Showing posts with label ceramics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ceramics. Show all posts

21 June 2017

Paolo Soleri - architect

Italian greatly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright


Paolo Soleri envisaged buildings in  harmony with their environment
Paolo Soleri envisaged buildings in
harmony with their environment
The groundbreaking architect and ecologist Paolo Soleri was born on this day in 1919 in Turin.

Soleri is largely remembered for the Arcosanti project, an experiment in urban design in the Arizona desert that was like no other town on the planet, a unique fusion of architecture and ecology.

Originally conceived as providing a completely self-sufficient urban living space for 5,000 people when it began in 1970, only about five per cent of the proposed development was ever completed.

At its peak, Arcosanti’s population barely exceeded 200 yet the buildings Soleri erected in accordance with his vision are still there, rising from the desert as an assortment of concrete blocks, domes and soaring vaults, resembling a cross between the remains of some ancient civilisation and a set from Star Wars.

It has never been abandoned, however, and although Soleri died in 2013 the project is still home to between 50 and 100 of his most ardent disciples, still seeking to live as Soleri envisaged.

Although Soleri grew up in Italy and acquired his formal training in architecture and design at the Politecnico di Torino, where he obtained his master’s degree, it was a visit to the United States in 1946 that had the most profound influence on his life.

It was there that he met Frank Lloyd Wright, whose views on what he called organic architecture, in which buildings were designed in harmony with their environment, would form the basis of Soleri’s philosophy.

Soleri's ceramics factory in Vietri sul Mare
Soleri's ceramics factory in Vietri sul Mare
He returned to Italy, where in 1954 he built an extraordinary factory for a producer of ceramics in Vietri sul Mare, of which the exterior interspersed conical shapes covered with multi-coloured ceramic tiles and inverted triangles of glass.  Among many wonders of Campania’s spectacular Amalfi coast, the Ceramica Artistica Solimene is a tourist attraction in its own right.

It was not long, however, before he returned to the United States and to Scottsdale, Arizona, close to Wright’s concept home, Taliesen West, which on a smaller scale in that it was home also to a commune of Wright’s disciples could be seen as a forerunner of Arcosanti.

Soleri’s admiration for Wright waned over the latter’s Broadacre City project, an essentially low-rise development that went against the Italian’s belief that the urban sprawls that proliferated across America were a wasteful and inefficient use of land.  Soleri believed that in future man needed to build upwards rather than outwards.

In 1956, he settled in Scottsdale with his American-born wife Colly and established the Cosanti Foundation.  He built trial dwellings using a process he called "earthcasting", in which mounds of earth were built, concrete was poured over the top to create a shell, and the earth then dug away from beneath.

Soleri in Arizona in the early days of the Arcosanti project
Soleri in Arizona in the early days of the Arcosanti project
In Arcosanti, which he began in 1970, one of his favoured methods was to dig out troughs in the ground in order to create buildings that appeared to be semi-submerged in the earth as if they were a natural phenomenon in the landscape.  Every building in the town was carefully oriented to maximise the use of solar energy, which Soleri harnassed for heat and power.

In Vietri he had learned the techniques of ceramics and bronze casting, which he put to use in Arconsanti by setting up a small factory producing wind bells, which were sold to provide the town with an income.  

Soleri blamed himself for Arconsanti’s failure to grow much beyond its conceptual beginnings, admitting that he did not do enough to promote his work and persuade others to believe in the wisdom of his vision for urban living.

Nonetheless, through the Cosanti Foundation he and Colly devoted themselves to research and experimentation in urban planning and the support of innovative architectural ideas. Arconsanti may not have achieved its goals of becoming a cost-effective infrastructure, conserving water, minimizing the use of energy, raw materials and land, reducing waste and pollution, yet it remains an active project in which more than 6,000 people have had an input since it began.

Soleri died in Paradise Valley, Arizona, at the age of 93.

The distinctive dome of the Chiesa di San Giovanni  Battista in Vietri sul Mare
The distinctive dome of the Chiesa di San Giovanni
Battista in Vietri sul Mare
Travel tip:

The town of Vietri sul Mare is considered to be the southern gateway to the Amalfi coast. The town is best known for the production of ceramics, which goes back to the 15th century. The church of St John the Baptist is notable for its dome, which is decorated with blue and white ceramic tiles. Vietri borders the historic town of Cava dei Tirreni and is separated from the port of Salerno by nothing more than a sea wall.

