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Michael T. Coughlin theorizes the possibility of interpreting art and architectural form as an index for Logos in Early Modern Italy, while simultaneously proposing a theory about the origin of Freemasonry from a historical perspective.

The planned conservation of cultural heritage has found a useful tool in the HBIM approach, as the digitization of the process allows for effective access to documents, operations, and projects by various actors in the sector. The adoption of the HBIM approach has seen several key issues emerge, linked to the difficulties of geometric modeling (using a parametric paradigm) of built heritage and the management of big data such as point clouds. With these issues now established, it is time to consider the necessary insights related to information modeling, including for planned conservation. This need has an impact on the practical approach to the work, but also on contractual aspects. In terms of operational practice, information modeling allows HBIM models to be constructed that are easily accessible in all their information, updatable, and easy to use. From a more formal point of view, the definition of the information content in the EIR and BEP is a prerequisite for the proper management of the work and for defining, through an agreement, the characteristics of the work, the results to be achieved, and the methods to be used.Information modeling is therefore at the heart of this research, which finds its application in Villa Forni Cerato, attributed to Andrea Palladio. The theme developed is that of wooden floors because, on the one hand, they have specific information content and, on the other, because the villa was designed by Andrea Palladio for his timber supplier.

The staircases represent one of the most impressive architectural expressions of the building. Many authors presented a great deal of research over the years on this matter intending to understand how they are designed and laid out. This paper is concerned with a particular structural type of masonry staircase, known as stair with open well or roman staircase. It aims to demonstrate that in masonry-vaulted staircases, the close relationship between the shape and static behavior is particularly evident, and geometry and construction are essential for their stability. The authors have proved this statement by studying Palazzo Di Majo's open-well staircase in Naples, whose main structure consists of tuff vaults. The first part of the article is substantially descriptive and presents an in-depth description of the geometric and architectural features of the stair. The second part explains all the aspects concerning the equilibrium of this kind of stairways, within Heyman's theory of masonry.

Palladio's design principles, including proportion and harmony, have often been associated with mathematical definitions of beauty. However, the geometric and semantic properties of his façades have rarely been analysed in a holistic manner. There is little evidence of how mathematical beauty may be embodied in his architecture. This research investigates complexity (fractal dimension or D) and diversity (perplexity or PP) as aesthetic indices, aiming to capture distinct characteristics of Palladian architecture. The D and PP values of 22 Palladian villa façades are measured and analysed, before being compared with those of three Renaissance facades by Sebastiano Serlio. The combination of D and PP captures the geometric and semantic aesthetic qualities of architectural compositions. Importantly, the developed scatter plot of D and PP results supports the identification of four distinct aesthetic types of Palladian façade designs. The novel combination of D and PP measures contributes to a better understanding of one definition of the mathematical beauty of architecture, wherein “the whole is other than the sum of the parts” in compositional terms (a famous Gestalt principle). Specifically, this research provides new mathematical insights into the visual character of Palladian architecture and compares two important measures thereof.

This article demonstrates that the most celebrated building designed by Andrea Palladio, widely known as the Villa Rotonda and begun around 1566, was left only partially constructed at the time of the architect’s death in 1580 and that, as a villa design, it was neither perfect nor ideal. Drawing on detailed records of the construction work carried out in the 1590s, the article shows that much of the villa was constructed or altered after Palladio died, in significant part so as to deal with practical difficulties and deficiencies inherent in the design originally published in Palladio’s treatise. Scholars in general have come to recognise that the Villa Rotonda is something of a palimpsest. However, it has not been properly understood that the building was largely constructed not as an adjusted scheme devised by Palladio, but rather as a strategically revised concept for a villa developed after Palladio’s time by Vincenzo Scamozzi. This preserved something of the original scheme as a hilltop belvedere — especially its outward appearance as a domed and isolated block with four near-identical porticoes — but it adapted what had been built, which was far from complete, to a much more practical vision of the requirements of rural life. What was built during this later period then remained intact until the late eighteenth century.

Chimneypieces, washbasins, well heads, and sinks by Andrea Palladio represent refined design works following architectural systems on a reduced scale, even if systematic documentation and analysis of them is still limited. This paper introduces the custom knowledge-based Information System (IS) developed to study the design patterns and proportional relationships of these microarchitectures, after their digitization. The research employed smartphone-based photogrammetry to replicate fifty-seven chimneypieces and additional microarchitectures across twenty historical buildings; digital models were collected and organized into the IS enabling systematic typological and dimensional analysis. Proportional deepening revealed recurring ratios consistent with Renaissance treatise recommendations, alongside systematic variations suggesting design flexibility within theoretical frameworks. The IS integrates 3D architectural models by metadata attributes, providing a replicable framework for heritage documentation that combines scholarly rigor with technological accessibility. This approach offers new insights into Palladian design principles while establishing a scalable model for architectural heritage documentation and analysis.

