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Author for correspondence: Pedro Filipe Coutinho Cabral D'Oliveira Quaresma, E-mail: [email protected]
Introduction
The shape grammar presented in this paper may be considered as a detailed grammar. Its construction started from a doric base element described in Alberti's De Re Aedificatoria column system. The conjugation of different elements, mostly molds, with other elements leads the grammar user to the generation of parts of larger architectonic elements, such as facades. This process is based on the application of a grammar called Alberti's Column Systematization Shape Grammar, that is applied to generate part of a specific building – the longitudinal elevation of the nave of the Sant'Andrea church in Mantua, Italy.
The column systematization grammar allowed us to understand a set of possible combinations of elements, starting from a sequential manipulation of molds, revealing a certain number of possible conjugations of those elements, testing the generative characteristics of De Re Aedificatoria (the original treatise did not include any drawings), as Alberti specifies in Book IX, Chapter VI, pp. 592, that is, the reader should use the treatise descriptions at his discretion and not be “absolutely” constrained by them (Alberti, 2011). The algorithmic nature of the treatise is related to these premises: it describes ways of articulating and manipulating the molds and the column system elements (as desired by the user), not a combinatorial specification of them.
The research presented in this paper was related to the Alberti Digital research project (Kruger et al., 2011), whose goal was to determinate the extension of Alberti's influence on Portuguese architecture during the counter-reform period.
This paper is centered in the decoding process of the De Re Aedificatoria by inferring the corresponding shape grammar using the computational framework provided by description grammars (Stiny, 1981), shape grammars (Stiny & Gips, 1972) (Li, 2001), and the transformations in languages of designs (Knight, 1994). The grammar in the treatise was compared with the grammar of existing buildings designed by Alberti as well as with Portuguese buildings from the same period.
Alberti's De Re Aedificatoria consists of ten books: Book I about the Lineaments; Book II on materials, Book III on construction; Book IV on public works; Book V on buildings for private purposes, and Book VI on the ornament. Book VII is dedicated...