Professional Design Practice in Baroque Rome; Francesco Borromimi, A Case Study

The \”Professional Practice\” seminar takes the great 17th century Roman architect and outstanding draughtsman, Francesco Borromini – the subject of several huge exhibitions in 1999-2000 in Rome, Vienna, and Lugano – as the case study for an exploration of professional practices and disciplines at a paradigmatic moment in the history of design, when landscape architecture, urbanism, and architecture were the practices usually of a single designer, but the turn to specializations was already appearing.Topics include: the vita or biographical-sociological study of the life and career of Borromini and the architect/landscape architect; the education, training, and social status of the architect/landscape architect; disciplinary boundaries and the formation of disciplinary practices – the \”Maestro di Strada\” (Master of the Street) as architect, urbanist, land and landscape surveyor in Rome and the Roman Campagna; Borromini and the Natural World in Galileo Galilei\’s Rome: science, technologies, vision and surveying instruments, architectual/natural ornament, vegetal and floral, and the collecting and classification of botanical specimens, instruments, and curiosities-rareties; Bernini and Borromini, and professional rivalries; the clientele, patronage and social networks of Borromini and architects in the Roman social hierarchy; the roles of Roman Antiquity and the new archaeology; the study of drawing\’s practices and types (were there drawings for villa gardens?), techniques, and new media; the relation of architecture and sculpture in ornament and expression; the in-depth study of the great Roman buildings and landscapes of the seventeenth century: among others, the Piazza Navona and Roman architectural-sculptural fountains; the Barberini, Carpegna, and Pamphilj palaces; the religious communities, San Carlino and the Congregation of the Oratory; the University, Sant\’Ivo alla Sapienza; the road works, hydraulics and water works for the city.