Educational/Research Objectives

Approaching my final semester in Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, I am given the opportunity to investigate a thesis of interests in painting and how it speaks to architecture. I will be working with the narrative of the reckless painter known as Caravaggio, as he inhabits the island of Malta.

I am proposing a project that seeks a conversation with another restless mind.

It is the product of his instability that drives my quest to make spatial sense of the scene before me.

To realize the architecture my mind inhabits while lost in a work.

Amongst the composition of blackness, it is the precise placement of small moments of light that allow me to inhabit the scene. In the act of becoming transfixed through means of lighting, composition, and subject I enter the space. Within the red room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I lose myself in the same two scenes created by the painter Caravaggio. Returning to produce the same set of drawings from the same set of paintings week after week, my mind finds release in the exploration of the dark composition. It is in this transfixed state of observation and drawing that there is a retreat and I begin a conversation with its restless creator. A painting as the byproduct of instability, and a lifestyle of fleeing from city to city triggers in me an attempt to make spatial sense of where my mind travels, as I follow the painter. In the creation of a narrative, I would inhabit a series of spaces through a series of drawings and buildings, as informed by the works of Caravaggio traveling from city to city.

In researching the numerous cities Caravaggio inhabited in his short lifetime, I am drawn to the narrative of his time spent on the island of Malta. As someone of Maltese heritage, I am drawn to the sites in which the painter existed, as an honored Knight of Malta, the huge scale of painting produced while on the small island, and the Fort St. Angelo where he was eventually imprisoned for his violent behavior, and where he would plot a dramatic escape from the island. This exploration will ultimately inform the creation and program of a dwelling for a restless mind to be partially sited in Malta.

Travel Summary

Travel Plan I am proposing to travel the island of Malta, specifically the two cities of Valletta and Birgu.

Estimated Costs/Funding Support $1350

Dates of Travel 4/15/11 -4/23/11

Valletta In the capital of Valletta I would conduct historical and cultural research on potential sites, and the existing city through a series of drawings.

University of Malta I would make a trip to the University of Malta in Valletta, where I have been in recent contact with a faculty member who specializes in the history of Caravaggio and has published his findings on the work produced while he was part of the Order of the Knights of Malta.

Birgu – Fort St. Angelo In Birgu, Malta I would visit the Fort St. Angelo which was once the headquarters of the Knights, and the eventual prison for Caravaggio. The fort today is a large and complicated structure that has fallen into disarray. It was recently opened for the addition of potential program into the fort, which is something I am interested in looking at. How a forty foot wall scaled t by the painter on his escape to sea, translates into contemporary use.

Painting Visit the sites of the paintings themselves. I would produce drawn studies of the lighting and composition, within the architecture that houses each painting.

Throughout the entire trip, I would generate a series of drawings as I see and experience the cities, as a way of recording my travels, and seeking a potential site for the final stages of my thesis.