Architecture Engineers Award

  This study challenges the long-standing claim that Michelangelo Buonarroti conceptually isolated Ancient Roman architectural forms through abstract ideation. Instead, it argues that Michelangelo’s architectural innovation emerged from close engagement with material conditions rather than purely intellectual abstraction. By reframing his design process through a material lens, the research repositions Michelangelo as a practitioner whose architectural thinking was deeply rooted in tactile interaction, craft, and material affordances. Reassessing Michelangelo’s Relationship with Antiquity The paper critically revisits historiographical narratives that portray Michelangelo as reinventing Roman architecture through abstract conceptual manipulation. It proposes that his engagement with Ancient Roman forms was not detached from material reality but grounded in direct interaction with architectural fragments. This reassessment questions canonical interpretations of Renaissance creati...