Bernini & Borromini: Theater & Heresy

Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini were the most original architects of the seventeenth century. Working within the cultural, philosophical, theological, and even scientific volatilities that electrified the atmosphere of Baroque Rome,they challenged the established canons of architecture's classical tradition. Responding to the powerful constraints associated with these conditions, each architect expressed space and time in architecturally unprecedented ways. Yet, the approach each took was as uniquely distinct as were their respective personalities.

David Bell is a faculty member of the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has written essays on a variety of topics. His most recent essays have examined the relationship between prisons and gardens, the negative dialectics of AdolfLoos's architecture, and the correlation of Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics.