Fellow, Garden and Landscape Studies
In this study, David explores the shared ideas and approaches that informed the new disciplines of architecture and natural history during the early modern period. Early modern natural historians and early modern designers and builders shared similar objectives, as both sought to better understand nature in all of its infinite complexity. By putting the early modern fascination with natural history into dialogue with early modern architectural practices, we can begin to question the established distinctions between these fields, and recognize the essential importance of the study of nature for architects and builders as a means to understand both their work and themselves.
David Karmon is Professor of History of Art and Architecture and Head of the Architectural Studies program at Holy Cross and the chief editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. His writings include Architecture and the Senses in the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 2021), The Ruin of the Eternal City (Oxford University Press, 2011), and numerous articles and essays in journals, anthologies, and exhibition catalogues.