Mostafavi

Mohsen Mostafavi

Mohsen Mostafavi, arquitecto, decano de la Escuela de Postgrado de Diseño de la Universidad de Harvard y profe-sor de disñon en Alexander y Victoria Wiley. Su trabajo se centra en los modos y procesos de urbanización y en la interfaz entre la tecnología y la estética.

Su trayectoria incluye los cargos de presidente de la Ar-chitectural Association School of Architecture en Londres; decano de la Facultad de Arquitectura, Arte y Planifica-ción de la Universidad de Cornell; director del Máster de Arquitectura del Programa I en el GSD, además de dirigir catedras en las universidades de Pennsylvania, Cambridge y la Academia de Bellas Artes de Frankfurt.

Hoy, es miembro del Consejo del Instituto Van Alen, del Comité Directivo del Premio Aga Khan de Arquitectura, y de la Junta del Consejo Urbano de La Fundación Skolkovo. Además, es parte del comité asesor sobre la planificación del campus de la Asian University for Women.

Ha participado como jurado en el premio Mies van der Rohe de Arquitectura, los premios de la Holcim Foundation para la Construcción Sostenible, en los premios del Royal Insti-tute of British Architects (RIBA) y el premio Annie Spink. Es consultor en una serie de proyectos arquitectónicos y urbanos internacionales. Sus proyectos de investigación y de diseño han sido publicados en numerosas revistas, como AAFiles, Arquitectura, Bauwelt, Casabella, Centre, Daida-los, y El Croquis. Sus libros incluyen On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time (1993), Delayed Space (co-au-tor de 1994); Approximations (2002); La superficie de la arquitectura (2007); Logique Visuelle (2003); Landscape Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape (2004); Structure as Space (2006); Ecological Urbanism (2010);Im-plicate & Explicate (2011); Louis Vuitton: Architecture and Interiors (2011); In the Life of Cities (2012); Ins-tigations: Engaging Architecture, Landscape and the City (2012); and Architecture is Life (2013).

INTERVIEW

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BIBLIOGRAFÍA EN BASE DE DATOSPROQUEST

BASE DE DATOS PROQUEST

ARCHITECTURE, ART AND PLANNING DEAN MOHSEN MOSTAFAVI ACCEPTS HARVARD POSI-TION. (2007, Aug 10). Targeted News Service Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/468548440?accountid=14666

Carl, P. (2003). Ijp: The book of surfaces by george liaropoulos-legen-dre with an introduction by mohsen mostafavi AA publications, 2003 164 pp, numerous mono illus ISBN 1-902902-32-7 price £20. Arq : Architectural Re-search Quarterly, 7(3), 371-372. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/199251265?accountid=14666

Gooptu, B. (2013, Apr 21). Design solutions for developing mega-cities by mohsen mostafavi infrastructure]. The Economic Times (Online) Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1330875189?accountid=14666

Mobasher, M. M. (1996). Class, ethnicity, gender, and the ethnic economy: The case of iranian immigrants in dallas. (Order No. 9717008, Southern Methodist University). ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, , 312-312 p. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/304300820?accountid=14666. (304300820).

Mostafavi, M. (2001). Humanism embodied. The Architectural Review, 209(1251), 100. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/201155629?accoun-tid=14666

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Humanism embodiedMostafavi, MohsenThe Architectural Review; May 2001; 209, 1251; ProQuestpg. 100

ijp: The Book of SurfacesBy George Liaropoulos-Legendre withan introduction by Mohsen MostafaviAA Publications, 2003164 pp, numerous mono illus isbn 1-902902-32-7 Price £20

Reviewed by Peter Carl

There is some question as towhether this should have been abook or a wall (or, in the author’sterminology, ‘a developed surface’).The first two facing pages presentthe page layout of the work as amatrix of 9 rows and 18 columns (towhich the page-numberingcorresponds). An illustration thatmakes a rectangle of 3 rows and 7columns in the matrix appears inthe book as 3 seven-page blocksinterleaved with the text. Moreover,‘the matrix conditioned everyaspect of this book’. The title of thebook comes from ‘the row index iand the column index j’ and fromthe designation ‘p, for point’referring to the peculiar form ofinterrelatedness possessed by

points on a parametric surface,determined by functions ofindependent variables(parameters). Observing that eventhe distribution of typographiccharacters articulates, orconstitutes, such a surface,Liaropoulos-Legendre summarizesthe work: ‘it resorts to severalmodes of writing [later qualified as‘notation’] to fully convey a processof thought elaborated in parallelforms, including discursive essays,statements of computerprogramming code, printouts ofdatastreams, mathematicalexpressions and technicaldescriptions of numericallycontrolled fabrication processes, allof which offer alternatedescriptions of the very samething’.