Since 2021, the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio (CISAAP) in Vicenza and the Department of Architecture at the University of Bologna collaborated for a didactical joint initiative involving students from the Photogrammetry for Architecture course. The main goal was to develop a new teaching approach for architectural education exploiting photogrammetry as a digital tool for joining the Architectural Heritage (AH) documentation with the architecture analysis and design interpretation. Beginning from the new technological advances (semi-automatic workflows and smartphone cameras use), a ‘learning-by-doing’ didactical method and situated real work problems, a whole systematic process, based on the concept of a digital copy of an architectural artifact as mean to collect and to aggregate knowledge, was developed and inferred to the student. Starting from the designed teaching path, in which the perspectives of the historian, the surveyor, and the designer are blended to get a holistic vision of the architecture, 29 fireplaces by Andrea Palladio were chosen as emblematic case studies. These microarchitectures let students understand the complexities of historic objects and of their digitalization to produce 3D models as outcomes of an acquisition pipeline useful to train them for a future professional career.

Beginning in the 15th century, the reconstruction of Venetian state communal palaces, which served as the institutional seats of the city councils and judiciaries, was often seen as an opportunity for civic magistrates, along at times with Venetian officers, to develop plans to renovate their cities. These projects often led to the enlargement of central districts and to the transformation of cities’ roads and squares. I look at communal palaces from across the Venetian territorial state, focusing on Treviso, which clearly elucidates how the modification of public buildings often led to a redefinition of central urban space. An array of mostly unpublished drawings proposing urban redevelopment projects that were not always realised are key to reconstructing the city’s history, demonstrating better than other documents how communal palaces have enhanced its fabric.

The first volume to be published was A, which appeared in 1969, but the first of the series of individual architects, Andrea Palladio, one of the jewels in the crown of this collection, which was also planned for 1969, to be catalogued by Howard Burns (b. 1939), never appeared and, as of late 2023, still has not seen the light of day.3 This, despite Burns having immediate access from his office in the Courtauld Institute of Art's then London location in Home House, at 20 Portman Square, to the RIBA Drawing Collection next door at 21 Portman Square. The seventeen bound volumes of drawings by Palladio and others in the Burlington-Devonshire collection (q.v.) are the subject of a separate volume, The Palladio volumes in the Burlington-Devonshire collection by Howard Burns and Lynda Fairbairn, in the RIBA Drawings Collection catalogue series.4 Certainly, Burns, Lynda Fairbairn (b. c.1948), and Bruce Boucher (b. 1948) had been busy in 1974 preparing the Arts Council exhibition of 1975, Andrea Palladio: the portico and the farmyard, mounted at the Hayward Gallery, London.5 Also, in 1973, Burns had published a short but important article on Palladio's drawings, so work on the cataloguing project seemed to be proceeding, advancing research published in the 1960s by Wolfgang Lotz (1912-81) and Heinz Spielmann(b. 1930).6 Burns had also written the entries on Palladio's drawings in the 1973 Vicenza exhibition catalogue which included a final statement, here translated as: To this effect I had brought with me, in addition to those of the Quattro Libri of Palladio, already printed, also all the original unpublished drawings of the Antichità di Roma in Palladio's own hand which by good luck passed into my hands with other writings from those of the last of the Albanese family, sculptors of good name, who had received them from Vincenzo Scamozzi, accredited architect, of whom they were heirs.11 Thus, a decade before their purchase by Burlington, Muttoni stated clearly that he had obtained them from the then beneficiary of Scamozzi's will, Francesco di Girolamo Scamozzi Albanese (fl. 1660-1710), to whom they had been passed down, architect to architect, as per Vincenzo's testamentary bequest (lascito) following his death in 1616. Wisely, given the then recent exhibition of 1973, a sensible 'work around' avoided mere repetition of that earlier initiative and instead focused on specific themes including: text, image, and city; Palladio and Verona; architecture and utopia; his second mentor, Alvise Cornaro (1484-1566); his bridges; documents; and Palladianism throughout the world.14 Moreover, in this last- mentioned exhibition, Cinzia Sicca (b. 1954) wrote all the entries for the section dedicated to Palladianism in England, based on her PhD research, including the entry on Inigo Jones's copy of Palladio's treatise held at Worcester College, Oxford, mentioning the significance of the early possession by Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639) of Palladio drawings and that of the Teatro Olimpico drawing RIBA XIII/5r by Marcantonio.15 Likewise, in 1980, Margarita Azzi Visentini (b. 1944) published an article in which she discussed Wotton's early ownership of Palladio drawings.16 Here in translation are her perceptive observations, largely ignored and overlooked by English-language scholars: