A place is not merely a container of space but is invested with meaning. The intersection of the spatial and temporal axes determines the significance of the site, and within this matrix architecture not only responds to the genius loci but also helps to create it.
The ten essays in this book explore architecture in its broadest sense, placing special emphasis on the making of buildings (both design and construction) within their physical, social, and institutional contexts. The anthology grew out of a conference held in Berlin in 2017 that sought to bring together the history of science and architectural history. The shift from “space” to “place” reflects the authors’ emphasis on primary source material, which lends a distinct geographical identity to each contribution. Considering the variety of different approaches and subject matter, it cannot have been easy to formulate a consistent thread to link these heterogenous approaches and contexts. The book is divided into three sections: “Making Place,” “Teaching Place,” and “Excavating Place.”
Elizabeth Merrill's thoughtful introduction considers the theoretical and philosophical background to the study of place, from Aristotle onward. The book seeks to draw attention away from the single architectural genius to focus on the interacting roles of different agencies of place formation, especially through the physical process of making buildings. Architecture is considered as a discursive practice—that is, the product of systems of knowledge that display links both between places and over time. A further introductory essay, by Wolfgang Lefevre on architectural drawing, contrasts the role of perspective (as a tool for communicating the nature of a place to patrons and lay viewers) with the development of the new conventions of representation through plan, section, and elevation.
The section on “Marking Place” begins with a chapter by Nele De Raedt reviewing the legal and architectural consequences of the confiscation and demolition of the Santa Croce family's property in late fifteenth-century Rome. After a short exile, they returned to the city to build a new palace, demonstrating their enduring attachment to the site. The essay by Noam Andrews opens with the fall of a meteorite at Ensisheim in Alsace in 1492 and goes on to consider the early modern cosmos “as a place, and in place” (102). The third contribution, by Federico Bellini, looks at the church interiors of Baroque Rome as sites of multisensory experience. The author discusses the impact of organ lofts and singing galleries, using schematic diagrammatic plans to show the direction of sound emission.
The second section, “Teaching Place,” looks at the ways in which knowledge could be propagated between places. Elizabeth Merrill uses the archives of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena to show how the hospital's management of its rural properties (granges, mills, quarries, and kilns) helped to communicate technological developments in the fifteenth century, alongside manuscript model books. Paul Brakmann and Sebastian Fitzner consider the Kunstkammer of Johannes Faulhaber in Ulm as a source of engineering and military technology. Now lost, the collection is known from the printed catalogue of 1628 and from an inventory of 1636, transcribed in the appendix. Though described as secret, the collection of mathematical instruments and machine models attracted many visitors. The last chapter in this section, by Stefan M. Holzer and Nicoletta Marconi, focuses on the influential system of scaffolding pioneered by Nicola Zabaglia for the Fabbrica of St. Peter's in the eighteenth century.
The final section, on “Excavating Place,” opens with a comprehensive account by Merlijn Hurx of the construction of pile foundations in the Netherlands, with particular emphasis on the development of deep foundations in the early modern period, used, for example, in the Amsterdam Town Hall (1648–65). Ludovica Galeazzo addresses the creation of place as a dynamic process with cultural social and economic dimensions, generated in the Insula dei Gesuiti in Venice by the conflicting interests of religious and state institutions. In the last chapter, Edward Triplett discusses the Book of Fortresses of Duarte de Armas, surveyed and recorded in 1509–10, which illustrates 55 border fortresses on the Portuguese-Castilian border in 120 perspective drawings and 51 plans. The author uses this remarkable graphic output as a key to the communication of place, using the invented term platial to describe the images.
This review has itemized all the essays because of their heterogeneity, which makes it impossible to discuss them in blanket terms. Given the exorbitant cost of the book, it is a pity to find a number of copyediting errors, such as “Siena's principle institutions” (163), or “compliment” for “complement” (249). Nevertheless, all the chapters are based on meticulous primary research and are analyzed thoughtfully and rigorously. Each makes an original and important contribution to the field, although place unifies them only in the sense that each one has a geographical specificity.
