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DISRUPTION AND CONTINUITY IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL/MATHEMATICAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE ARCHITECTURAL GOTHIC AND RENAISSANCE SPACE

R. Goycoolea

Abstract

The transition from Gothic to Renaissance usually explained in the canonical architectural criticism as the (re)discovery of Greco-Roman culture fostered by humanism. Faced with this traditional view, the proposed paper attempts to show that the change, rather than disciplinary, was due to the emergence of a new structure of thought. In Europe, this change entailed moving from a world and a transcendent space to another scientist, as reflected in the passage of the space/divine light of Gothic cathedrals to the space/natural light of Renaissance churches. Radical transformation that, nevertheless, maintained a common structure: the Neo-Platonic idea that behind the visible world exists a mathematical order. [8] The idea of bottom, it was following to San Augustin, that any physical was sustained in a harmonic and proportional order. Order that the scholastic considered of divine nature, while the humanists of natural character. To support this hypothesis, we search in the original sources of the philosophy and the architecture of the epoch, putting special attention to the influence that the philosophical ideas had in the vision of the world and art of the period. In short, it is shown that the universal characteristic of these notions is reflected in the wide use -both the Gothic and the Renaissance- of the number as a basis for art in general and architecture in particular. [13] In both cases, also, the accentuation of architectural elements in geometric characteristics led to a two-dimensional representation of space, principally considering that figures and not geometrical bodies were the mainstay, expressed as idealized models. Sight from our time, the communication insists on the need that exists to analyze the theory and the practice of the architecture considering the structures of thought that support them, as the only way to fully understand them. Something that is often ignored in contemporary architecture analysis, focusing more on the formal and political structures than on the philosophical ones. In academic terms, the paper belong to a wider investigation, which tries to study and demonstrate the close relationship that exists between philosophy and architecture in the development of Western architecture.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2015/b41/s15.043

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