A "laboratory" open air in the urban landscape of Palermo

Abstract

The study intends to make new contributions to knowledge of a interesting "laboratory" in the open air in the urban landscape of Palermo, a cultural and scientific heritage in which architecture, art and decoration coexist in an experiment of collective synergies. The Botanical Garden C enter, with its ten acres of land appears, still, a fervent creative process between artifice and nature, the expression of a specific historical and cultural climate in which expectations converged of a intellectual, scientific and institutional fervor. The academic institution, founded in 1789 with the intention of cultivating useful plants to the arts, crafts and medicine, contributed to the spread of tropical tree species introduced later, in parks and gardens, public and private, enriching the natural heritage and transforming the landscape of the sicilian coast. The fifth stage overlooking the garden consists of a unique architectural complex that is articulated in a central amphiprostyle doric building a square plant, the Gymnasium, and two lateral buildings, arranged symmetrically, the Tepidarium and Calidarium, a rectangular plan designed by Dufourny collaboration with local architects such as Pietro Trombetta, Domenico Marabitti and Venazio Marvuglia. On the basis of a precious monograph of the architect G.B.F. Basile, you will critically revisit all the buildings, full of stylistic features of the greek temples and symbolic codes siceliots of the masonic Enlightenment, the first example of neoclassical architecture in Sicily. In particular, using the latest topographic non-invasive and photogrammetric technologies in acquisition, development and exploration of metric data, we report unedited representations of some devices that characterize the monumental work.