http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/228416179

Architecture and the law in early Renaissance urban life : Leon Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria

Leon Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria (1432-1452) presents an accurate picture of the urban process in the late Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance by describing it in terms of laws, norms and tradition. Alberti, using his legal training, gives us a picture of how urban planning proceeds in an Italian city. He sees planning as the outgrowth of community values, and the city as a manifestation of the laws and customs which society has formulated. On the one hand he sees the city as a simile for family, his own, and thus feels close identity with it; on the other hand he sees civic institutions, and individual cities with an objective and critical eye. Above all Alberti sees architecture in an environmental context, and studies cities as living entities, not theoretical ideals. Hence the title of the treatise, not "on architecture," but "on building things," which illustrates Alberti's intent to describe the building of all structures and spaces. Using the legal framework described by Alberti we can appreciate how much of the planning process of shaping cities was in evidence in the late Middle Ages, and did not originate ex novo in the Renaissance. In fact this dissertation seeks to demonstrate that a continuity persisted through the interaction of custom, statutory law and the Church, and that these planning processes, which appeared before the Renaissance, were not only conscious but deliberate.

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