CHARLES MOORE PIAZZA D ITALIA , NEW

ORLEANS.

CHARLES WILLARD MOORE

The secret to originality is

carefully concealing ones
sources. Charles Moore
[1925-1993] American
architect,educator, writer..

About the Architect

CHARLES MOORE

Born-October 31, 1925

Benton Harbor,Michigan

Died-December 16, 1993 (aged 68)

Austin,Texas

Higher Education - University of Michigan B.Arch,Hon.D.Arch

-Princeton University M.Arch, Ph.D

Design Motto - Moore wanted architecture to recapture a lost sense

of place each commission was an opportunity to highlight what the ancients

called genius loci ,or special attributes of a site.

WORKS :
The influential Sea Ranch (1963) planned community in Sonoma County,
California .(with landscape architect Lawrence Halprin)
The Faculty Club at University of California, Santa Barbara, (1968) with William
Turnbull.
Kresge College (1971) at University of California Santa Cruz.
The exuberant,postmodernarchetypePiazza d'Italia(1978), an
urbanpublic plazainNew Orleans,Louisiana.
The Beverly Hills Civic Center (1992) in Beverly Hills, California.
National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan (1992)
The California Center for the Arts, Escondido in Escondido, California (1993).
The Haas School of Business (1995) at the University of California, Berkeley.
Lurie Tower at the University of Michigan (1995)
The Preview Center (now a Bank of America branch) in Celebration, Florida (1996).
The Williams College Museum of Art addition in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
His last work, the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, Washington.

About the Architect

Charles Moore:
Another Post Modern architect
who was a contemporary of
Venturi

Affected by Louis Kahns feelings

for the architectural past

Major structures

Dormitory Complex, Kresge

College, CA
Piazza dItalia, New
Orleans, LA

About the Architect

Charles Moore- Early Life :
Charles Willard Moore was born in 1925 in Benton Harbor, Michigan. A former
school teacher, Moore's mother recognized his gifts early on, and through
encouragement in self-education and frequent trips across the United States, the
young Moore developed a remarkable sense of place aided by a photographic
memory.
Too young to serve in World War II, Moore spent those years as an student of
architecture at the University of Michigan. There he came under the wing of Dean
Roger Bailey, who would expand his cultural horizons.
Upon graduation in 1947, Moore went to San Francisco, attracted by the European
qualities of the city, and the legacy of the Bay Region Vernacular. He apprenticed for
several offices: Mario Corbett, Joseph Allen Stein, and Clark & Beuttler. Moore was
registered as an architect by his 21st birthday.
Hoping to teach, but not having been to Europe, Moore applied for and was awarded
Cranbrook Academy's Booth Travel Fellowship. Between 1949 and 1950, Moore
traveled throughout Europe and Northern Africa, where he watercolored,
photographed, wrote, and even made 16mm films of various architectural
monuments.

About the Architect

Charles Moore Early Life :
With his first teaching job waiting for him, Moore returned from Europe and drove his

imported Citroen 2CV to Salt Lake City. Moore reveled in this teaching experience,
remarkable, he later recalled, because he and his colleagues were able to invent an entire
architectural curriculum, without an established orthodoxy to counter their efforts.
Anticipating a draft notice in 1950, Charles Moore enlisted, trained, and was sent to Seoul,

Korea, serving as lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers. Some of his work included the
design of simple structures such as schools and chapels. His trips on leave to Japan,
however, would profoundly shape his work to come, after experiencing architectural and
landscape works of tremendous spirit and subtlety.
In the hopes of advancing his own studies, Moore, with the aid of the GI Bill, enrolled at

Princeton University upon discharge. He arrived there in 1954 where he immediately formed
important relationships with fellow students who would remain lifelong friends and
collaborators, including William Turnbull, Jr., Donlyn Lyndon, Richard Peters, and Hugh
Hardy. Moore's work at Princeton was influenced by its Dean Jean Labatut, professors
Enrico Peressutti, George Rowley, and especially Louis Kahn, for whom he served as a Post
Doctoral Teaching Assistant. Moore completed a Master's Degree and Ph.D. in only three
years, writing his dissertation on Water and Architecture.

