Architects and the 'Building World' from Chambers to Ruskin
Constructing Authority

This text examines how the authority of architects was created within the changing working practices of British architecture.

Brian Hanson (Author)

9781107403314, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 September 2011

394 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

Review of the hardback: '… the scholarship is impressive …' Architecture Today

This study peers behind the veil of architectural styles to the underlying social microcosm of the 'building world' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to examine how the fragile authority of the architect took root there. Bringing to architectural history methods more familiar from studies of the social content of poetry and painting, Brian Hanson is able to establish often surprising relationships between many of the key figures of the period - including Chambers, Soane, Barry, Pugin, Scott and Street - shedding light also on lesser figures, and on agencies as diverse as Freemasonry and magazine publishing. John Ruskin in particular emerges here in a different light, as do his arguments concerning 'The Nature of Gothic'. In line with rethinking of the pace of industrialization, and the dynamic between the metropolitan centres and the more slowly evolving 'fringes', Hanson concludes that in some respects Ruskin was closer to William Chambers than to William Morris.

Introduction
Part I: Section 1. 'The Shadow of their Wings': The Architect among Builders: 1. John Gwynn
2. William Chambers
3. The example of Chambers
Section 2. 'The Poetry of Architecture': The Architect above Builders: 4. Joseph Gwilt
5. John Soane
6. The example of Soane
Part II: Section 3. 'Mystery and Craft Are Gone By': The Poet's Descent: 7. A language of men
8. The pictorial art
Section 4. 'He Never Condescended': Coming to Terms with New Disciplines: 9. Charles Barry
10. Pugin
11. A. J. Beresford Hope and the Ecclesiologists
Part III: Section 5. 'Conjunctive All': The Sharing of Knowledge in Building: 12. John Britton
13. The Artizan
Section 6. 'Orthodoxy of Practice': The Builder and a New Freemasonry: 14. Josiah Hansom and The Builder
15. Alfred Bartholemew, The Builder and the freemasons of the Church
16. Bartholemew's College
17. Godwin's Builder
Part IV: Section 7. Ruskin's Changing Prospect: 18. Ruskin, Leeds, Lamb, and Loudon
19. The poetry of architecture
20. Modern Painters I and II
21. The Seven Lamps of Architecture
Part V: Section 8. Ruskin's Descent: 22. Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle
23. The Stones of Venice: James Fergusson and E. L. Garbett
24. Ruskin in 1854 and 1855
25. Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites
Part VI: Section 9. Incarnation: 26. Ruskin, G. G. Scott and the architectural museum
27. Ruskin, Acland, and the Oxford Museum
28. Deane and Woodward
29. Pre-Raphaelite painters and sculptors and the Oxford Museum
Part VII: Section 10. Ruskin's Reception: The 1850s and 1860s: 30. John Pollard Seddon and the 'puginisation' of Ruskin
31. G. E. Street: father of the Arts and Crafts
32. E. W. Godwin - the 'art-architect'
33. The architectural museum in the late 1850s
34. The failure of the Oxford Museum
35. Ruskin's lectures to architects
Part VIII. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Theory of architecture [AMA]