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Encyclopedia Ichnographica

Tafuri, Manfredo

Tafuri, Manfredo

Tafuri, Manfredo; architectural historian and theorist; b. November 4, 1935; d. February 3, 1994.
Architecture and Utopia - Design and Capitalist Development (1976) and The Sphere and the Labyrinth - Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s (1987) entitle the texts within which Tafuri lays out his interpretation of Piranesi's Ichnographia Campus Martius.

After an extended independent analysis of the Ichnographia Campus Martius, it becomes evident that Tafuri misreads Piranesi's large plan in most cases. Tafuri's texts indicates no research of the plan beyond simply looking at it and subsequently offering a description of what Tafuri thinks he sees. (In fact, a careful reading of both Tafuri's texts and the text of Fasolo from 1956, clearly shows that Fasolo's text greatly influenced Tafuri's observations.) For example, in calling out the various axes delineated within the Ichnographia, Tafuri notes the axis running through the Bustum Hadriani, but he fails to recognize it's symbolic function as the Axis of Death; nor does he identify the Axis of Life that runs perpendicular to the Axis of Death. Moreover, Tafuri marginally notes the semblance of an axis within the northeast sector of the plan, yet he never mentions that Piranesi labeled this axis the Equiria, place of the annual horse races instituted by Romulus in honor of Mars.

These are just two examples which plainly demonstrate that Piranesi's plan holds significant and coherent symbolic content, however, recognition of Piranesi's "carved in stone" symbolism necessarily negates Tafuri's primary thesis that the Ichnographia Campus Martius is utterly fragmented and devoid of "language." Ironically, had Tafuri not discounted the presence of language and instead actually translated the hundreds of Latin labels Piranesi applies throughout the plan, he would have concluded with a more accurate, if not also a more honest reading.

See eros et thanatos for an explication of the axis of life and the axis of death.

It is unfortunate that the subsequent 20th century Campo Marzio analyses of Allen, Bloomer, and Eisenman, build upon Tafuri's mistakes rather than correct them.

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