The book takes the readerthrough simple matrices,parametric surfaces and thearchitectural implications.Although technically savvy, this isin no way a technical manual. It israther a sequence of meditationsupon our understanding of spatialorder consequent to properlygrasping the structure of suchsurfaces. ‘Every paragraph anddiagram of this book belongs to ... aclass of synthetic writing about thesurface, from the surface, on thesurface’.

The most provocative aspect ofthe work seeks to concoct a fullreality from the properties ofinternally consistent surfaces.Insofar as ‘the [developed] surface iswriting and figure in equal parts’,Liaropoulos-Legendre seeks tochallenge the customarypreference for depth and metaphor– ‘depth is good ... and the surface isbad [superficial]’. He speaks of ‘thebias against the surface ... the

mistrust of the surface’ and of the‘preference’ for depth andmetaphor as a ‘habit of hoping’ formeaning behind ‘the immediacy ofappearances’. Given thateverything said about, or donewith, these surfaces holds if theyare considered part of reality, it isnot clear why this argument needsto be offered. It occludes thedistinction between certainty (themode of relatedness of his surfaces– logical consistency; complexity)and truth (pertaining to the natureof reality; richness). This problem isa legacy of the ‘clear and distinct’reason of Descartes (on whosePrinciples of Philosophy Liaropoulos-Legendre unfortunately relies forhis understanding of ‘space’), andthe way that this has cast all otherforms of perception andunderstanding into ‘experience’.With this immediate legacy, viaKant and Fichte, Hegel struggled inhis Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807);but the issue dates back to thedifferent meanings of ‘universal’ in

reviews arq . vol 7 . nos 3&4 . 2003 371

reviews

‘…comforting, erotic smoothness … the offspringof a regime of abstract, relentless calculation …’

Peter Carl on the poetry of matrices

plus three other reviews

Lines and co-ordinates buried beneath theslippery make-up of smoothness

Aristotle’s logical works and in hismetaphysical and ethical works,and subsequently gravitatesaround the perennial effort todiscover a universal logicallanguage (clavis universalis) fromRamus to Russell and Wittgenstein.This confusion regarding levels ofdiscourse/reality and regarding thenature of communication betweenthe humanities and the sciences ishardly confined to architecture,whose enigmatic relationship tothe computer, however, lies at theheart of its appearance in ijp.

When Liaropoulos-Legendresimply declares ‘I Love Matrices’, Iam with him. It seems to me thereal – even unique – achievement ofthis work lies in the poetic domain.He writes well, with urbane wit,

enthusiasm, intelligence; and, aswith AA publications generally, thebook is beautifully produced; itselegant economy is inverselyrelated to the vertiginous openingsof the imagination to which thereader/viewer is subjected.Liaropoulos-Legendre prefers hiscomputing with as littleinterference as possible from‘pasteurized, off-the-shelf software’.Accordingly, the interleaving ofcode, matrices, and diagramscreates an experience analogous tostudying quantum phenomena –the closer one gets to thefundamentals, the moremysterious do things become, themore one is required to draw uponaspects of imagination andthought that are distant from theexplicit declarations of themathematics or code. The pursuitof rigorous complexity (surface)solicits a ludic richness (depth) forthe purposes of understanding andillumination.

The comforting, eroticsmoothness of the preferredsurface-profiles is the offspring of aregime of abstract, relentlesscalculation. The curves are rarelypresented without evidence of thesober pulses of computation.Reminiscent of Duchamp’s infra-thin more than Greenburg’sflatness, Liaropoulos-Legendre’ssurfaces seem to require a personaas much fond of note-filled staffs asmusic. He professes the virtues ofarduous wrestling with code, of itsintrinsic beauty, and he lingerswithin the anticipation before thevoluptuous surface hovers intovisibility (see, for example, the

demonstration regarding writingand drawing a matrix, from p1,6,and the discussion of curvature interms of fragmented flatness, fromp5,12). One sympathizes with hisdisdain for the form-merchants of‘blob’ architecture, the proselytesof formal combinatorics, the kitschof CAD/Photoshop, or theincomplete thought of datascapes;and one is amply persuaded thatthe ‘difficult, arid and elusive’surface offers a poetics of wit,beauty and rigour. At the sametime, the reader/viewer is remindedof Kafka’s hunger-artist, whosemasterpiece consists in starving todeath.

