The drawing in the design process: a study in the work of Andrea Palladio

Abstract

The development of design activity uses technical suports that allow the architect to record the evolution of your idea or communication with it. Historically, the support that has been used is the graphical representation, which, as a intelligence technology, joins with the creative and cognitive processes of the individual, allowing communication with their imagination and also to all individuals involved in projecting. The representations graphically materialized, calls drawing,  are important in the practice of architecture because they represent the evolution of the design process. The drawing means the way in which design is conducted, tested, controlled and ultimately appears performed.

In this context the drawings of the Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio play a special role in the history of architecture, because it makes clear how he understood and thought the architecture. At that time, the graphical representation of the space acquired an importance that had not previously, incorporating a greater number of alternative representation, highlighting the aesthetic concerns and the current building techniques. A lot of drawings produced by Palladio, shows how he was deeply convinced of eloquence and priority of images to understand the architecture, more than any other form of discursive explanation.

In this sense, this work investigates the drawings of Palladio as a tool at the process of design solutions translation. The reading of the project through the design has been used to study designs and architectural objects or certain styles or specific authorship of an architect. Here the method is used for reading the project of Villa Pisani in Bagnolo (1542). Using two and three dimensional drawings, represented by plan, section and volumetry, it is intended to make explicit certain aspects underlying the architectural work, as questions of proportion and symmetry. It is expected that, at the work of Palladio, this method allows to compare and understand drawings, in order to analyze mutations and replications and  search of new meanings, readings and interpretations.