POLITECNICO DI MILANO MANTOVARCHITETTURA 2022
March 2022
On the 24th May Níall will be a guest lecturer at MantovArchitettura festival 2022 at the Palazzo Ducale, Atrio degli Arcieri, Mantova. MANTOVARCHITETTURA is a cultural project conceived and organized by the Territorial Pole of Mantua of the Politecnico di Milano, as part of the activities of the UNESCO Chair in Planning and Architectural Protection in World Heritage Cities. Launched by the series of international conferences promoted in this context since 2012, the initiative offers a rich program of exhibitions, workshops, conferences and meetings with the protagonists of international architectural culture, which every year, in the month of May, transform Mantua into a Capital of architecture
‘Eternal Problems’, RIBA Journal Exhibition Review by Niall McLaughlin
June 2014
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.