Florentine Streetscapes and their Role in Revisiting Palazzo Rucellai’s Urban façade Hypotheses

Abstract

The facciata double meaning as façade and outer appearance embodies the Italian city-state’s political, cultural, and social values that Leon Battista Alberti outlined in his famed De re aedificatoria libri decem (1485). This concept lies at the heart of Florence’s urban fabric: one of the early cradles of Renaissance architecture that originated from the artistic expenditure of prosperous families including, the Medici, Strozzi, and Rucellai. In this context, the Palazzo Rucellai (c.1446-66) marks an important historical moment in history as its façade, with its three superimposed orders and well-proportioned urban composition, was the first of its kind in Renaissance Florence. However, the palazzo’s unfinished façade sparked a debate regarding its finished appearance which the paper revisits by positioning a 3D digital twin onto the façade’s historic urban context and by applying through Space Syntax to explore its relationship to the urban fabric.