Chapter 8 shows that Palladio’s design for the unbuilt wings would have reinforced the villa’s hybrid character through their allusions to a range of urban and rural building types. Their evocation of the ancient triumphal arch would have made a bold claim for Pisani hegemony in Montagnana.

Chapter 2 traces the biography of the patron, Venetian patrician Francesco Pisani (1509–67), addressing his family affairs, political offices, and cultural patronage in Venice. An investigation of where and how Pisani lived when in his native city clarifies the reasons for his investment in his mainland estate.

The Introduction argues that Villa Pisani at Montagnana does not conform to the conventional definition of the Renaissance villa as a second home. Instead, it shares certain functions and architectural and decorative features of the urban palace, usually considered the principal seat of an elite family. This case study reveals how Palladio gave architectural expression to a way of living among Venetian patricians in which the villa had come to play a fundamental role.

The Epilogue traces the influence and afterlife of Villa Pisani in domestic architecture of the southern colonies of British North America, as transmitted by eighteenth-century English translations of Palladio’s treatise.

Chapter 1 analyzes Palladio’s design for Villa Pisani in relation to ancient and Renaissance architectural theory, local building practice, and his own written and built works. Although Palladio’s approach to typology was more flexible than generally understood, the building is recognizably a hybrid of a villa and a palace, which can be linked to Alberti’s conception of the suburban residence (hortus suburbanus).

If Dietterlin’s Architectura epitomized the empirical turn in architectural image-making, the preparatory drawings for the treatise’s etchings show how such firsthand research in art, architecture, and science coalesced in drawing as a context for managing visual research. The 164 surviving Architectura drawings constitute an ideal case study for this phenomenon, for they stand as one of the largest corpora of sixteenth-century architectural drawings made north of the Alps. Dietterlin’s Architectura drawings are compared with drawings from Bramante and Raphael’s St. Peter’s workshop as well as botanical and geological drawings by natural historians Conrad Gessner, Ulisse Aldrovandi, and other natural philosophers. The comparison reveals that, during the sixteenth century, tactics for making images and managing information – such as cutting, collaging, annotation, folding and counterproofing – came to inform both architectural and scientific drawing. Indeed, artists, architects, printers, and natural philosophers began to trade tactics of drawing as a means for managing visual information, thereby codeveloping empirical artistic techniques for producing knowledge. Through its drawings, Dietterlin’s Architectura promoted the new, empirical methodology of architectural image-making.

Introduction

As access to funding becomes increasingly competitive, with ever closer scrutiny to ensure wise investment and value for money, writing an internal business case is now an essential skill across all areas of library practice. But I believe it is also an area where libraries can leverage their unique position. At the nexus of professional services and the faculty, library business cases can be well placed to garner wide support, deliver on multiple agendas and strategies and derive maximum benefit.

However, faced with a blank sheet of virtual paper, writing a business case can feel a daunting task. This chapter aims to demystify the process and provide an outline of the key steps and considerations needed to make a great idea happen or to address a known need. This guidance can apply to any area of library work, including building projects, new or replacement technology, increased staff resource, a change in the delivery of a service or a new way of working. And it is of course likely that, with many estates-related projects, all of the above will be included.

The need for a business case

There are many reasons why an argument for a change or new course of action might be proposed, but before a business case is started I find it helpful to consider some key questions, such as the following.

• • Is there an identifiable benefit for the organisation?

• • Is there a good reason or clear drivers for the change being proposed?

• • What options have been considered?

• • Are the costs and the benefits clear?

• • Who are the key stakeholders and what is their interest in the proposal?

• • Have assumptions been tested and the required evidence gathered?