The Discovery of Piranesi's Final Project
Stephen Lauf



25 May 1778   Monday
. . . . . .


28 y.o. Francesco Piranesi 1786
Francesco is commissioned by the Venetian Andrea Memmo to make an engraving reproducing the project for Prato della Valle in Padua.

Perspective of the new square in Padua behind the general idea already conceived and largely carried out by the exceptional Mr. Andrea Memmo cavaliere and procurator of S. Marco Qvand was proved for the Serenissima Republic of Venice, extraord of that city
In the years MDCCLXXV, and VI above swampy land containing the space of 974012 geometric qvadrati feet therefore called the Prato della Valle, island intended for public passage, art gallery and lapidaria that adorn it, fair of goods and animals, indication of shows, forest, lake, roads, bridges, and many other ornaments which can be detected without explanation.
Giuseppe Subleyras drew     Cav. Frn.co Piranesi engraved Rome 1786


25 May 1812   Monday

Morning without a cloud, wind NW, temperature 52°, rose rapidly and reached 76°. Wind drew eastward and Serly. Some clouds arose which disappeared in the afternoon. A perfectly vernal day. We began to plant corn in north field. Debby Logan and her son Algernon S. produced certificates from Philadelphia monthly Meeting to Abington which were accepted and they now belong to our monthly and general Meetings. PM they united with my family in a visit to neighbor Eddows's family. He was absent in Boston on a religious visit to the Unitarians there. I fear this society is increasing. I say fear, because altho they preach Christian Morality and are in general exemplary in it to a considerable degree, yet by subjecting Christianity to Reason and rejecting everything the 4 histories of the Gospel, which affronts[?] the Divinity of our Saviour, they render the Christian system as prophesized in the Old Testament and registered in the New a mere system of morals, not of Divinity. A most brilliant evening, moon newly full, not a cloud to be seen. Air mild from SSE. Cowper had the Unitarians in view, Book VI near the end.
Who, constant only in rejecting this,
Deny thy Godhead with a martyr's zeal,
And quit the Office for their error's sake;
Blind and in love with darkness, yet sin[?] then
Worthy, composed[?] with sycophants who kneel,
Thy house adorning, and there preach this .... Testament[?].


25 May 2002
CQ MO
Since revisiting the Bernini double theater that I read about almost 25 years ago, I've come to greatly admire the creative fecundity of double theaters as both a means and an end within the creative process. There is something almost magical about working with a vehicle/medium where there are literally twice the possibilities and where inversion (of self, for example) and mirroring (again of self, for example) provide, again, double the possibilities. Or is it all just 'too much play(ing)' in what is really just a virtual place?


25 May 2020

Mary Boone's 180 hours of community service   hours 82 83 84 85 86 87


Mary Boone's 180 hours of community service   hours 88 89


25 May 2023   Thursday

"Ungovernable" is how Miers Fisher described the temper of Braines.

"That there is little architecture may be because we don't know what the architecture of our time is supposed to be yet."

A fool's quote, indeed, because the days of an architectural hegemony are over.
That's not to say, however, that architecture is now ungovernable.

All the true architectures "of our time" over the next two centuries will readily display the fulfillment of assimilation and the strengthening rise of the metabolic.




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