The renaissance was about the revival of old ideas as well as the learning of culture. When looking at architecture during this time you can see that many element of the architecture resembles that of the past but it is used in ways that reflected society as a whole. They revive the classical style and explore it through boundaries on a single decorated façade which in essences shows history. These façade are designed as a way to let the viewer create an idea of a building and this idea is repeated throughout the rest of the structure.
When taking from the past there is a need to make thing one’s own, by doing this people are creating alternative structures and details which reflect upon the ones of the past, meaning that although there are similarities there are great differences too. This is where breaking the rules and testing boundaries comes into play. The Baroque style is a perfect example of this. The Baroque period focuses on illusions and providing a sense of theatricality and movement. For example, the Trevi Fountain in Italy is a sculpted fountain protruding off of a façade of a structure in other word it is breaking the boundaries set for facades before it.
Alternatives of European architecture can also be view in the architecture of America. Since European colonies were based in America they used what they know of architecture tweaked it in order to make it their own and distanced themselves from Europe. In doing this a lot of what we see in America is also seen in Europe, it is as if someone was standing in from of a photocopier and making copy after copy and somewhere down the line the copy will eventually not be the same as the original but it would be apparent of what that copy was based off of.
From what I’ve gathered of this unit is that architecture is like a pizza. It first started in Italy and some traveler came along and loved it. He them went home and tried to recreate it making minor adjustment, whether it was because he didn’t like something on it or that a certain ingredient was not available to him. From there he had his friends taste it who also brought it home and attempted to recreate it. This went on for a long time and now we have the pizza we see today. And if you think about it the pizza we have today reflects society as a whole. We are lazy and don’t want to make our own pizza therefore we have Digiorno’s frozen pizza!
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