XXIX Symposium of the Scientific Instrument Commission
IMSS, Florence, 4-9 October 2010
ABSTRACT
Title of the paper
Science and Architecture. Images and
dissemination of knowledge in Florentine
'600. New directions of research.
Author
Antonino Pellicanò
Institution
Architect. Freelance Laboratory Sustainable
Development (Prof. Fera) Oasis
Mediterranean University Dept.
The designs of Cosimo Noferi related to architecture can be considered
a continuation of Renaissance culture reviewed with the application to
the architecture of the scientific discoveries of Galileo and, thus,
explicitly placed within the scientific revolution of Galileo. They are
tools of a Wunderkammer public, civil and professional. They treat all
activities related to the civil and military architecture, perspective,
anamorphosis, the technical and scientific means of measurement
applied to the territory, the extension to traditional architecture of
hydraulics, physics, mathematics, new professional ethics, aesthetics
and respect for history. But many designs are equivalent in quality,
scientific and graphics, to a modern industrial design. For A.
Marabottini Noferi design “compete with the best graphics of the
Florentine '600".For P. Galluzzi, Noferi “raises the insights of Galileo far
beyond his time and the traditional interpretations that have been
given” and then this study outline “a more accurate profile of the
relationship between Art History, History of Architecture and History of
Science and Technology, which have hitherto operated as bodies
separate but instead are born, just think about the travails of
Borromini, with a unified conceptual approach.”And only a drawing of
his school was presented at exhibition The Medici and Sciences. Noferi
translate in images not only what comes from the Renaissance
tradition, but also the discoveries of Galileo and the New Science, and,
welding with mathematics, geometry, physics, hydraulics, writings with
drawings, particularly in the Travagliata Architettura, creates a new
conceptual dimension within which they must develop new design
rules. But his designs and his work were seen and known at least in
the Accademia del Cimento (we have strong evidence), and probably
also in the milieu of the Prince. This material have great quality and
importance, to the point where it could be considered the other leg of
the Accademia del Cimento, was published only recently (Pellicanò,
2005; Schlimme, ed., 2006) and remains misunderstood and hidden
for 350 years. Then, the Wunderkammer of concepts developed by
Galileo and Noferi, now and from now on, acquires a different
meaning. It 's the same concept should apply to Galileo, whose works
had to wait, to be fully known, the end of 800, what is now believed to
be, from certain, the twilight of modernity. We therefore, for the first
time, have a concept, that will find 100 years later in the Encyclopédie,
which exceeds to be pure conservation or museum and becomes
applied science and element of social diffusion of knowledge, but must
meet certain historical, civilians as well as technical and aesthetic
values. It is therefore once again highlights one of the objectives of
Galileo, which began with the choice to write in Italian, and continued
in various forms, with the Immaculate of Cigoli, with Borromini, the
Travagliata Architettura and by the work of Viviani.