Villa
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villa
Villa
Villa
villa
Villa
a type of country house with a garden or park. The first villas appeared on the territory of present-day Italy in the third century B.C. During the second and first centuries B.C. they were found throughout the Mediterranean region.
The most common type of villa during this period was the villa rustica, an architectural group of residential and farm buildings that formed the center of a rural estate. It usually consisted of the landowner’s section, where the master and his family lived, and the farm section (housing for slaves, cattle sheds, barns, and so forth). The villa’s buildings were all grouped around an open (later, closed) courtyard. The villa urbana, which was located in the country, was intended primarily for pleasure and recreation (for example, the Villa of Mysteries near Pompeii, second and first centuries B.C.). During the second and first centuries B.C. the owner’s residence was separated from the farm buildings and frequently decorated by mosaics and wall paintings. In addition to the early type of villa, large villas were built (especially under the empire), surrounded by specially laid out, usually terraced parks with pavilions, sculpture, and fountains.
This kind of villa—the country residential estate of an aristocrat—was further developed in the 15th through the 17th century in Italy. During the Renaissance the villa group began to have an axial composition, with the main building—the casino—in the center. A great deal of importance was attached to architectural solutions for the support walls and the terraces, which were connected by staircases with numerous flights. Combined with landscaped areas, these elements visually united the house and the park with the surrounding landscape (the villa of Pope Julius III in Rome, 1550-55, architects G. Vignola, B. Ammanati, and G. Vasari; the Villa Rotonda near Vicenza, 1551-67, architect A. Palladio, completed during 1580-91 by the architect V. Scamozzi; and Cambiaso near Genoa, 1548, architect G. Alessi). The natural grace and simplicity of the Renaissance villa gave way to the ornate baroque villa’s intricate, fanciful composition, which was designed to produce a sprawling effect by means of the viewer’s consecutive perception of separate buildings in the group. During the baroque period, the large park with pavilions, statues, and cascades formed an artificial, multilevel landscape, the view of which was completed by the casino (the Aldobrandini villa in Frascati, 1598-1603, architects G. della Porta and C. Maderno; completed by C. Fontana).
In the 19th century comfortable, private residences with gardens or parks in the wealthier sections of a city or suburb or at a resort were called villas. In the 20th century the term “villa” is often applied to any comfortable, isolated country home for one family. Because many of these houses are built to individual orders without the usual restrictions on the architect, the construction of country homes in contemporary architecture abroad is often experimental. In construction and planning, new solutions are being sought to create maximum comfort and unity with surrounding nature (for example, the villa in Garches, Haut-de-Seine Department, France, 1927, designed by Le Corbusier).
REFERENCES
Vseobshchaia istoriia arkhitektury, vol. 2. Moscow, 1948; vol. 5, Moscow, 1967.Masson, G. Ville e palazzi d’ltalia. Milan, 1959.
Le Corbusier. Vers Une Architecture. Paris [n.d.].
Ruprecht, B. “Villa: Zur Geschichte eines Ideals.” In the collection Probleme der Kunstwissenschaft, vol. 2. Berlin, 1966. Pages 210-50.
V. I. KUZISHCHIN and V. M. DAMUNOV