Over the decades since his publications, contemporary architects, urban planners, and a few architectural historians exploited the term to characterize certain urban streets; none explicitly interrogated its efficacy as an analytical tool. In part this restraint was due to the challenges of reconstructing entire historical cityscapes, in part to a lack of clarity about the application of the armature as an operational, projective apparatus. In the early twenty-first century scholars now have the technologies as well as the mindset to explore the Roman urban armature as a tool that is applied to, rather than derived from, ancient remains. To test the efficacy of the approach, this study examines Nysa in Caria, Turkey . The city is an ideal case study for the proposed investigation as the scant traces of the urban plan and monuments as well as the dramatic topography forestall attempts to define a potent pathway.
Project led by Diane Favro, UCLA
