Parametric Experiments on Palladio’s 5 by 3 Villas

This paper investigates and describes the parametric reconstruction of Palladio’s villas, using his treatise, I Quattro libri dell’architettura, as the primary source. The process starts with an extensive comparison of Palladio’s rooms’ ratios, the compositional rules of the villas’ plans, and the digital creation of parametric architectural elements. Finally, the process of parametric construction on three selected case studies of 5 by 3 villas—Villa Poiana, Villa Zeno, and Villa Thiene in Cicogna—is undertaken. The developed instrument offers an experimental laboratory in which different hypotheses of integration by the authors, or other scholars with reference to the sources, could be tested.