The chaollage of contemporaryculture creates the conditions forhunger-artists who seek a momentof integrity without having toabjure the context within whichthey find themselves. Instead ofexploring the ‘interdisciplinary’character of the practicalimagination, and its capacity forcollaboration in moving betweensystematics and poetics, this bookadheres to architectural design as amatter of securing ‘form’. However,there is no question that the quiteremarkable and, to me, profoundlittle corner in a plan at the end ofthe book could only have arisenfrom the meditations whichprecede it (incidentally, numbers 4and 5 in the plan need to move SEand N, respectively). Like ijp itself,the originality and multivalentrichness of this configurationinspire prolonged reflection,silencing reservations.

Submission to abstract disciplinedepends tacitly upon the ‘depth’ ofthose ordering phenomena whichgive birth to creative insight andaccount for its recognition as such.Language is more a context forbeing understood than for makingstatements. As much asLiaropoulos-Legendre’s ‘book ofsurfaces’ orchestrates visual,textual, mathematical matricesembedded within each other – theabstract male’s bachelor-machine –even more it marvellouslyexemplifies the chthonic, femaledetermination of matrix, as womb,fulfilling Kircher’s project toconstruct a metaphor-machine.

After training at Princeton and twoyears as a Prix de Rome fellow, Peter Carltaught at the University of Kentuckyand, since 1979, at CambridgeUniversity. At Cambridge he teachesgraduate design and is co-convenor ofthe graduate programme in the historyand philosophy of architecture

arq . vol 7 . nos 3&4 . 2003 reviews372

Author Title

The performance of reaching for an upper shelfdefined as a curve ...

... results in a ‘profound little corner’

Valparaíso School/Open CityGroupBy Rodrigo Pérez de Arce andFernando Pérez Oyarzum Birkhäuser, Basel/Boston/Berlin, 2003168pp, 124 colour and 82 mono illus,70 drawingsisbn 3-7643-0751-XPrice £35.50

Reviewed by Nicholas Ray

When I arrived in Santiago last year,at the airport designed by EmilioDuhart, Chile’s most distinguishedarchitect of the second half of thetwentieth century, I was met by oneof the authors of this book with thewords ‘welcome to the end of theworld’. With few direct connectionsto New Zealand, Australasia or theEast, Chileans feel at the very edgeof Western culture. This welcomecompilation of the work of theValparaíso School celebrates agroup of architects, artists andpoets who have forged out of thatcontext work of internationalrelevance, and unforgettableresonance.

In 1952 a group of youngarchitects – led by the charismaticAlberto Cruz, an architect andsometime fellow-student andcollaborator with Duhart, andGodofredo Iommi, a poet who wasborn in Argentina – moved fromthe Catholic University in Santiagoto teach at the Catholic Universityat Valparaíso, at the invitation ofthe Rector. Cruz and Iommi hadmet only a year before but hadformed a strong friendship, unitedby common ideals in the teachingof the subject. They lived in Viña delMar, close to Valparaíso, and beganimmediately to put their ideas intopractice. Broadly, poetry and art,rather than the technical solutionof practical problems, was seen asthe primary generator ofarchitectural form, and all theirteaching was conducted with thataim in mind. As a result of theirparticipation in conferences and anumber of exhibitions, theteaching methodology was soonfamous in Latin America, but it was

not until 1970 when the CiudadAbierta (Open City) was foundedthat they became internationallyknown.

