Short description:

This book frames mannerism as an inescapable stage in the creative process. The mannerist phase is usually an adolescent stage of language, preceding the consolidation of thought. It is that period when architects design spaces, not yet knowing what it means to design places.

Long description:

This book frames mannerism as an inescapable stage in the creative process. The mannerist phase is usually an adolescent stage of language, preceding the consolidation of thought. It is that period, as fertile as it is anguished, in which each author engages in a dialogue with his or her past, reinterpreting or completely transforming it. The mannerist phase is that period when architects design spaces, not yet knowing what it means to design places.

The mannerist condition can be short-lived or protracted until it becomes systemic. In all cases, it is a period of research experienced by architects who are also intellectuals, that is, architects who operate between the practice of making and the elaboration of a personal design philosophy, within a perspective in which history, theory and criticism are intertwined. In this sense, the mannerist condition can also be defined as the style of the academic thought.

The book explores the work of many authors, analyzing their relationship to history and how they managed to emerge from its shadow. Of interest to academics, scholars and students exploring the theory of architecture, this book offers an unconventional, transtemporal reading of mannerism, where facts, events and images belonging to different times and spaces are juxtaposed to generate a series of temporal paradoxes.

Table of Contents:

Foreword by Paolo Portoghesi

Introduction

An Inquiry into Mannerism ? Book Organization ? Acknowledgements

Part I. Maniera, Mannerism, and Other Manias

1.                     Maniera  vs. Agency

Good and Bad Manners in Architecture ? All about the Author

2.                     Enigma and Ambiguity

Mechanisms of Production ? Seven Forms of Ambiguity

3.                     Variation and Haecceity

Obsession with Possibilities

4.                     Imitation and Referentiality

                              Bringing the Past Back into Play ? Reasoned Copy ? Non-referential

5.                     The Erudite and the Untamed

                     Revolution ? The Wonder and the Monster ? Green Renewal

Part II. Adolescent Architecture

6.                     The Mannerist Phase

                      From Decorum to Vertigo ? Architecture and Conspiracy ? Between Refinement and Awkwardness

7.                     Postmodern Mannerism

The VSB Perspective ? Between Ecstasy and Orthodoxy ? Academic Architecture

8.                     Chunky, Bizarre, Sophisticated

The Peter Pan Syndrome

Part III. Mannerism as a Method

9.                     Voluptuous Stillness

Elasticity, or Adaptability ? Disrupted Rationalism

10.                  Mute Façades, or Theatrical Backdrops

Architecture as Sign

11.                  Parallel and Continuous Interior

The Black Lodge ? Bridge-figures and Other Spatial Structures ? Alternative Realities and Atomization

Repertoire

Conclusions

Paolo Portoghesi, The Idea of Mannerism