knew about da Vinci’s or Raphael’s own thoughts on orthographics , we could very well tow the line taken by our esteemed military historians – namely, that Dürer’s treatise is an isolated instance, a mere footnote in the history of architecture.

Here, however, I would like to identify possible trajectories for locating Dürer’s Etliche Underricht within a history of architecture treatises. An investigation into the architectural significance of this treatise necessarily begins with a brief foray into Dürer’s own background in architecture, the Entliche Underricht itself, as well as his exposure to existing texts on architecture. With this context firmly in place, it is then possible to continue exploring ways of articulating an architectural significance for the Entliche Underricht.

Dürer, Study for a Corinthian Capital [Source: Conway (1889)]

Two basic types of works constitute Dürer’s early architectural output: sketches and drawings of classical subjects, as well as annotated drawings of various design commissions in Nuremberg. Although Conway tells us that Dürer thought of architecture as an art subject to individual capriciousness, he does see value in the myriad architectural notes interspersed throughout a draft of Dürer's Four Books on Measurement – a testament to the influence of Vitruvius. One of Dürer’s notes accompanying the Four Books, for example, features a large sketch of a Corinthian capital. This sketch contains a series of regulating lines -- evidence of Dürer actively working out the proportional calculus from Vitruvius’ work. This is, however, an ultimately unsuccessful endeavor, according to Conway: “If Dürer never attained any clear grasp of the principles of perfect simplicity and perfect proportion, which were the secrets of the beauty of classical architecture, it was not for lack of willing and persistent study.” This sketch, as Conway notes, is part of a larger series of coherent, yet seemingly unconnected thoughts on architecture.

Dürer, Proposals for a Church Roof, Nuremberg (1525)

In 1525, Dürer was also commissioned to submit alternative schemes for a church roof in Nuremberg. Charged with replacing an old roof that was rotting away, Dürer’s notes and sketches show the artist replacing a high-peaked roof with a low-peaked solution – the result being a lightweight roof that could be supported by columns and minimal wood-bracing. These notes are significant for two reasons. On the one hand, they show Dürer working with an architectural plan. Along with his redesign for the roof, his plan shows an affinity towards a new spatial organization for the church with new spaces for kitchens and rooms. On the other hand, it is important to note that for this project, Dürer is asked to improve on an existing structure and issue a series of drawings detailing the modifications. Dürer would eventually realize these two impulses within the pages of the Etliche Underricht.

Courtyard of a Castle (1524) (top), and Segonzano Castle, Val di Cembra (bottom) (1494)

Dürer’s travels to Italy also provided the artist with architectural inspiration, as seen by a series of watercolors completed in the Autumn of 1494 and the Spring of 1495 (his Wanderjahre). Although some of these works -- such as these of a castle in Innsbruck -- tend to analyze the relationship between the vertical stonework and masonry and the flatness of the central square for a castle, others – like the watercolor of a castle in Val di Cembra – seem to analyze the location of a fortification in relation to its immediate landscape. Taken together, these watercolors provide a study of sorts: whereas one set considers a near-stereotomic approach, looking at the architecture of fortifications in terms of complicated layers of masonry and stonework, the other looks to the topography surrounding the subject.

Dürer, Marksburg and Stolzenfels Castles (1520-1521)

After his second trip to Italy, from 1512-13, Dürer began to write his Lehrbuch der Malerei (or Speis der Malenknaben), which contained two sections of note: one called "Von mos der pew" (“On the proportion of buildings”), the other "Daz fünft ein wenig vom gepew" (“The fifth capital: a bit on construction”). This text would eventually prefigure the more well-known Underweysung from 1525 and his Vier bücher von menschlicher Proportion, published posthumously in 1528. Dürer kept his interest in depicting architectural fortifications alive even during his trip to the Low Countries in 1520-21. In one of his sketches, Dürer places the Marksburg and Stolzenfels castles together on a singular mountainscape even though they are kilometers apart. It is a random placement – a capricious intervention that also signals Dürer’s own interest in a method for the site selection of fortifications along the German landscape. All these impulses – looking at a fortification in terms of sectional and topographic complexity, and placing fortifications in previously uninhabited areas – would become central to Dürer’s Etliche Underricht.

