Ovale & Blicke Format: Paperback

The book explains how architectural techniques were deliberately

used to achieve the greatest possible impact on the viewer. The essays in this work captivate with their meticulous research and in-depth analysis, making them a pleasure to read for architects, architecture critics and advanced students.

Dominikus Zimmermann’s pilgrimage church of Our Lady and parish

church of St Peter and Paul in Steinhausen, built between 1728

and 1733, is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable creations of

Upper-Swabian Baroque architecture. Architectural history has devoted

considerable space to it, and yet there are important aspects

that have remained unnoticed and unexamined.

The first question that arises is that of the ovals on which the

building is based, whereby two different versions need to be examined:

the design drawing that the architect presented to his abbot

client and the completed building, which could be analyzed in detail

for the first time thanks to a recently created precise measurement.

In both cases, the result shows ambitious oval constructions that

deviate from the usual practice, as well as two fundamentally different

geometric approaches.

The second complex deals with peculiarities of perception. Here,

one must accord the Steinhausen church a prominent position.

Zimmermann designs the path into and through the church interior

as a sequence of stations, each characterized by different expectations

of what is to come – by illusory images of space that the viewer

creates in his imagination based on what he can perceive from

his respective vantage point. These images follow one another as

one walks through the church, they change, expectations are in a

state of constant metamorphosis, until finally the image of the last

station coincides with reality.

A concluding chapter is devoted to the question of whether, and

if so, to what extent Zimmermann’s Steinhausen spatial artwork can

be said to have a dialectical constitution of architecture, and which

dialectically related moments prove to be constitutive of a unity.

Fritz Barth, studied architecture at the University of Stuttgart and
the ETH in Zurich. He runs an architectural offices in Fellbach and
Berlin, holds the honorary professorship for building design at the
Bauhaus University in Weimar and is the author of a number of
books dealing with architecture and its environment, including a
study on the iconography of 16th century Italian gardens (Die Villa
Lante in Bagnaia, Edition Axel Menges 2001), as well as a detailed
study of the Melnikov House in Moscow (Konstantin Melnikov und
sein Haus/Konstantin Melnikov and his House, Edition Axel Menges
2015).

Achim Ilchmann headed the Analysis and System Theory department
at the Institute of Mathematics at the Technical University of
Ilmenau from 2000 to 2022. His research areas are adaptive control
of (non-linear) systems, the investigation of structural properties of
differential-algebraic systems, and the algebraic treatment of timevarying
linear systems. He regularly held and continues to hold seminars on philosophical problems in mathematics, and he has written three books on Rococo architecture.



Achim Illmann war von 2000 bis 2022 Lehrstuhlinhaber für »Analyse und Systemtheorie« am Institut für Mathematik der Technischen Universität Ilmenau. Seine Forschungsinteressen liegen im Bereich der adaptiven Regelung nichtlinearer Systeme, zeitabhängiger linearer Systeme und Differential-algebraischer Systeme. Darüber hinaus hielt und hält er regelmäßig Seminare zu philosophischen Aspekten der Mathematik. Er ist Verfasser einer Reihe von Büchern zur Systemtheorie, zu Ovalen im Barock und zur Rokoko-Architektur.