The modern study of Renaissance architecture departed from the archeological, philological, and moralizing approaches that had characterized the study of Greek and Gothic architecture and produced the historicist design of the nineteenth century. Heinrich Wölfflin and Goeffrey Scott analysed Renaissance architecture as a part of the history of human consciousness and as a style. In their work the buildings were formal compositions and the lessons that they contained for architects were universal ones about viewer response and design. This was an approach that directed students to a philosophical view of history and prepared the way for the rejection of history as a direct model for contemporary architecture. Siegfried Giedeon, the author of Space, Time and Architecture, was a student of Wölfflin.

This course studies the formation of Renaissance style in its historical context. It examines the great monuments and the iconic figures whose names were synonymous with the discipline of architecture for centuries: Brunelleschi, Alberti, Bramante, Michelangelo, Palladio. It also studies the methods of design and construction in this period, the organization of workshops, the invention of the architectural treatise and the introduction of images into the discourse about architecture.