Front Page of Dürer's Etliche Underricht (1527)

Before Dürer began working on his architecture treatise, Eastern Europe was engaged in a slow redoubt against advancing Turkish forces. In addition to Constantinople, which fell in 1453, Belgrade succumbed to Turkish armies in 1521. During that time, an anti-Turkish alliance of sorts was undertaken, arranged through the intermarriage of various crowns and bloodlines. This explains the appearance of a woodcut depicting a modified shield of Ferdinand I on the very first page of the Etliche Underricht. The shield contains heraldry from various areas. The two large lions represent Bohemia and Hungary. The smaller shield is split into four quadrants representing conflicts between Austria and Burgundy, Aragon and Sicily, Franche-Comte and Brabante. The small shield in the middle features a conflict between Tirol and Flanders. At the bottom, we see a pendant depicting the Order of the Golden Fleece, which surrounds the coat of arms. The appearance of this shield at the beginning suggests how we can look to the creation of the Etliche Underricht as an emergency architecture commission.

During the Diet of Nuremberg, from 1522-1523, the city inaugurated a committee of specialists to provide “the most educated solutions” for defending against a possible Turkish attack. Included in this committee were two Dürer’s closest friends: Wolfgang von Rogendorf, a military advisor to the crown, and the Moravian mathematician and military architect Johann Tscherte, a close friend of Willibald Pirckheimer’s. Dürer probably began learning about the urgency of countering the Turkish threat during his travels with Tscherte around Pavia from 1494-95. And on April 15, 1524, Tscherte wrote to Dürer, asking him to finish his “Instructions for measuring” as quickly as possible. This makes 1524 the year when Dürer most likely began working on the Etliche Underricht.

Dürer, Method for Planning a Fortification at Angled Town Wall, Woodcut from Etliche Underricht zu Befestigung der Stett, Schloß und Flecken (1527)

Angled Fort with Graded Scarp, Plan, Section, Elevation, Woodcut from Dürer's Etliche Underricht (1527)

Square Fort with Rounded Wall, Plan(s), Woodcut from Etliche Underricht (1527)

Fortified Citadel Situated between Sea and Mountains, Elevation, Section, Internal Section, Woodcuts from Etliche Underricht(1527)

Preexisting Town Fortified with Casemated Galleries and Bombproof Magazines, Section, Woodcut from Etliche Underricht (1527)

Though not as lengthy as the Underweysung or the Four Books on Human Proportion, Dürer’s Entliche Underricht is a notoriously messy text. Sentences have been erased and recopied, and the manuscript sometimes makes references to images that are not there. The book, as it exists, contains four lessons on the design and siting of fortifications, and a short annex concerning the placement of cannons and heavy mortars. Yet, following Conway’s own discussion of the Etliche Underricht, I want to identify briefly 6 different types of fortifications in Dürer’s text (all shown directly above): 1.) Forts to be erected principally at the angles of town walls; 2.) A different kind of angle fort, the scarp of which does not rise above the level of the ground with a casemated gallery on its base; 3.) A square fort with slightly rounded walls; 4.) A fortification covering ground between mountains and the sea. With regards to this, Dürer writes: “If a prince had in his land a narrow, level place lying between the sea, or some large water, and a hill or lofty precipice, and if the precipice or hill were so situated that no great force could pass, and the way between the hill and the water were rather narrow and very long, he might there build a strong Block-house by which that part of the country would be closed; 5.) Fortifications to be added to a preexisting town or structure; and 6.) An ideal headquarters for a King. It is this last category – the Royal garrison – that deserves attention.

