#filarete

From the circle to the starred square

Vitruvius’ predilection for the circle and the square is not a geometric preference but a cosmological gesture: perfect figures that mirror the ideal human body and, once transposed into the urban plan, transform the city into an extension of the microcosm. The walls follow a regular perimeter, the streets intersect along the cardinal axes, and the urbs aligns itself with the cosmos like an organism rediscovering its measure within universal order. In Sforzinda by Filarete, the form arises from the intersection of two rotated squares that generate an eight‑pointed star: a mandalic figure capable of evoking terrestrial motion and inscribing the city within a temporal as well as spatial dynamic. Here the plan is not merely structure but soul — a material and spiritual body that radiates meaning.For Vitruvius, the architect is a priest who deciphers the laws of nature and translates their meaning into built form; in Filarete, by contrast, the shape of the city becomes a generative shadow, a matrix that influences the life of its citizens like a permanent symbolic field. If in Vitruvius priority is given to the modulus, in Sforzinda it is the stellar grid that guarantees unity: each building becomes a tessera of the cosmic mosaic, part of a figure that precedes and orients dwelling. Both models define the city as an expanded temple. Yet while Vitruvius achieves harmony through an almost biological equilibrium, grounded in the commensurability between parts and whole, Filarete reaches it through a figure that absorbs astronomical time and returns it as urban form. In both cases the same truth emerges: architecture is not what the eyes see, but what the intellect recognizes as the echo of a higher order. Matter is a veil — when properly arranged, it reveals our most authentic face.

Ideal Vitruvian Schemes

Notes from a Future Past

Filippo Lo Presti, 2026

Filarete’s meditation on the ideal city is fully inscribed within the symbolic constellation that, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, binds architecture to the order of the heavens. Antonio Averlino, known as Filarete, in the treatise dedicated to Francesco Sforza, conceives the plan of Sforzinda as the intersection of two rotated squares, from whose interlocking emerges a sixteen‑sided figure perfectly circumscribed by a circle. This is not a mere geometric exercise: the form arises as a cosmic ideogram, a device that translates celestial logic into urban sign, according to a principle analogous to the Vitruvian city oriented to the winds. Filarete aligns the projecting vertices of the defensive walls with the cardinal points and assigns to the eight towers the names of the eight winds, adopting a personal yet astrologically coherent nomenclature. The entire project is accompanied by astrological indications concerning the propitious date for beginning construction: the foundation of the city is not a technical act but a ritual that must occur under a favorable sky, so that the urban form may participate in cosmic harmony. The correspondences with Vitruvius also emerge in the conception of the building as a living organism. Filarete describes architecture as a body endowed with “entrances and exits like a man,” subject to life and death, and inevitably destined to decay with time. Attention to temporality, to the transience that governs all earthly things, is explicit and programmatic: the building is not a static object but a being that participates in the natural cycle, a fragment of the world that is born, grows, and declines. In this way, Filarete’s architecture assumes an almost animistic quality: the ideal city is not merely a mental construction but a symbolic organism that breathes with the cosmos. Even if many of his visions remained imaginary buildings and fantastic spaces, they reveal a profound tension toward a cosmological urbanism in which form is always the reflection of a higher order and the architect becomes a mediator between earth and sky.

Design of New Words

The Ideal Vitruvian Schemes

Filippo Lo Presti 1989

Filarete’s meditation on the ideal city is fully inscribed within the symbolic constellation that, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, binds architecture to the order of the heavens. Antonio Averlino, known as Filarete, in the treatise dedicated to Francesco Sforza, conceives the plan of Sforzinda as the intersection of two rotated squares, from whose interlocking emerges a sixteen‑sided figure perfectly circumscribed by a circle. This is not a mere geometric exercise: the form arises as a cosmic ideogram, a device that translates celestial logic into urban sign, according to a principle analogous to the Vitruvian city oriented to the winds. Filarete aligns the projecting vertices of the defensive walls with the cardinal points and assigns to the eight towers the names of the eight winds, adopting a personal yet astrologically coherent nomenclature. The entire project is accompanied by astrological indications concerning the propitious date for beginning construction: the foundation of the city is not a technical act but a ritual that must occur under a favorable sky, so that the urban form may participate in cosmic harmony. The correspondences with Vitruvius also emerge in the conception of the building as a living organism. Filarete describes architecture as a body endowed with “entrances and exits like a man,” subject to life and death, and inevitably destined to decay with time. Attention to temporality, to the transience that governs all earthly things, is explicit and programmatic: the building is not a static object but a being that participates in the natural cycle, a fragment of the world that is born, grows, and declines. In this way, Filarete’s architecture assumes an almost animistic quality: the ideal city is not merely a mental construction but a symbolic organism that breathes with the cosmos. Even if many of his visions remained imaginary buildings and fantastic spaces, they reveal a profound tension toward a cosmological urbanism in which form is always the reflection of a higher order and the architect becomes a mediator between earth and sky.

Design of New Words

The Ideal Vitruvian Schemes

Filippo Lo Presti 1989

"Sforzinda" is one of the first ideal city designed in the 15th century by renaissance architect Filarete (aka Antonio Averlino) as part of his "Trattato di Architettura"

allegedly Filarete was inspired to by Leon Battista Alberti's architectural treatise "De Re Aedificatoria"

note: each tip of the 8-point star had a defense tower!