Martha Pollak

The Early Modern Treatise on Military Architecture: Discourse and Representation

The treatise on military architecture, which proliferated in the late

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is an important offshoot of the

architectural treatise, a type of illustrated text that disseminated

architectural knowledge (about the classical vocabulary of architecture,

proportions, building practices and history) to an increasingly larger

reading public. It was often authored and illustrated by practicing

architects, who suggested methods for the fortification and defense of

cities. Through the examination of the ambiguous role of the

seventeenth-century urban citadel (intensely theorized and often

constructed), I will demonstrate that the treatises on military

architecture reoriented the discourse about the city and inflected its

physical form, thus contributing to the representation and nomenclatures

of the modern city.

The treatises on military architecture claimed the interest of military

commanders and sovereign rulers with solutions for the "armament race" of

the early modern period. Filled with images of fortifications (walls,

gates, glacis) and views of cities, these treatises offer an important

document for our understanding of architectural representation. Initially

borrowing the instruments of architectural representation-plan, section,

elevation-the practitioners of military architecture soon developed

sophisticated survey methods, and familiarity with abstract geometry.

Their designs mark the transition from individual buildings to the

consideration of the entire city as the subject of architectural

composition.

My paper will focus on the pentagonal citadel, adopted in the early modern

period for the defense and control of numerous European and American

cities. My examples will be drawn from the treatises which I have

analyzed in my Military Architecture, Cartography and the Representation

of the Early Modern City (Chicago, 1991) and a chapter on the urban

citadel that is part of my current study, Cities at War: Baroque

Fortifications and Military Urbanism.