[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.One party called for clearing it through the demolition of a narrow, block-ing lengthwise built-up belt (the so-called Spina).Other wanted to leave it so that toevoke a phenomenon of a surprising, "unexpected" opening to the Square and to theBasilica.That effect was applied earlier in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, onthe example of cramped streets, introducing unexpectedly to the interior of St.Mark'sSquare in Venice, or in the case of the Uffizi street, leading from under a cramped, ar-caded communication passage to the Arno river shore.Similar unexpected effects can befound also in English landscape parks, which employ the "Aha" effect.The centuries-olddiscussion ended in 1936, cut short by Mussolini and his architect Marcello Piacentini.Duce himself initiated the demolition of the Spina sector buildings, which soon was com-pleted.The Via della Conciliazione street has been adjusted and "smoothed" as a straightcontinuation of the axis of the Basilica with the Square."Unexpectedly" that opened theperspective to the Basilica's dome at its best.The redevelopment of the axis took placesimultaneously with the commencement of works related to the paranoid axis of Berlin,authored by Hitler and his architect Albert Speer76 after the success of the 1936Olympics.77At the turn of 1970 and 1980, creativity in the spirit of surprise developed in the atmos-phere of the "cardboard" postmodernism.In 1977, there was an exhibition called RomaInterrota.Participants were invited to creatively redesign main axes of Rome.The leadingwork by Krier proposed a return to the "surprise" reconstruction of the old Spina andadding, towards the direction of the Basilica, a triangular structure, which would have itstip stuck into the Bernini's ellipse.Serious critics considered that solution to be eithera joke, or a blasphemy.78Once its creation was completed in the second half of the 17th century, Rome as theworld capital of the Counter-Reformation culture reached the zenith of its spatial excel-lence and a crowning prestige.Those undertakings showed the opportunities for the de-velopment of cities in a polycentric way, without loosing their cultural values and despitethe growth in terms of population and surface area.They provided starting points for nextcenturies and style epochs, and became models for cities of metropolitan ambitions andEuropean capital status.When Bernini was working on the creation of St.Peter's Square in Rome, a great firebroke in 1666 in London, and destroyed the City with its surroundings.Architect Sir Chris-topher Wren, acting with the king's approval, worked out an excellent plan for plan for aninnovative reconstruction of the boring downtown area.The plan provided for building thatpart of London in the Roman style of an arranged city, with the monumental wharf of the76Dawidowski, Robert; DÅ‚ugopolski, Ryszard; Szymski, Adam M.2001.Architektura niemiecka w okresie IIIRzeszy (1933 1940).In: Architektura modernistyczna lat 1928 1940 na obszarze Pomorza Zachodniego.Szczecin, pp.48-73.77Speer, Albert.1969.Architektur und Megalomania.Ein Kolossale Empire.In: Erinnerungen.Published byVerlag Ullstein GmbH.Frankfurt n/Menem Berlin Zach., pp.74-102, 186-211.78KosiÅ„ski, Wojciech.1984.Nowa Urbanistyka Miejskość, CiÄ…gÅ‚ość, Wielość.In: Jakie Miasto.Architektura 4,Warszawa, pp.35-39. WOJCIECH KOSICSKI, Twórczość architektoniczna jako niezwykÅ‚ość 61Thames, with large axes of avenues arranged in triangles, and with ceremonial squaresat their intersections and junctions.Unfortunately, the bourgeois lobby in fear of repeateddividing up of land did not approve that "surprise," choosing the option of reconstructionof the previously chaotic City based on the existing land property divisions.And so, be-cause of the lack of readiness to take the risk of the "surprise," the chance for getting amore beautiful and a more functional city had been lost.In that case, the English conser-vatism associated London with the cultural symbol of the time, which was John Milton's"Paradise Lost."Unlike the Londoners, a century later the Lisboners acted differently.After the disastrousearthquake and a tsunami, the centre of the city was reduced to a heap of rubble (1755).However, both the king, and the residents approved a wise "surprise" a brand new planprepared by Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, marquess de Pombal, which was putinto effect in 1777.(pic.24)It was the innovative thought of the Enlightenment, whichalready existed at the time within the enlightened (as the name suggests) populations, orat least within their elite circles that determined the fate of the city.In that way the innova-tive downtown district of Baixa was created.The centre of Baixa is the Commerce Square(Praça do Comércio), adjoining the Tejo riverside, with a network of main streets thatintersect with secondary, transverse streets.That network links to and merges with aclear and a well-arranged system of squares, communal life areas, public buildings,greenery and the lie of the land.(pic.25) It is a combination of a traditional plan of anEuropean city and a prophetic forecast of plans of post-colonial cities that have originatedfrom that tradition, in particular the American cities (cf.Plan for the orderly developmentof Manhattan, 1807-1811).Controversial, yet finally generally recognized and stable through centuries as regards itsconception and construction was Saint Petersburg.It has been created actually on a one-time basis, unexpectedly, like a stage scenery, in the era of the declining Baroque andClassicism, "an artificial Moloch city, as though a Western metropolis, erected betweenAsia and Europe, on mud and bodies of convicts."79.The creator of Saint Petersburg,Peter the Great, the only tsar truly leaning towards the West, modelled his new capitaljust after the Baroque and later the Classicism and the Enlightenment examples, mainlythose from Rome and Paris.The designers included, first of all, Western experts, just likethe majority of authoritarian figures in all critical fields of life: from the aces of diplomacyto military leaders (although local propaganda still highlights natives in that respect).Theprocess of development of the city continued under the reign of Catherine II (1729-1796),the most eminent personality after Peter the Great that ruled over Russia, yet ofa strictly Western provenance (she was born a German princess of Szczecin in thePrussian Kingdom).The Classicism, directed against surprises, has conquered the whole civilized world, eventhere where the novel thought of the Enlightenment had not reached sufficiently.(pic.26)Paradoxically, Classicism may evoke the feeling of a surprise à rebours: making architec-tural forms look similar in places that previously had different traditions
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]