Palazzo Massimo/Peruzzi, Rome, analysis

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TitlePalazzo Massimo/Peruzzi, Rome, analysis

Artist Stephen Kieran (American, b. 1951)

Date1980 - 1981

MediumPencil and felt tip pen on a set of 30 index cards

DimensionsUnframed: 3 x 5 in.

SubmissionNA diploma presentation, November 16, 2022

Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY

Object number2022.5.1-30

Label TextStatement given by architects Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake of Kieran Timberlake Architecture:

Early in our careers, we were both Fellows in Architecture at the American Academy in Rome, Stephen in 1980-81, James in 1982-83. During our respective residencies, we each recorded what we were seeing and experiencing in Rome and – more broadly – in all of Italy. We did so largely through the lens of drawing and photography.

The drawings we each made during that year continue to be central to who we are as architects. Our approaches and collections could not differ more, but together they represent how our practice continues to conceive and make architecture to this day. James explored Rome and Italy through understanding a history of Italian drawings, draughtsmen, and their designs/products over the centuries; then drawing numerous buildings produced from the Renaissance through modern Italian architecture, utilizing an array of graphic media and tactics, exploring ‘abstraction’ while each offered a specific way of seeing anew.

Stephen’s approach was more encyclopedic. He recorded his observations and thoughts on thousands of index cards, as seen here in his work, Palazzo Massimo/Peruzzi, Rome, analysis. Drawings of all different sorts here mingle with words, all in service of deeply penetrating and recording a way of seeing form and place. Both ways of drawing are a form of research that underpins all we do.

For our gifts of work to the National Academy of Design, we have made selections from drawings completed during our residencies at the American Academy in Rome. Our respective works focus on a single work of architecture, Palazzo Massimo, located in Rome and designed by Baldassare Peruzzi in 1530-32. James’s drawing portrays the remarkable curvature and profiling of the Palazzo facade along the Via del Corso. Stephen’s collection of thirty index cards disassembles and reassembles spatial sequences from the city beyond, through a suite of courtyards, as the architect searches for light in the deep urban site.

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