The 2020 issue of the open access journal Opus Incertum (Florence University Press) aims to examine, through selected case studies, the complex relationship between construction practices and architectural writings in Renaissance and early modern Europe. Situated at the crossroads of several disciplines (architectural history, history of science and technology, history of literature), the subject can be approached from different perspectives. To begin with, confrontations of texts on construction techniques with the material realities of extant buildings may reveal, for specific contexts, to what extent these texts operated as vehicles for the transmission of technical know-how, and how much weight they gave to topoi borrowed from ancient authors. 

Presentation

Although the literature on architectural treatises is vast, the complicated connections between the written page on the one hand and the building site on the other have received comparatively little attention. Situated at the crossroads of several disciplines (architectural history, history of science and technology, history of literature), the subject can be approached from different perspectives. To begin with, confrontations of texts on construction techniques with the material realities of extant buildings may reveal, for specific contexts, to what extent these texts operated as vehicles for the transmission of technical know-how, and how much weight they gave to topoi borrowed from ancient authors. Furthermore, analyses of the rhetorical and literary aspects of technical writings may help to contextualize technical passages on construction, assessing their relevance within the larger structure of the treatise as well as in the eyes of contemporaries. The latter aspect can also be elucidated by looking at the various translations, adaptations, and cuts which the Italian treatises underwent while circulating across Europe. Further epistemological questions are raised by considering how supposedly oral building traditions were confronted with writing and how their time-honoured conventions were adapted to theoretical frameworks. Another problem concerns the role of drawing in support of writing for the transmission of technical knowledge.

This thematic issue will bring together new contributions and a number of papers first presented at the conference Building techniques in writings on architecture between Italy, France and the Low Countries (16th – early 18th century), held in Brussels and Namur in February 2015. We welcome proposals from other geographical contexts and from related disciplines and are open to approaches that differ from those briefly indicated here.

Submission Guidelines

Send your proposal to the following e-mail address, specifying in the object “CfP Opus Incertum 2020 – Paper proposal” to our Editor in Chief: Gianluca Belli: gianluca.belli@unifi.it 

by 5 January 2019

The call for papers is also available in Italian

http://www.fupress.net/index.php/oi

Guest Editors: Caterina Cardamone and Pieter Martens.

Chief Editor

Gianluca Belli, Università di Firenze, Italy

Editorial Board

Amedeo Belluzzi, Università di Firenze, Italy

Mario Bevilacqua, Università di Firenze, Italy

Alessandro Brodini, Università di Firenze, Italy

Joseph Connors, Harvard University, USA

Francesco Paolo Di Teodoro, Politecnico di Torino, Italy

Emanuela Ferretti, Università di Firenze, Italy

Roberto Gargiani, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland 

Alessandro Nova, Kusthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Italy

Riccardo Pacciani, Università di Firenze, Italy

Susanna Pasquali, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy

Brenda Preyer, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Alessandro Rinaldi, Università di Firenze, Italy

Editorial Secretariat

Daniela Smalzi, Università di Firenze, Italy

Executive Secretariat

Donatella Cingottini, Università di Firenze, Italy