On the 7th December Níall wil be giving a talk at Jonathan Tuckey Design as part of their Building on the Built series.
Building on the Built is a programme of talks and other events, hosted by Jonathan Tuckey Design, which aims to promote the topic of architectural work connected with existing structures and, more specifically, to look at work that might challenge the way in which work on existing structures is approached today.
Niall McLaughlin has written a piece for the RIBA Journal on the symbolic use of architecture within early Renaissance Art. The essay describes observations based on a visit to the ‘Building the Picture’ exhibition, currently on show at the National Gallery in London. The exhibition gathers together architectonic works by the Italian masters of the 14th-16th centuries that explore real and imagined architectural space.
The article observes how the Renaissance artists’ enthusiasms for displaying their newly discovered skills of perspective and knowledge of the classical forms are conflated with a religious symbolism. The tropes of classical architecture are used as visual metaphors for the divine and eternal. The article explores the effect of these spaces on the viewer and the reasons why the idealised architecture tends to alienate rather than engage.