theoretical

THEORETICAL

David Mayernik has become a leader of the contemporary classical renaissance in no small part on the basis of his theoretical projects that push the possibilities of architecture toward what we once were capable of before Modernism. He is convinced that so-called "paper architecture" is essential today just as it was in the eighteenth century, as a measure of our aspirations even if our contemporary building culture does not afford the opportunities to build as well as we once did. Read what he said on this subject at the Humanist Art Review.

His project for the via della Conciliazione, done during his fellowship year at the American Academy in Rome, began a series of explorations of the poetics of Roman urbanism, which led to his project for S. Giovanni in Laterano and to his book Timeless Cities.

For him, a critical part of these projects is their integration of the arts: the employment especially of the idealized human figure to convey meaning in the best rhetorical tradition of the Renaissance. He has been fortunate in his built work to integrate painting and architecture by means of his own frescoes, but in these theoretical projects the full potential of the classical tradition is displayed.

Via della Conciliazione | S. Giovanni in Laterano | S. Croce in Gerusalemme

Villa Don Giovanni | Stairway Based on Dante's Purgatory | Chapel for the Notre Dame Campus