The work to have come out of thearchitectural school is of threekinds. There have beenconventional buildings, at least interms of their professionalmethods of procurement andfunding; these consisted of housesand churches for the most part, forwhich Cruz and his associates havebeen responsible. Both the drawingstyle and the built work reflect theinfluence of Le Corbusier. Thenthere have been constructions thathave arisen out of the travesías –travels that students and staff haveundertaken. These remarkableworks are often of a temporarynature but form part of a largerproject entitled Amereida: a SouthAmerican version of thewanderings of Aeneas, as recordedin Virgil’s Aeneid. The route of thefirst 1965 Amereida was determinedby mapping the Southern Cross onto an inverted projection of SouthAmerica, re-conceptualizing theinherited colonial view of thecontinent. Finally, and mostfamously, there is the settlementitself, the Ciudad Abierta,constructed by students and stafffrom 1970 at Ritoque, along thecoast from Valparaíso.

Among the landscapeinterventions at Ritoque, thecemetery, constructed from 1976onwards, deeply inscribed into the

landscape, is most memorable. Thenearby Palacio del Alba y del Ocaso(Palace of Dawn and Dusk, 1982)appears as an elaboration of itsmaterial and procedures, andconsists of a series of carefullypositioned free-standing walls andan intricately conceived brickfloorscape. There is the sense thatalthough the forms are unusual andseemingly wilful, nothing has beenleft to chance and everything hasbeen most carefully considered,tested and reconsidered. Many of thebuilding forms at Ritoque arise outof the study of the elements – windor light – rather than exploitingviews of the landscape. Here, thefloorscape was determined by thechannelling of water, though in theend the baths that were intendedwere never installed. The plan revealsa surprising diagonal symmetry, andthe height of the walls is maintainedat a consistent 2.2m, but theexperience of walking in the spacesmade by the walls is one ofcontinuous surprise. One part of the


Reflecting the influence of Le Corbusier: AlbertoCruz et al, Benedictine Monastery, Las Condes,Santiago, Chile

The spirit of ensemble: the Music Room, Open City, Ritoque, Chile

experiment is its structure: thecurved walls rest on a delicatefringe of bricks set in sand. How theinstallation will perform in a severeearthquake is yet to be tested, butthe effect at Ritoque is reminiscentof the beautiful remains atFatehpur-Sikri, Akbar’s sixteenth-century palace complex inRajasthan (again much influencedby water engineering). In both,each adjustment to wall plane orfloor surface surely obeys rules thatare not merely pragmatic, but todetermine what those rules were isalmost impossible for theuninitiated. In the case of Fatehpur-Sikri there is a complexiconography which has provedfertile ground for scholars; atRitoque the rules of the game areeven more difficult to determine,but the fact that the architecturehas been made with a passionateconviction is palpable.

Of the buildings at Ritoque, theMusic Room, of 1972 but withsubsequent alterations, is formallyhighly controlled, and curiouslymoving, while the Hospedería delErrante (the Wanderers’ Lodge,reconstructed in 1995) seems toreflect Deconstructivist proceduresmost closely. The buildingrepresents an investigation into thequalities of light and of wind – 16spidery diagrams with Spanishnotation are illustrated here – andwe are told that models were testedin a wind tunnel. There areprominent free-standing brises-soleilon the northern edge, with avariety of openings and fixedstained-glass insertions. Theseprotect an interior which itself hasmany different light sources. Themain volume is roofed with opentimber lattice trusses on a regulargrid and, while the northernwindow-wall is perfectly standard,the edges and interstices are highlycomplex and irregular. Visiting thisand earlier buildings, it is almostimpossible not to see them asharbingers of the sculpturalexperiments of Gehry and others,which they pre-date in certain casesby some years. When a paper on theCiudad Abierta was published in AAFiles 17 in 1989, a project byChristine Hawley for housing atPeckham in South Londonappeared a few pages before. InHawley’s project the aesthetics ofdistress would appear to have beenexplored for its own sake, but theinterest of the Valparaíso School isnot aesthetic: it is the result ofpoetic researches which happen toresult in what are at the moment

quite fashionable forms.Interestingly for the Westernobserver, however, the issue ofenergy does not appear to haveinformed the design of the projectsexcept in the most general way, likethe use of the brises-soleil. As in mostconventional buildings in Chile,windows are single-glazed andwalls are uninsulated. This is partlyexplained by the benign climate ofthis part of the world, but for a fewmonths of the year high amountsof energy must be expended, orconsiderable discomfort endured.

