Craftsmen, Models, Numbers
technical culture between real and virtual

by Felice Ragazzo

Leon Battista Alberti’s lesson, a literate as well as a firm believer in the idea of number as a paradigm of harmony and beauty, has not disappeared over the centuries, but is directly connected to the present time

“I shall never stop [...] recommending what the best architects used to do: meditate and meditate again on the work to be done as a whole [...] using not only drawings and sketches, but also models [...]”.(1). In a nutshell, this is what Leon Battista Alberti thought about designing and making works of art. Is this lesson still alive today, now that drawings and sketches can ideally be transformed into images of computer automated design and models in technofacts of CNC machines?

Alberti, however, was not only a fine humanist, but also a firm believer in the idea of number, conceived as a paradigm of harmony and beauty of forms. Not only has his lesson not disappeared over the centuries, but it is directly connected to the present time since it includes many fundamental assumptions. If any, it requires an update, in order to be understood and applied also by those who are not authorities on Alberti. Here we are not going to directly discuss it, since we have a concrete experience of model construction as a reference: the models on show in Mantua at the exhibition on Leon Battista Alberti that was held at Palazzo Te in September-December 1994.

The theme of the model, conceived as an object for representation or visualization, has now become extremely complex because this term constantly acquires new meanings: in the Italian dictionary there are about thirty different ones. Without getting into philological details, we will try to briefly describe this complexity, and point out in particular some topical aspects of the relationship between drawing and object, especially in the light of new technologies, though the models of the Mantua exhibition refer to a Renaissance architect.

First of all, let us examine the current identity of the model-maker: nowadays a model-maker is basically a sophisticated craftsman, who can be considered the epigone or descendant of the faber soul of the Renaissance maker from many viewpoints, enriched by the subsequent sedimentation of knowledge but substantially alien to the industrial revolution.