November 21, 2024
organised by Ruggero Lenci
Main Lecture Hall, Faculty of Architecture
Piazza Borghese 9, Roma
15:00 pm
Bruno Queysanne, with the history of the Cathedral of Pienza, presents us with the superb oxymoron of lasting instability, put into practice by Bernardo Rossellino. Instability, which should be the cause of a ruin of the building, is found to accompany and therefore allow its duration.
Vitruvius' ratio firmitatis does not therefore indicate a value in itself, but a condition at the service of duration over time. This is why the translation of firmitas for durability in the 1914 translation of the Vitruvian treatise is for Morgan a luminous choice that largely anticipates the contemporary notion of durable, which some translate as sustainable.
Bruno Queysanne, deconstructing every concept of absolute solidity, and therefore every supposed guarantee of infinite duration, arrives at the point of arguing that the fragility and settling of the Cathedral of Pienza, far from being the failure of its construction, would on the contrary be the clear manifestation that the architectural condition is destined, if not condemned, to a relative stability: or rather to a lasting instability.