As Fernando Pérez and RodrigoPérez de Arce suggest, theimportance of the ValparaísoSchool rests as much with itsteaching principles as in the builtartefacts. From the start, AlbertoCruz and his colleagues taughttheir students to study and recordthe particularities of an urban orrural site and to relate theirconcept to the largest (indeedcontinental) dimensions as well asto the minutiae. They alsoencouraged them to respect theirown poetic intuitions, assisted by akind of communal ritual (acollective ‘act’ at the start of theproject), to design collectively bypassing their ideas around, andalways to integrate a concern forthe ordinary and mundane withthe mythological. The fact that theteachers at Valparaíso lived by theirprinciples as well as teaching themassociates their project withutopian communities from Owenonwards. Faint echoes of theseprinciples are to be detectedwherever teachers in schools ofarchitecture try to engage youngstudents, who often subscribe to an

unreflective positivism, in anactivity which has the capability oftouching on the most profoundhuman or indeed metaphysicalissues.

As for Ritoque itself, there iscurrently a proposal to create aresearch institution there, whichwould be the first official universitybuilding on the site. The area thathad been purchased at minimalcost and put into a trust by anidealistic group of teachers is nowbeginning to be part of a lineardevelopment along the fringes ofthe Pacific. New residential towerson the outskirts of Viña del Mar areall too visible. The new building, asall the others, is to be designed bythe staff and will aim to be asinnovative and experimental as therest, but this must be a challengingtask. New buildings will bringinfrastructure issues: at present theconstructions are disposed quitefreely over a large area divided bythe coast road, either on the dunesby the ocean or on the hills backedby the mountain range. Somethinglike a masterplan will be required,not least to deal with questions ofaccess by car and the channelling ofwater from the enlarged areas ofhard surface that will receive theinfrequent but sometimesextremely heavy rainfall. AlbertoCruz is now 86, and it must be asuncertain whether the teachingmethodology of the originalcreators can be maintained as it isthat the unique Ciudad Abierta willsurvive. This carefully documentedbook from ‘the end of the world’,with its inspiring photographs,provocative texts andcomprehensive catalogue of theworks and designs of the ValparaísoSchool could hardly be moretimely.

Nicholas Ray has taught and practisedin Cambridge since 1973. His GardenHostel project was published in arqvol 6/1. Currently he is completing amonograph on Alvar Aalto for YaleUniversity Press


An architecture of conviction: the Palace of Dawnand Dusk, Open City, Ritoque, Chile, 1982

Poetic researches ‘happen to result’ in aDeconstructivist aesthetic: the Wanderers’ Lodge,Open City, Ritoque, Chile 1995

Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies:Architecture and UrbanismBy Maria GeorgopoulouCambridge University Press,Cambridge 2001390 pp, 136 mono illusisbn 0-521-78235-XPrice £50 (hb)

Reviewed by Frank Arneil Walker

I read this book while on anextended vacation on the Adriaticisland of Korcula. I confess to aPresbyterian compulsion, as guilt-ridden as it is self-righteous, totemper indulgence with disciplineand it seemed appropriate toimbibe a little academic rigourwith the grilled fish and wine, notleast because, despite its tiny size,of all Venice’s colonial cities –exempting Ragusa (Dubrovnik) as atechnically independent ‘republic’– none is more compact andintensely urban nor morearchitecturally unimpaired thansea-girt Korcula. I was intrigued tolearn more about the widerMediterranean pattern of Venetianurban settlement and to discoverhow characteristic or aberrantKorcula might be. In this selfishexpectation I was, alas,disappointed.

I had been deceived by the book’stitle. Far from being an overview ofthe urban development andarchitecture of ‘Venice’sMediterranean Colonies’, the textfocuses all but exclusively on Creteand in particular on Candia(modern Herakleion) which theauthor considers ‘the mostsophisticated example of Venetianrule’ and, by extension, a model forthe understanding of how colonialideology manifested itself in urbanlayout. To be fair to DrGeorgopoulou, she makes it clear at

the outset that the book is anelaboration of her 1992 doctoraldissertation, ‘The Meaning of theArchitecture and Urban Layout ofVenetian Candia: Cultural Conflictand Interaction in the Late MiddleAges’ – the cultural conflict impliedbeing, of course, that betweenVenice and Byzantium. Such a title,though explicit (indeed perhapsbecause it is so explicit) scarcelyrings with commercial resonance.In any event, for publisher andauthor, the temptation to broadenthis first study into somethingostensibly of much wider appealand significance has provedirresistible. Despite, on the onehand, an early expression ofacademic regret that most study ofthe relationship between Venetianand Byzantine cultures, byconcentrating on Venice herselfand Constantinople, ‘neglects therest of the Venetian and Byzantinecommonwealth’, and, on the otherhand, by virtue of a few scattered,hardly adequate references, eg to