Woodcut of Ramparts Surrounding Fortfied Citadel, Plan, Inscribed Section (top), and Plan (bottom) (1527)

A series of concentric, rectangular bastions – all designed according to Dürer’s specifications, surround the Royal garrison. For the Royal garrison itself, Dürer creates an orthogonal plan with a central square for the residence of a King. Around the residence, Dürer articulates a fairly normalized and rigorous spatial organization. Among a network of streets 50 feet wide, some 2,000 houses, stables, a Church, a Rathaus, magazines, armory, blacksmiths, and markets. The East corner of the City even features a Church. Houses behind the Rathaus are assigned according to kinship and rank, and other buildings are also arranged according to a prescribed division of labor: shopkeepers live near provisionary stores; armorers live near stables; clergymen live near the Church, et cetera. There are even separate bathhouses for men and women. All external bastions and walls are to be constructed from heavy stone, to protect from bombardment. The interior buildings are to be made of wood and stone, according to the size and importance of the structure.

To be sure, the Royal garrison from Dürer’s Entliche Underricht merits our attention for other reasons. Conway attributes a host of innovations to Dürer’s treatise: “The use of a polygonal form for the tracé of town fortifications; the use of well ventilated and lighted casemated batteries for the defence of trenches; the use of bomb-proof magazines and shelters; and the defensive interdependence of different parts of a fortress.” Others, like Hanno-Walter Kruft, locate the Etliche Underricht within a larger discourse about utopias and other ideal cities. Though Dürer’s treatise would be the obvious successor to works by Di Giorgio and others, it certainly should be considered alongside Serlio’s work as an exemplar of the relationship between ideal city forms and the complex spatial and hierarchical organizations within. And with regards to issues of site planning, Juan Luis González García observations about Dürer’s sketches of the Marksburg and Stolzenfels castles become important here – like the Royal garrison of the Etliche Underricht, these castles are depicted as if they were randomly placed on a landscape. This undergirds the ideal nature of Dürer’s fortified city – it is architecture that can be located practically anywhere.

Albrecht Dürer, Siege of a City (1527)

The only caveat -- as Dürer’s own drawings of the rounded block house show – is that in some circumstances, the particular nature of a site can place demands on the design of a fortification. Thus a block house situated between water and hills should take on a more rounded shape. For Dürer, then, the ideal city is a fortified city – the best case in point would be his 1527 woodcut Siege of a Fortress. Here, we see two cities. In the upper left, an agglomeration of unfortified buildings burn, while at the right, a fortified citadel featuring many of the innovations outlined by Dürer (rounded walls, protected casements, fortification of preexisting structures) appears relatively unscathed by the ensuing battle.

Yet in locating Dürer’s Etliche Underricht in a history of architecture treatises, some mention should be made about the degree of geometric formalism presented in the various woodcuts throughout the text. The drawings share an obvious affinity with many of the drawings from his Underweysung. Dürer’s very first lesson in the Etliche Underricht shows the adding of a circular rampart to a preexisting cornered city wall as a series of geometric iterations. Lines and arcs are measured and drawn according to a specific set of directions. Mario Carpo, in his Architecture in the Age of Printing, suggests that “Gothic architecture theory … privileged the control and the (often secretive) transmission of abstract geometric schemes.” Although there was nothing secret about Dürer’s geometries in the Entliche Underricht (a Latin translation appeared in 1535, and successive French and German editions appeared in 1603, 1823, 1840, and 1870), is it possible to claim that the treatise owes more to Gothic than to contemporary exemplars?

As is well known, Dürer had a personal, annotated copy of a 1505 edition of Euclid’s Elementorum (purchased during his second trip to Venice). But equally important is the fact that Dürer also had access to Willibald Pirckheimer’s personal library. There, Dürer would have encountered texts such as a 1498 edition of Polybius’ Historiae, a German translation of Flavius Vegetius' De Re Militari from 1474, as well as a 1521 edition of Niccolo Machiavelli’s Dell’arte della Guerra. But more importantly, the author had access to two vital texts: a 1512 edition of Alberti’s De re Aedificatoria, and a 1504 edition of Vitruvius’ Ten Books (this is not the illustrated version from 1512).

