Baroque Topologies

The era of “big data” has fostered the need for new approaches to analysis and representation in all fields of design. The ability to capture, record and simulate increasingly larger sets of data coupled with remote access to cloud computing and progressively more affordable additive fabrication technology provides new opportunities and methods for understanding and assessing complexity and representation in architecture.

Baroque Topologies examines the potential of these new methods to redefine and enhance knowledge and understanding of the full spectrum of formal and spatial complexity of Baroque architecture.   As the recipient of the University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation grant, Associate Professor Andrew Saunders traveled to Italy to laser scan and amass an archive of some of the most important Italian Baroque architecture.  The archive includes key works from Francesco Borromini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Girolamo and Carlo Rainaldi, Pietro da Cortona, Guarino Guarini and Bernardo Vittone.   The primary Baroque works selected for analysis can be deciphered as topological variants of the centrally planned church of the Renaissance.  The collection demonstrates the blossoming evolution from the early and high baroque in Rome extending to the late baroque in the Piedmont Region in Northern Italy.

 New instruments from inside and outside of the discipline have a direct influence on the way architecture is designed and realized.   Baroque Topologies demonstrates their potential to radically redefine our understanding of the full spectrum of formal and spatial complexity of Baroque architecture.  Inherent in this process is a reexamination of the value-laden tools of contemporary representation and their impact on current architectural production. 

Andrew Saunders

Andrew Saunders is an Associate Professor of Architecture at The Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania and founding principal of Andrew Saunders Architecture + Design. As a designer, scholar and faculty member within the discipline of architecture, Saunders specializes in computational geometry as it relates to aesthetics, material culture, and advanced technology and fabrication.  His approach to practice, research, and teaching leverages contemporary design technology as a critical lens and design instrument for reassessing how the material culture of architecture and design are generated and conceived.    

Saunders received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Arkansas and a Masters in Architecture with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He has significant professional experience as project designer for Eisenman Architects, Leeser Architecture and Preston Scott Cohen, Inc. Prior to being appointed Associate Professor with tenure at The University of Pennsylvania, he has held teaching positions at a variety of institutions, including Cooper Union and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and Head of Graduate Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York  

His current research stems from being awarded the competitive 2015 University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation Grant for Baroque Topologies: Digital Analysis of the Latent Topological Structure of Baroque Architecture to explore how emerging technology—including high-resolution 3D digital scanning and printing—provides unprecedented access to Baroque architecture’s formal complexities, intricate detail, and deep topological structure. The research has received continued additional support funding from the Mellon Grant for Digital Humanities, Mellon Grant for Humanities, Urbanism and Design as well as leading industrial partners including FARO® Technology and Autodesk™. 

Baroque Topologies marks the first extensive survey of key Italian Baroque churches utilizing LiDAR technology as a tool for architectural representation.  Through two years of extensive field research in Rome and the Northern Piedmont region of Italy, Saunders has gained access and permission to 3D laser scan the most innovative Baroque churches in Italy. He has accumulated an exhaustive survey with unprecedented three-dimensional detail and resolution. Once collected, the immense data sets (up to 300 million points per church) are processed using cloud computing to inform methods for 2D and 3D architectural representation never before possible.  

The first phase of the research is published in the book Baroque Topologies by Italian publisher Palombi Editori.  In addition to the state-of-the-art images generated from the research, the book establishes how the development of architectural representation techniques have been deeply influenced by an integral relationship to surveying instruments and methods. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the interior space of architecture rather than the exterior has long been the fundamental experimental ground for both design and representational breakthroughs in the discourse.  

Baroque Topologies has received critical acclaim nationally and internationally by an extremely broad and multidisciplinary audience both academic and professional. The research has been presented at the Penn Department of History and Classical Studies, PennDesign Lecture Series, the The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union and the 5th INTBAU International Event in Milan. In addition, Baroque Topologies has been featured and exhibited at Addams Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, the 2017 Milan Expo exhibit Close Reading and is currently a traveling exhibition (2017-2018) Church of Big Datasponsored by Autodesk™ starting in London, Darmstadt, Tokyo, Dubai, Mumbai, Sydney, Sao Palo and finally installed at the Gallery at One Market in San Francisco, where it will be on view for five years. Publication of the work includes AD Magazine, a chapter in Putting Tradition into Practice: Heritage, Place and Design, the two largest circulating Italian newspapers LaStampa and Reppublica, upcoming chapters in Transformations in Classical Architecture: New Directions in Research and Practice, Digital Architecture beyond Computers: Fragments of a Cultural History of Computational Design and recently the feature cover article of The Pennsylvania Gazette.  Based on preliminary phases of Saunders was selected as one of two finalists for the 2017 Rome Prize for Architecture.