Ragusa (Dubrovnik), a passingrecognition that the culturalhegemony of La Serenissimaembraced some communitiessubstantially Latin/Slavic in natureas well as those of Orthodox/Greekorientation, the author gives allher attention to the impact ofcolonial rule on the latter.Tangential exemplifications of hercentral arguments are drawn fromCanea (Chania) and Retimo(Rethymnon) on Crete, Modon(Methoni) and Coron (Koroni) inthe Peloponnesos and Negroponte(Euboea), all of which, like Candia,shared an essentially Greek, ieByzantine, inheritance. Nothing, oralmost nothing, is said about thenon-Greek, part-Slav, Adriaticcolonies at, say, Split, Hvar, Korcula,Dubrovnik or Kotor.

But set this complaint aside.Working within her declaredcontext, Dr Georgopoulou makesthe claim that Venetian rule onCrete, established in the earlythirteenth century and secured


Adopted by the colonizers: an icon of the Virgin Mesopanditissa, ultimately moved from Crete to the churchof Santa Maria della Salute, Venice

through the plantation of ‘a landedaristocracy of colonizers’, took amore sophisticated course thanmight be expected of a foreignpower bent on consolidating itsimperium. Walls and fortificationswere raised or reinforced; land andsea gates bearing the unequivocalstamp of Venetian authority, theLion of St Mark, were constructed ateach end of the city’s main north-south artery, the ruga magistra;loggia, public fountain and marketwere built; new Catholic churches,Gothic basilicas distinct in plan anddetail from the existing Orthodoxplaces of worship, began to appearon prominent main-street sites; onopposite sides of the walled city,establishing a putative east-westcross-axis with the ruga magistra,the monasteries of the Franciscanand Dominican orders ‘framed theold town of Candia with theirsilhouettes’. Thus, altogetherunsurprisingly, the new rulerscontrived to ‘manipulate cityspace’, conscripting architecturaland urban form as the mediators ofadministrative, religious and socialpower. In this undertaking theemulation of metropolitanprecedent was frequent – theauthor maintains, for example,

that the organization of Candia’sPiazza San Marco ‘replicatedVenice’s main square’, though theevidence for this, at least in spatialterms, seems slight. What gave theimperial programme its subtlercast, however, was its deliberateassumption and assimilation ofCrete’s Byzantine past.

At a practical level the Venetianswere judicious enough not todestroy many of the buildings theyfound in Byzantine Candia. Severalwere adapted to the needs of thenew regime. The very centre ofpower, the palace of the duca (ofwhich only problematical vestigesnow remain), appears to have beenan adaptation of a pre-existingstructure, in all probability theformer residence of the governor ofByzantine Chandax. In a parallelmove, Candia’s Orthodox Cathedralwas offered to the Latin archbishop,a consequence of which was thatthe larger Greek Orthodoxchurches were thereafter foundoutside the walls where thesuburbs increasingly became ‘aprimarily Greek space’. Outside andinside the walls, many colonizerscommandeered the houses of theisland’s Byzantine aristocracy,houses which, says the author,

would have been ‘trendy (sic) bythirteenth century Venetianstandards’. No doubt such actionsoften had a simple economicexplanation but it is DrGeorgopoulou’s contention thatthis does not do full justice to theingenious character of Venice’scolonial strategy. By retainingmany of the outward physicalsymbols of Byzantine power, Venicepresented herself as the legitimateinheritor of imperial status. But itwas her appropriation of lesstangible but more potent symbolswhich deepened this legitimacy.The Venetians recognized theimportance of the island’s patronsaint, Titus, revering him alongsidetheir own St Mark. So strong didthis affiliation become that when,in 1669, after four-and-a-halfcenturies of rule, they wereexpelled from Crete by theOttoman Turks, they would takethe relics of St Titus back with themto Venice. So, too, one of the mostvenerated icons in Crete, said tohave been painted by St Luke, theMadonna of St Titus, also known asthe Virgin Mesopanditissa becauseof its miraculous conciliatory rolein bringing peace between Latinsand Greeks following a localrebellion in 1264, was adopted bythe colonizers. Every week it wascarried in procession to the city’sLatin and Greek churches inhonour of the Virgin and ‘in praiseof the Venetian dominion’. It, too,was ultimately brought to Venice tobe placed at the high altar of thechurch of Santa Maria della Salute.That Titus himself travelled ‘untoDalmatia’, as Paul writes in hissecond letter to Timothy, mighthave alerted Dr Georgopoulou tothe value of a closer study ofVenice’s eastern Adriatic territories.