Travel tip:

The historical base of the Politechnic University of Turin, as it is now, is the Castle of Valentino, a 17th-century House of Savoy on the River Po that houses the main teaching campus. The main campus of engineering is in Corso Duca degli Abruzzi in central Turin. Other facilities can be found close to the Mirafiori Motor Village and the Lingotto Building, which were both once car production centres for FIAT.


25 October 2016

Evangelista Torricelli – inventor of the barometer

Physicist's name lives on in scientific terminology



Evangelista Torricelli: a portrait by Lorenzo Lippi, shortly before he died
Evangelista Torricelli: a portrait by
Lorenzo Lippi, shortly before he died
The inventor of the barometer, Evangelista Torricelli, died on this day in 1647 in Florence at the age of just 39.

A disciple of Galileo, Torricelli made many mathematical and scientific advances during his short life and had an asteroid and a crater on the moon named after him.

Torricelli was born into a poor family from Faenza in the province of Ravenna.

He was given a basic education in Faenza and then sent to a Jesuit college to study Mathematics and Philosophy.

He studied science under the Benedictine monk, Benedetto Castelli, a professor of Mathematics at the Collegio della Sapienza, now known as the Sapienza University of Rome, who had been a student of Galileo Galilei.

Torricelli also became an admirer of Galileo and, after the great scientist’s Dialogues of the New Science were published, Torricelli wrote to him telling him he had read it with ‘delight’.

Galileo was condemned by the Vatican in 1633 for his beliefs and held prisoner at his villa in Arcetri. For the last three months of Galileo’s life, Torricelli worked for him there as his secretary and assistant.

Early barometers based on Torricelli's findings
Early barometers based on
Torricelli's findings
After Galileo’s death the Grand Duke Ferdinand II de Medici asked Torricelli to succeed Galileo as Chair of Mathematics at the University of Pisa.

In this role Torricelli solved some of the great mathematical problems of the day and described his observations in his book, Opera Geometrica. His work contributed to the eventual development of integral calculus.

Torricelli was also interested in optics and designed and built telescopes and microscopes.

But his most important invention was the mercury barometer, which he produced after he had discovered the principle of the barometer while trying to find a solution to the limitations of the suction pump in forcing water upwards.

He designed a kind of vacuum pump using mercury. He filled a metre-long glass tube, closed at one end, with mercury and inverted the tube so that the open end rested on the bottom of a vessel containing more mercury.  The mercury in the tube fell until it reached the point at which the weight of the mercury in the tube was balanced against the pressure exerted by air on the mercury in the vessel, leaving a vacuum at the top of the tube.

The statue of Torricelli in Faenza
The statue of Torricelli in Faenza
Torricelli noted that the height of the mercury in the column varied from day to day, which he concluded was due to changes in atmospheric pressure. In 1644, he turned these discoveries into the first instrument to measure atmospheric pressure.

Scientific terms such as the Torricellian tube and Torricellian vacuum are named after the scientist, as is the torr, a unit of pressure in vacuum measurements. Torricelli’s Law refers to the speed of a fluid flowing out of an opening and Torricelli’s Trumpet relates to mathematical discoveries he made about infinity.

Torricelli died in Florence ten days after his 39th birthday and was buried at the Basilica of San Lorenzo.

Several Italian submarines have been named after Torricelli in honour of his work.

Travel tip:

A statue of Torricelli was erected in 1868 in Faenza, the city where he was born and educated, in recognition of all he had done to advance science during his short lifetime. The white marble statue can be found in the park of San Francesco in Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi.

An example of faience majolica-ware
An example of faience majolica-ware
Travel tip:

Faenza is in the Emilia-Romagna region, about 50 kilometres south east of Bologna. The city is famous for the manufacture of a type of decorative majolica-ware known as faience. It is also home to the International Museum of Ceramics, which has examples of ceramics from ancient times, the Middle Ages and the 18th and 19th centuries as well as displaying work by important contemporary artists. The museum is in Viale Baccarini in Faenza. For more information visit www.micfaenza.org.

More reading:



(Picture of faience plate by Rosco CC BY-SA 2.5)


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