About the Architect

Charles Moore taught at six universities while simultaneously maintaining his

architectural practice and writing. He began his teaching career at the University of
Utah in 1950, when the architecture program was in its founding stages.
He left in 1954 to enter the PhD program in architecture at Princeton. After his
graduation in 1957, Moore spent a year there as a teaching assistant before moving to
the University of California, Berkeley, where he was appointed Associate Professor. He
served as Architecture Department Chairman at University of California, Berkeley from
1962 until his departure in 1965.
From 1965 to 1970, Moore served as Chairman, and then Dean, of the Architecture
Department at Yale University. In 1967, he created the Yale Building Project, an
ethically-minded construction project for first-year graduate students.
He stayed on as a professor once his term as Dean ended, until 1975, when he accepted
a faculty position at the University of California, Los Angeles that included joining
Urban Innovations Group (UIG), a teaching practice at the UCLA Department of
Architecture and Urban Planning. In 1985, Moore took on his final teaching position as
the ONeil Ford Chair of Architecture, at the University of Texas at Austin.

About the Architect

Writing was a significant part of Moore's contribution to architecture. He authored numerous

books, articles, and essays, often collaborating with other architects and scholars.
Some of his notable publications include:The

Place of Houses(1974), with Gerald

Allen and Donlyn Lyndon;Body, Memory, and Architecture(1977), with
Kent Bloomer;Dimensions: Space, shape & scale in architecture(1976),
with Gerald Allen;Los Angeles: The City Observed(1984), with Regula
Campbell and Peter Becker;The Poetics of Gardens(1988), with William
Mitchell and William Turnbull, Jr.;Chambers for a Memory
Palace(1994), with Donlyn Lyndon; and Water and Architecture(1994)
as well as essays, such as "You Have to Pay for the Public Life.

An avid traveler, Moore documented his extensive travels through painting, photography, and

collecting folk art and toys.

He was awarded the Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education and the American

Institute of Architects Gold Medal for the scope and importance of his contributions to architecture.
Charles Moore died in Austin, Texas, on December 16th, 1993.

PIAZZA D ITALIA

PIAZZA D ITALIA
Piazza dItalia was designed by Charles Moore in conjunction with New
Orleans based Perez Architects.
The plaza was commissioned to recognize the contributions of Italian culture in
New Orleans.
The plaza was part of a larger plan to rejuvenate part of the warehouse district.
Perez Architects created infill buildings along Tchoupitoulas Street, assisting with
the rehabilitation of historic buildings on the block.
Built from 1975 1979, the Piazza dItalia fell almost immediately into disuse
and disrepair. Partial renovations were done in 2004 in conjunction with the
opening of the adjacent Loews Hotel.
In design, the Piazza dItalia and Charles Moore are firmly associated with
Postmodernism.
At least into the 1950s, the Modern movement was the dominant theory in design.

Architects such as Robert Venturi and Charles Moore pushed against Modernism,
feeling that it defined what design should be and excluding everything that did not
fall within that definition.

The

PIAZZA D ITALIA
POST-MODERNISM INFLUENCE :
Postmodernism rejected absolute distinctions, strict definitions, and restrictive rules.

Moore in particular was concerned about what was excluded by Modernism. He

preferred to consider what could be included by design, not excluded. In this light,
Postmodernism embraced the ornament and historical architecture that had been
explicitly rejected by Modernism.
Moore stood out with designs that ranged from whimsical to flamboyant, including
projects such as Sea Ranch, the UCSB Faculty Club, and Kresge College at UCSC. The
Piazza dItalia does not represent the initiating project in Postmodernism, but rather it
is one of the prominent defining moments in the rejection of Modernism.
Much of previous Postmodern work, even Moores projects, had involved adding
various elements to buildings to create an architecture of inclusion. The Piazza dItalia
could be regarded as the endpoint of that process, rejecting all elements of Modernism.
The Piazza dItalia was both acclaimed and reviled by critics.
However, no one movement has secured the dominant position previously held by
Modernism

PIAZZA D ITALIA
ThePiazza d'Italiais an urbanpublic plazalocated at

Lafayette and Commerce Streets in downtownNew Orleans,

Louisiana
It is controlled by the Piazza d'Italia Development Corporation, a subdivision of
New Orleans city government. Completed in 1978 according to a design by
noted post-modernist Charles Moore and Perez Architects of New Orleans, the
Piazza d'Italia debuted to widespread acclaim on the part of artists and
architects.
Deemed an architectural masterpiece even prior to its completion, the Piazza
in fact began to rapidly deteriorate as the development surrounding it was
never realized.
By the turn of the new millennium, the Piazza d'Italia was largely unfrequented
by and unknown to New Orleanians, and was sometimes referred to as the first
"postmodern ruin".
The conversion of the adjacent Lykes Center to the Loews Hotel, New Orleans,
completed in 2003, was accompanied by the full restoration of the Piazza
d'Italia (accomplished by 2004).

