Guarino Guarini and the design of staircases in italian treatises | Guarino Guarini y el proyecto de escaleras en los tratados italianos

This present study investigates the models of staircase proposed by Guarino Guarini (1624-1683) in Architettura Civile (1737). Through the reading of the texts and with the support of the few illustrations contained in the treatise, several graphic models have been elaborated, highlighting the geometric configuration and spatial features of the presented types. These models are then compared with those proposed by other Italian treatises, including those of Serlio and Palladio. Here the methods of geometric re-presentation used by Guarini to draw the staircases are significant, as is his criticism of the Spanish mathematician Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz (1606-1682) and his Architectura Civil Recta y Obliqua (1678-1679), which Guarini analysed in terms of spatial confi-guration and decoration of the staircase.