This reflected influence of latemedieval Crete on Venice itself – theveneration of icons and inparticular those ritually related tothe cult of the Virgin – representsfor the author ‘the flip side (sic) ofthe strategies of appropriation thatthe Venetians used on Cretan soil’.While Cretan icon painters enjoyedbig business, flooding the easternMediterranean ports with theirwork, art at the very centre of theempire was profoundly affected. Asfor any architectural borrowings,there is nothing comparable to thedirect influence which thecathedral at Sebenigo (Sibenik) hadon Venice’s church of San Michelein Isola, a relationship elsewhereobserved, as the authoracknowledges, by Dr Deborah


The colony reflected at home: Candia (an etching by Erhard Reuwich, Mainz, 1486) …

… as an influence on the Jewish ghetto in Venice (detail, Scolari, Pianti di Venezia, c1700)

Howard. In urban terms, however,it is argued here that the creationof the Jewish ghetto in Venice in1516 followed what had alreadybeen done in the Levantinecolonies, notably within the wallsof Candia.

Dr Georgopoulou’s book isthoroughly and impressivelyresearched from manuscript andpublished primary and secondarysources; in a work of almost 400pages, 103 are devoted to notes andbibliography. Confronted by such aweight of scholarship which, itmust be said, does not generallydepress the text, it may seemstrange to ask for more, but why doa number of substantial passages ofLatin and Italian quotation appearin the body of the text withouttranslation? My three years ofschoolboy Latin do not begin tocope with what I fancy most readerswill regard as an annoying andunnecessary intellectualpretension. It is odd, strangelyendearing even, to find lower downthe page on which the first of these(for me) impenetrable Latinpassages occurs this sentence: ‘Acomparison . . . reveals tons (myitalics) about the sophistication inVenice’s colonial approach’.

The architectural and urbanevidence of the Venetian presencein Candia is generously illustratedthroughout. Excellent maps andengravings convey something ofthe historical growth of the city,while a series of clearly drawndiagrammatic town plans locatesthe principal buildings and helpsclarify the development of theurban structure. It would have beeninteresting to find these plansrelated to the city’s contemporaryform, though one suspects spatialcontinuities would be hard todetect. It is a much greaterdisappointment to find buildingplans and sections badlydelineated: in many the standard ofdraughtsmanship is puerile, scalesare missing or illegible, northpoints are absent, and one wondershow such material was everaccepted in such a scholarlyvolume. Photographs are plentifuland good though they serve toshow that the survivingarchaeological evidence of Venetianarchitecture in urban Candia isdisappointingly limited in qualityand quantity.

And here I am back to my Adriaticexpectation. In her first chapter DrGeorgopoulou notes the ‘disparity’in the physical evidence betweenthe little to be found in Candia and

the more impressive structuressurviving, for example, in thoseAdriatic ports which shedismissively refers to as ‘the moreout of the way tourist orientatedVenetian colonies along the coast ofDalmatia’. I admit to being biased –my familiarity with the Dalmatiancoast stretches over forty or so yearswhile I have visited Crete on onlyone occasion – but a book whichpurports to interpret thearchitecture and urbanism of‘Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies’ought surely to devote some seriousattention to those outposts of theempire where the physical evidenceis richest. That there the ‘culturalconflict and interaction’ was thatbetween Latin and Slav rather thanLatin and Greek might haveprovided evidence to explain thisvery ‘disparity’.

Frank Arneil Walker is ProfessorEmeritus in the University of Strathclydeand the author of numerous books andpapers on architectural and urbanhistory


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