Dirk De Meyer
Learning from Giotto: a space for public gesture
ABSTRACT
This studio built upon the analysis of the architecture in a series of frescoes realised, around 1300, by the Tuscan painter and architect Giotto di Bondone — in the Basilca di San Francesco in Assisi, the Cappella Scrovegni in Padova, and the Santa Croce in Firenze. While Giotto’s architecture verges both on the vernacular and the classical, the ‘buildings’ always imply a very precise idea of architecture and of its interaction with the life and the acts performed within them. Using the minimal amount of architectural elements, the spatial context is meticulously built around a central gesture in order to allow for the action to be performed. The studio started with graphical analyses of Giotto’s architecture: a study of the buildings and of their role in the fresco composition. With Giotto’s compositional strategies as a starting point, the students developed an architectural space for a contemporary public gesture. Giotto’s buildings formed the starting point for a reflection upon architecture’s perennial challenge against gravity and both Giotto’s and modern architecture’s desire for fragility and transparency. Finally, the studio results were presented as a Giottoesque fresco cycle in a wooden structure, designed and built by the students, which is modelled on the Cappella Scrovegni. The small panels at the bottom of the walls present the preliminary analyses. The large panels show the projects, as a series of fresco cycles. As such, the form of the final presentation also reflects the fresco’ a public notion of painting: a public message, in a public space, executed as a communal effort.