Etching with Light

Translating Piranesi’s Carceri

Spaces . Objects . Artworks . Research

Architectural History + Theory

Giovanni Battista Piranesi harnessed perspective drawing not as a reductive representational tool for producing seductive images, but rather as an experimental generator of architectural atmospheres. His Carceri etchings feature a dynamic interplay between shifting perspectives within a single composition, thereby reclaiming temporality and synesthetic experience.

I argue that the effect of Piranesi’s etchings is a direct result of the presence of ambiguous depth (which is not to say vagueness, or imprecision) in his work – a quality which is almost always excluded from architectural representations in practice.

In the Carceri, lines overlap and collide, seemingly solid forms exhibit transparency, and archways open ad infinitum. The drawings have a physicality which connects the hand of the maker to the body of the viewer.

Can drawings synthesize these seemingly opposed qualities, and be seen not as separate from, but rather in continuity with the act of building? In other words, how can the spirit of Piranesi’s imaginative world-making be injected into the realm of reality with all its delightful consequences?

How can ambiguous depth re-enter all phases of architectural making? How can architectural drawings use their legs to walk the line between real and imagined, visible and invisible, rather than planting themselves firmly on one side or the other?