Timeless Cities: An Architect's Reflections On Renaissance Italy (Icon Editions) [Hardcover]

David Mayernik (Author)

Book Description

Series: Icon Editions | Publication Date: September 2, 2003

For Italian city builders over the course of a thousand years, the urban realm was the great theater where their best aspirations were played out, the place where society said the most substantial things about who they were and what they longed for. In Timeless Cities, architect David Mayernik reveals how Venice, Rome, Florence, Siena, and Pienza emerged from the cultural ideas of humanism that characterized Italian society from late antiquity to the eighteenth century. Cities were literally designed to be models of the mind and images of heaven. Mayernik takes the reader on an architect's tour of these five cities and describes the cultural beliefs and ideas behind the buildings. Not only a journey into the past, Timeless Cities also explains why these city-building ideas are relevant today. Whether travelling on holiday or appreciating the art and architecture of Italy from home, Mayernik helps bring the wonder and beauty of the Italian mind and its great cities a little closer.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A thoughtful, passionate, learned, and unexpected examination of cities past, present, and ideal, written with conviction and humor." -- Ingrid Rowland

"Erudite travelers will enjoy [Mayernik's] thoughtful meditations." -- Chicago Tribune

"You'll never look at a building again without wondering what its meaning is." -- Washington Post --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Named as one of the top forty architects of his generation in the United States, David Mayernik is an internationally recognized practicing architect, painter, and educator. In addition to having been Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame's School of Architecture, he has taught with the New York Academy of Art, the Institute for the Study of Classical Architecture, and the University of Virginia's Erasmus-Jefferson Scholars program in Tuscany. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; Icon Ed edition (September 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813365929
• ISBN-13: 978-0813365923
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,544,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Mayernik's work has been devoted to the classical ideas and arts of the Italian Renaissance for more than three decades, and he has become the leading exemplar of the Renaissance ideal in art and architecture. He is an urban designer, architect, artist, and author who has won numerous awards and competitions. His book, Timeless Cities: An Architect's Reflections on Renaissance Italy, was published by Westview Press (Icon Editions) in 2003 (paperback 2005). His essay on Giulio Romano's architecture and frescoes at the Palazzo Te was published in Aeolian Winds and the Spirit in Renaissance Architecture (Routledge, 2006). He has a chapter in the book on sustainability sponsored by the Prince's Foundation, Green Living (Rizzoli US and Tradition & Sustainability, Compendium Publ. UK, 2010), and his work for TASIS is featured in the book New Palladians (Artmedia Press, 2010). He has contributed two chapters to the forthcoming book The Capriccio (ed. L. Steil, Ashgate). He is the co-editor with Taeho Paik of the online Humanist Art Review (www.humanistart.net). In addition to teaching as a tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and Rome, he has taught in the Graduate Fine Art program of the New York Academy of Art, in the Institute for the Study of Classical Architecture, and in the University of Virginia's Erasmus-Jefferson Summer Institute in Tuscany. He was a visiting lecturer with the Prince's Foundation summer school in Lincoln, England in 2007. David Mayernik is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, & Commerce).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Journey Across Time and Ideas, September 11, 2003

By 

Thomas Rajkovich (Evanston, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Timeless Cities: An Architect's Reflections On Renaissance Italy (Icon Editions) (Hardcover)

Timeless Cities is indeed a wonderful journey, a voyage across time and ideas. The author tells a poetic, scholarly and delightful story of five Italian cities and how they became meaningful and memorable places, remaining so to this day.

For those who have experienced the magical, transforming impact Rome, Florence, Venice, Siena and Pienza have on their visitors, David Mayernik unlocks the richly poetic ideas which are their very essence. An architect and traveler, his writing is filled with the passion of one who truly loves and understands the tradition of those great cities: the tradition of humanism.

For all for whom life is, above all, a cherished series of discoveries and experiences, Mayernik extends a masterful invitation to explore those places which stir our souls and which demonstrate the highest fulfillment of our collective potential for cultural and artistic achievement. He then challenges us to again seek to create cities "through which dance the Muses", cities which are "built Ideas suffused with cultural Memory". Accept his gracious invitation. It is a journey you will treasure.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A memorable lesson, November 6, 2003

By 

"nadia_arch03" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Timeless Cities: An Architect's Reflections On Renaissance Italy (Icon Editions) (Hardcover)

Mr. Mayernik transports the reader to the glorious past of Rome, Venice, Florence, Siena, and Pienza; a past in which city builders sought to make their cities into reflections of the perfect heavenly City of God; a past in which every stone, every building, every piazza was an episode of the larger urban narrative that played itself for its citizens as a great "theatre of the mind."

Mr. Mayernik's writing allows us to view the urban mythologies of these places not as History, events frozen in by gone times and no longer capable of speaking to present generations, but as living lessons in city building; he invites his audience to learn the 'language' of these five cities so that we too can build memorable places.

4.0 out of 5 stars Original!, January 8, 2010

By 

Pierre Gauthier (Montréal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Timeless Cities: An Architect's Reflections on Renaissance Italy (Icon Editions) (Paperback)

The idealistic author argues that cities require a predetermined purpose, a self-image that will be transcribed in its development through time. Conversely, a city's architecture and layout embody its memory and reveal its true nature. To illustrate this, the author discusses at some length the pre-18th century development of Rome, Venice, Florence, Sienna and Pienza.

Needless to say, the approach is highly intellectual. The author for instance draws various conclusions from the «architectural pun» created in ancient Rome by the construction, back to back, of a temple to Venus, goddess of love (AMOR in Latin) and a temple to the city per se (ROMA in Latin). In Venice, he likens all of piazza San Marco to an open-air church _ the Basilica acting as the sanctuary _ whereas the shape of Sienna's Campo is described as an analogy to the Virgin's protective cloak.

This requires of course on the reader's part a good prior knowledge of the cities discussed and the book would in fact definitely benefit by being more systematic and extensive.

Unfortunately, illustrations are in black and white and not up to par with what is now expected for such a topic. Even the image on the cover page is strangely unappealing!

Despite these shortcomings, many planners and city-lovers in general will find this book worthwhile.