“Renaissance architecture has traditionally been studied in terms of its form, and how the buildings of this period were products of theoretical principles. My work challenges this approach by suggesting that meaning came also from their materials and the nature of those materials. As a fellow at the American Academy, I had the opportunity to closely study hundreds of buildings in Rome, and saw how Renaissance architects developed a language of materials in tandem with classicizing forms. My discoveries were made possible not only through this on-site fieldwork, but also discussions with other fellows who were tackling issues of materiality in their own projects and simultaneously unraveling how architecture could speak through its material nature.” Michael Waters (2011 Fellow).

Michael Waters is currently a Senior Lecturer at Illinois Institute of Technology. He was recently awarded the Scott Opler Fellowship in Architectural History at Worcester College, Oxford. He is working on a book about materiality, ornament, and the column in the early Renaissance based on his dissertation written at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. He has published extensively on sixteenth-century architectural prints and drawings and curated the exhibit “Variety, Archeology, and Ornament: Renaissance Architectural Prints from Column to Cornice,” with Cammy Brothers, FAAR ’97, at the University of Virginia Art Museum in 2011. In addition to the Donald and Maria Cox Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize, he has held fellowships at the Getty Research Institute, Sir John Soane’s Museum, and Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.

The Home from Rome series is made possible by the new New Initiatives for Don Fund, a gift of Maria R. Cox.