ABSTRACT
The roles and filters of urban designers in the process of city-making evolved dramatically during the Renaissance with the humanist desire for visual order, the discovery of mathematical perspective, and new conceptions of space related to time and experiential movement. Early in Design of Cities, Edmund Bacon notes that a fundamental shift occurred from the medieval city, which was composed intuitively, perceived simultaneously from different viewpoints, and well integrated to its environment – to a perception of the Renaissance city that was dependent on the personal filters of designers at specific geographic locations and moments in time. The rise of one-point perspective in design practice elevated the individual eyes of designers and their particular focus to new importance (typically targeted at works of art or ecclesiastical and civic buildings of the powerful). In addition to reinforcing the power of capital and elite interests, Renaissance designs based in visual order and one-point perspective emphasized harmony in building design, the linearity of streets, and faster movement through the city. As a result, designers occupied a heightened role in urban decision-making processes, either in predicating new designs or in responding to the design of others (see the section on “Principle of the Second Man” herein). Despite Bacon’s suggestion that the form of a city is “determined by the multiplicity of decisions made by the people who live in it,” the influence of the Renaissance designer to evoke a singular vision suggests anything but a participatory multi-stakeholder process of design. Renaissance reliance on the designer’s perspective elevated the role of the design eye and created a new elite class that was able to direct the focus of others and create perceptual harmonies where none previously existed.
