Bek,Lise. — Towards paradise on earth. Modern space conception in architecture. A creation of Renaissance humanism.

[Odense], Odense University Press, [1980]. 375 pp. B./w. frontispice & 107 b./w. ills on plts. Orig. softcover. 8vo. - Cover worn along the extrimities; spine sl. discol. (Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, IX Supplementum).An influential theoretical study in the history of architecture by Danish art historian Lise Bek. This book examines how Renaissance humanists (c. 15th and 16th centuries) rediscovered classical antiquity and thereby unleashed a revolution in spatial perception. It builds a fundamental bridge between two eras: it explains how the modern way we think about space (architecture and urban planning) did not originate in the 20th century, but has its roots in the Renaissance. It demonstrates how architecture transformed from a purely functional or medieval-religious craft into a conscious, geometric, and human-controlled discipline in which man ("the measure of all things") takes center stage. Instead of buildings being designed purely from a religious or purely utilitarian perspective, space was now ordered around the human scale, symmetry, and mathematical harmony. Through the invention and application of mathematical perspective, architects (such as Alberti and Brunelleschi) learned to rationalize and survey space as a geometric whole.