The architectural logic of italian fortification: A geometric and form-based approach

Abstract

Advances in military techniques during the Renaissance called for a thorough rethinking of military architecture, leading to a dizzying process of experimentation in search of novel and effective solutions to artillery power. This situation transcended the military or functional plane to which fortification was traditionally linked and engaged other factors relating to its architectural values, such as its expressive capacity and the symbolic connotations they represented in the collective imagery. The unique cultural context in Italy and the architects' panoramic vision were essential to enable defensive architecture to be rethought in its full complexity. Geometric relationships and the use of form as architectural tools guided reflections aimed at reinventing a new idea of fortification. Study of the architects' original designs, enhanced by an approach involving the history of art is fundamental, in this case, in order to discover the initial reasoning and ideas that gave rise to modern fortification. A study that examines a specific foundational period of fortification in Italy which, nonetheless, holds timeless lessons and values linking all the gestation processes of an architecture that this paper seeks to reveal and make visible by retrieving the most interesting projects from this intense period of reinvention.