skip to main |
skip to sidebar
The Villa Emo was constructed in 1559 for Leonardo Emo in the later part of Palladio's career. The villa functioned as an active agricultural establishment and Palladio's design responds to the practical need for agricultural accommodations in the two arcaded wings that extend off of the main building. While Palladio consistently uses the iconographic "Greek Temple front" in all of his projects, the Villa Emo demonstrates Palladio's ability and willingness to reconsider traditional orders as he recesses the typically protruding Greek Temple front into the building mass. The strong visual elements of the pediment and columns on the front facade combined with the extension of the wings create a hierarchy within the design that clearly places emphasis on the domestic center of the villa. The Villa maintains an overall simplicity with clean lines of axis and symmetry, and clear mathematical proportions (in both plan and elevation) which are expressed in the simplest Doric order--notice even the windows are without casings and cornices. The simplistic and unadorned nature of the design is quite appropriate given the rustic context and agricultural purposes of the Villa.
Sarah Wade
Villa Foscari (better known as “La Malcontenta”) was built in 1558 by Andrea Palladio for two brothers, Alvise and Nicolo Foscari. It is located on the Naviglio border, a waterway that connects Venice and Padua, in Mira, a smaller town in the Venice province. Palladio built an architecture that expressed his theoretical thought process and his extraordinary compositional skill. The building consists of a central floor plan on three levels. The main façade faces the canal because people used to arrive by boat along the canal. Palladio used the concept of the temple front on pedestal base with two stairs leading up to the front door. The idea of the temple front comes from religious architecture. The façade is made of brick now but used to be covered by hard stucco. Palladio used the gentle rustication concept in his development of the building materials. Gentle rustication is a more flat and delicate form of rustication. Palladio came up with a sophisticated solution to turning the corner with the columns. He turned only one capital 45 degrees thus allowing the column to continue and go on to the next column. The rear façade “pleases the modern face.” It employs elements from Roman engineering such as the thermal window and relieving arches. The thermal windows are used in thermal bath designs. The relieving arches on the building are purely graphical and made of plaster. Inside, Palladio uses the cross layout, which is usually used in religious architecture. Palladio also employs the use of the terrazzo flooring, which was a Roman technique to cover terraces. The flooring is painted to look like carpet or marble.
Amy Altman
This house was built between 1560 and 1570 and it is assumed that Palladio, the designer, lived here. He designed this small building, the home of a notary, endowing it with all the elegance of the large and much more important houses he built for Venetian patricians. On the ground floor, the facade opens with a serliana framed by two Ionic columns. The two windows and the two grooved pilasters on the piano nobile provide a frame for a section of wall which, along with the second floor attic, was decorated with frescos, now lost, by Giovanni Antonio Fasolo. I was able to go inside the building which includes an open courtyard with a well. The building is currently filled with residents and an architecture firm.
Architect: Andrea Palladio
Brian Williford