Map of Tenochtitlan (Nuremberg) (1524)

Kruft suggests that a likely inspiration for Dürer’s design of the Royal garrison is the 1524 Nuremberg map of Tenochtitlan, the seat of the Aztec empire. This was probably known to Dürer - a similar central square gridding also appears in Dürer’s treatise. But a closer glance at the text and woodcut images from the Etliche Underricht shows a decided Vitruvian influence. One case in point comes at the moment when Dürer describes the construction and siting of the Royal garrison. He writes: “The [fortified citadel] is to be built in the form of a square, each side of which shall have as much as 3400 feet of length. The site of the Castle is to be so chosen that the four strongest winds shall spend their forces against its angles.” Vitruvius, in the first book of his De Architectura, suggests an ideal, radial city plan that allows for orientation according to various winds. Yet in classical antiquity, the Vitruvian method was used to determine four cardinal points that were not only in relation to the wind, but that also facilitated the creation of orthogonal street grids. A look at the plan of Dürer’s Royal garrison not only shows the four cardinal points that create the building’s four corners, but also confirms how this set the stage for the creation of a gridded urban fabric within.

Dürer only makes a passing, cryptic reference to Vitruvius in the text of the Etliche Underricht. He writes of the Royal garrison: “The interior of the [fortified citadel] is to be thus arranged. In the midst is the Palace of the King, established on a site eight hundred feet square, and no corner is to be cut off from it. Vitruvius, the old Roman, plainly describes how such a royal palace should be built.” When we look at the center of the garrison, however, there is a blank space, a hole in the fabric. It is fitting that Dürer implores his reader to conjure a Vitruvian design for a royal residence – it is, in a sense, an ideal center for an ideal city.

This post has only begun to offer some possible directions for locating Dürer’s Etliche Underricht within a history of architecture treatises. Although its influence as a theoretical text remains to be analyzed, we know for certain that Dürer’s treatise inspired a so-called “German” type of fortification design. We also know that the Etliche Underricht inspired fortification designs in Nuremberg and Strasbourg. Despite the extent of the treatise’s influence, and despite the fact that few critical studies exist concerning this, as Dürer’s only text on architecture, the Etliche Underricht stands as a compelling, penultimate contribution to a vast body of work. Is it, as Pamela O. Long has described in her study of the Vitruvian Renaissance, evidence of Dürer’s “developed sense of his own originality and ownership”? At the very least, I have only begun to demonstrate how we can begin to understand the Entliche Underricht as a Vitruvian text.

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Authors Note: Translations from German and Spanish are mine. Images come from the Spanish translation of Dürer's Etliche Underricht: Alberto Durero, Tratado de Arquitectura y Urbanismo Militar (Madrid: Ediciones Akal, 2004). Although there are countless texts on Dürer, Erwin Panofsky's The Life and Art of Albrech Dürer (Princeton University Press, 1943) and Giulia Bartum, Albrecht Dürer and His Legacy: The Graphic Work of a Renaissance Artist (Princeton, 2003) are standards. For more information related to this article, see (in no particular order) William Martin Conway, Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer (London: Cambridge, 1889); Simon Pepper, “Artisans, Architects and Aristocrats: Professionalism and Renaissance Military Engineering” in David J.B. Trim, ed., The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism (Boston, Massachusetts: Brill, 2003); Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare (London: Routledge, 1979); Jãnis Langins, Conserving the Enlightenment: French Military Engineering from Vauban to the Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2004); Hanno-Walter Kruft, A History of Architectural Theory from Vitruvius to the Present, Ronald Taylor, Elsie Callander, and Antony Wood, trans. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994); Mario Carpo, Architecture in the Age of Printing: Orality, Writing and Typography in the History of Architectural Theory, Sarah Benson, trans. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001); Jukka Jokilehto, A History of Architectural Conservation (Oxford, United Kingdom: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002); John Pinto, “Origins and Development of the Ichnographic City Plan,” The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 35-50; and Pamela O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).