Vincenzo Scamozzi and the Chorography of Early Modern Architecture

The first English-language overview of the contributions to Renaissance architectural culture of northern Italian architect Vincenzo Scamozzi (1548-1616), this book introduces Anglophone architects and historians to a little-known figure from a period that is recognized as one of the most productive and influential in the Western architectural tradition. Ann Marie Borys presents Vincenzo Scamozzi as a traveler and an observer, the first Western architect to respond to the changing shape of the world in the Age of Discovery. Pointing out his familiarity with the expansion of knowledge in both natural history and geography, she highlights that his truly unique contribution was to make geography and cartography central to the knowledge of the architect. In so doing, she argues that he articulated the first fully realized theory of place. Showing how geographic thinking influences his output, Borys demonstrates that although Scamozzi's work was conceived within an established tradition, it was also influenced by major cultural changes occurring in the late 16th century.

Contents: Preface: chorography, place, and time; ’Citizen of the world’; Geography and chorography: Scamozzi’s theory of place; Mapping the natural world: casa and villa; Mapping the city: palaces and civic buildings; Chorography and cosmography: place and transcendence; ’A scientific habit’; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.

Ann Marie Borys is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Washington, USA.