PIAZZA D ITALIA
Most of Moores buildings have a theatrical flair. They are whimsical

playful impish as Moore himself. The structure that best shows this
flamboyance is the Piazza dItalia (1975-1978) in New Orleans.
Brightly colored superficial as a Hollywood stage set, the composition of
arcades, fountains, and mosaics has all the exuberance of this carnival city,
where Laissez les bons temps rouler (let the good times roll) is the motto.
Moore stressed the need for joy in architecture. An omnivorous usurper of
historical forms, he considered himself somewhere between litmus paper and
a piranha fish" in his relation to high and low culture.

Climate Of New Orleans:

Humid subtropicalwith short, generally mild winters and
hot, humid summers
Average temperature ranges from 53.4 F to 83.3 F .
The lowest temperature was 6 F
The highest temperature was 104 F

LOCATION
NEW ORLEANS,LOUSIANA,
LA ,UNITED STATES

PIAZZA D ITALIA
LOCATION OF PLAZA :
The location ultimately chosen for the Piazza d'Italia was a city block sited
in the semi-derelict upriver edge of downtown, four blocks from Canal
Street and the edge of the French Quarter and three blocks from
the Mississippi River.
By the mid-1970s, this area had already endured several decades of disfavor
and was littered with abandoned or barely utilized mid-19th-century
commercial row houses, early-20th-century industrial architecture and
obsolete port infrastructure.
Talking a cue from Boston, Baltimore and other aging port cities who had,
starting in the late 1960s, moved to redevelop their historic waterfronts, by
the 1970s New Orleans sought to spur investment in what later became
known as the Warehouse District.

SITE & GROUND LEVEL PLAN

PIAZZA D ITALIA
Initial Planning :
The original site plan by Moores Urban Innovations Group and New
Orleans-based partner firm August Perez and Associates encompassed
St Josephs Fountain, a monument to the local Italian community, and
a set of surrounding buildings that occupied a redevelopment block in
New Orleans Central Business District.
Sited beneath a generic 1960s tower block, the former Lykes Building
(1968), the Piazza was planned as a hidden courtyard glimpsed through
a neon-trimmed campanile and classical temple pergola on Poydras
Street, the Lafayette Archway, and narrow openings between
commercial buildings that were never developed. Of the original
scheme, only St Josephs Fountain was constructed.

PIAZZA D ITALIA
DESIGN FEATURES :
Themed on Italian geography and culture in honour of its clients, the space consists
of concentric rings of pale granite and dark slate paving, partial
colonnades in six classical orders (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan,
Composite and Moores own Deli Order), a 24m (80ft) map of Italy with
Sicily at its centre, and three rivers (the Arno, Po and Tiber) flowing
into pools representing the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic Seas.
Water, one of Moores obsessions, features throughout the Fountain and forms the
columns and the wetopes on the Tuscan order, the acanthus leaves of the
Corinthian capitals, and the egg-and-dart moulding of the Ionic order. Double
cartouches of Moores smiling face spout water from the Tuscan colonnade, a
reference to Lorenzo Ghibertis self-portrait on the Baptistery doors in Florence.
Constructed of slate, marble, cobblestones, mirrored tiles,
brightly coloured stucco, stainless steel and neon, the Piazza
contravenes standards of architectural decorum and taste, and flaunts its glib
silliness, tawdry materials and excessive, whimsical connotations.

 Capitals consist of water jets

shaping Corinthian leaves.
Stainless-steel Ionic volutes and
streams of water flowing down
columns to suggest fluting are a
mischievous takeoff on Classical
style. In a high-camp parody,
medallions shaped like Moores
head spout water.

 Moores structures were

often made of ephemeral

materialsplywood and
stuccobecause they were
cheaper and lighter. As that
of Piazza dItalia.
For Moore, permanence was
not attainable. He lamented
the presence of absence
the loss of identity in our
increasingly homogenized
culture, which he tried to
rectify.

Inscription :
The Piazza is inscribed in Latin, split into two sections.
On the left, FONS SANTCI JOSEPHI and on the right, HVNC FONTEM
CIVES NOVI AVRELIANI TOTO POPULO DONO DEDERUNT.
This translates as: The Fountain of Saint Joseph: This fountain is a
gift to all the people of New Orleans.

Piazza D Italia - Plaza - Night view

THANK YOU
ANKITA. SAJJANSHETTY.
VI SEM A SEC
1AA12AT008