Public Architecture as Everyday Object in Early Modern Society
In recent decades, “everyday life” has drawn scholarly attention in the fields of early modern cultural studies (T. Bennett, T. Ingold, C. Richardson). By probing the production, exchange, utilisation and display of man-made objects, from painting, sculpture, buildings, decorative furniture, religious items, to personal items such as clothing, tableware, and textiles, scholars have underlined the instrumental functions of material objects in consolidating and regulating social order. For instance, it has been suggested that the elite classes’ consumption behaviour not only reflects their taste, fashion, wealth, pride and identity, but it also establishes their superiority (M. O’Malley, E. Welch). Similarly, the ways in which artisans interacted with and utilised everyday objects offers us a way to understand the social status of non-elite groups (P. Erichsen).
While material culture studies focus on the object-based urban society, it is worth mentioning that scholars tend to consider only domestic objects. Meanwhile, architectural commissioned for public usage, in particular those large-scaled civic monuments, buildings, and spaces, have not yet been fully explored (E. Campbell, S. Cavallo, S. Evangelisti). Such an oversight is probably constrained by the mainstream of art and architectural historical studies, in which architecture are commonly categorised as fine arts, and thus a field of visual, rather than material, culture studies (M. Yonan). However, the inherent accessibility of public architecture to people across social hierarchy, as well as their omnipresence in various types of urban activities, ranging from the ecclesiastical to the civic, could evidently shape contemporaries’ urban experience in ways that deserve further investigation. Some of the ways in which the materiality of public buildings inhabited the sphere of communal space include the processes by which they were commissioned, produced, their materials selected, and finally how they were presented.
Taking public, communal buildings as material evidence of the interrelationship between architecture, space, urban residents, and their daily experience, the goal of this panel is twofold: first, by exploring people’s utilisation of public buildings, it seeks to broaden the focus of current material culture studies. Secondly, by illustrating contemporaries’ everyday routine and behaviour around public buildings and spaces, it aims to illustrate a more inclusive imagery of early modern urban daily life.