The Cordoba Mosque-Cathedral is a building sublime result of historical evolution special architectural and overlapping the opposite spatial criteria without necessarily contradictory. The successive interventions carried out as architects Caliphate as Christians are all a lesson about how to deal with a building and how to adapt to different needs over time. When confronted with its forest of columns from which emerges the volume of the cathedral we feel overwhelmed by a host of historical data, sometimes mere anecdotes, reflected in documentation too simple graphic that captures the complexity and quality of future actions and delves into the topic romantic whereby Christian interventions, notably alternating spatial and religious conception of the building, preventing the appreciation of the abstract, neutral space and time Caliphate both are inferior.
Touristic map of the mosque, with colors indicating the various extensions caliph without regard to Christian interventions.
However, little is to analyze the subsequent sequence of actions we realize that each of them is with a deep understanding of the potential existing buildings to such an extent that we can not talk about extensions to the Umayyad Mosque original but new mosques in which the front is absorbed as a part, a process that continues with the Christianization of the temple is a holistic understanding of the Islamic stage that transcends the successive interventions to wrap equally to the two Christian cathedrals, spatially and structurally integrated into the building Islam.
evolutionary sequence of successive extensions of the existing plant Caliphate, which gives an idea of \u200b\u200bthe spatial changes produced
axonometric of the Mosque of Cordoba, with a view of the interior in which to appreciate the different spatial landmarks: Capilla de Villaviciosa, maqsura and two Christian cathedrals surrounded by the forest of columns Caliphate.
Architecturally three periods we can establish well differentiated in the history of the Mosque: first the Islamic period of successive enlargements / construction of new mosques. As we shall see, the work of successive emirs and caliphs were more than simple upgrades, construction of new mosques in which the former were absorbed as a part. After the Christian conquest takes place the consecration of the Christian church building, while all mosques were demolished Córdoba, Mosque Aljama is preserved and built inside the successive cathedrals (Gothic plateresca in 1489 and 1523). In 1740 a series of reforms rush on deck and painted white all the arches, giving the appearance Mosquel unit that will last a few decades, as from 1815, with the restoration of mirhab, begins the stage of restoration / conservation of the Mosque-Cathedral.
The Mosque in 1567. Detail from a drawing by Anton Van den Wyngaerde
Interior of the Mosque Cathedral in 1806, according to a recording of Alexandre Laborde. Note the arches still painted white.
Until then the interventions had been natural, following principles that the artist considered again, was of previous positions, participating in the idea of \u200b\u200bprogress. But the mentality that restorative breaks and sets its target in a moment of the past. The first two stages were the time of the artist, those involved in loving and destroying the temple to build something new under necessary and a thorough knowledge of architectural reality on which it sits. The third is the time of the restorers, who care for history and so are its prisoners.
Ricardo Velázquez Bosco. Restoration project for one of the gates of the eastern facade (Almanzor extension).
Reading offered at the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend , Indiana (USA), January 21, 2011.
Author: Pablo Álvarez Funes
0 comments:
Post a Comment