In the half century after the building of the Crystal Palace (1851), some architects, engineers, manufacturers and theorists believed that the fusion of iron and ornament would reconcile art and technology and create a new, modern architectural language. This book studies the development of mechanised architectural ornament in iron in nineteenth-century architecture, its reception and theorisation, and the contexts in which it flourished. As such, it offers new ways of understanding the notion of modernity in Victorian architecture.
Amidst the sea of squalid brick tenements and working-class two-up, two-down houses of late nineteenth-century London, new building types arose, large in scale and bold in their message: the triple-storied Queen Anne board schools, the mock Elizabethan settlement houses, an Arts and Crafts free public art gallery replete with mystic symbolism, and as first conceived, a neo-Byzantine pleasure palace for the working-classes.
Vilified by leading architectural modernists and Victorian critics alike, mass-produced architectural ornament in iron has received little sustained study since the 1960s; yet it proliferated in Britain in the half century after the building of the Crystal Palace in 1851 - a time when some architects, engineers, manufacturers, and theorists believed that the fusion of iron and ornament would reconcile art and technology and create a new, modern architectural language. Comprehensively illustrated and richly researched, Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain presents the most sustained study to date of the development of mechanised architectural ornament in iron in nineteenth-century architecture, its reception and theorisation by architects, critics and engineers, and the contexts in which it flourished, including industrial buildings, retail and seaside architecture, railway stations, buildings for export and exhibition, and street furniture. Appealing to architects, conservationists, historians and students of nineteenth-century visual culture and the built environment, this book offers new ways of understanding the notion of modernity in Victorian architecture by questioning and re-evaluating both Victorian and modernist understandings of the ideological split between historicism and functionalism, and ornament and structure.
These days it seems obvious that stupendous constructions like St Pancras Station should be preserved and restored. But as recently as the 1970s Glasgow’s superb St Enoch’s Hotel made way for a shopping centre, and in the 1960s St Pancras itself was also earmarked for demolition. “Victorian” was a term of abuse. Add in wartime bombing by the Luftwaffe, and town planners eager for ring roads and multi-storeys, and the destruction is shocking. This poignant, angry book, full of stunning images, chronicles the catastrophic swathe cut through Britain’s architectural heritage by the twentieth century’s sustained antipathy to the nineteenth, entirely through buildings that have disappeared. Of the 200 notable examples of Victorian architecture illustrated in this book, from the magnificent Imperial Institute in Kensington to the vast country house of Eaton Hall, not one still exists. A photograph is all we have left. As well as architectural causes célèbres like the Euston Arch and London’s Coal Exchange, Gavin Stamp turns up many lesser-known Victorian buildings, like the extraordinary Gothic battlements of Columbia Market in East London, or Chatsworth’s soaring glasshouse streamlined like a spaceship. Surprising, chastening, but also uplifting, Lost Victorian Britain is a memorable journey back into a world that should never have been lost.
The colonial architecture of the nineteenth century has much to tell us of the history of colonialism and cultural exchange. Yet, these buildings can be read in many ways. Do they stand as witnesses to the rapacity and self-delusion of empire? Are they monuments to a world of lost glory and forgotten convictions? Do they reveal battles won by indigenous cultures and styles? Or do they simply represent an architectural style made absurdly incongruous in relocation? Empire Building is a study of how and why Western architecture was exported to the Middle East and how Islamic and Byzantine architectural ideas and styles impacted on the West. The book explores how far racial theory and political and religious agendas guided British architects (and how such ideas were resisted when applied), and how Eastern ideas came to influence the West, through writers such as Ruskin and buildings such as the Crystal Palace. Beautifully written and lavishly illustrated, Empire Building takes the reader on an extraordinary postcolonial journey, backwards and forwards, into the heart and to the edge of empire.
The colonial architecture of the nineteenth century has much to tell us of the history of colonialism and cultural exchange. Yet, these buildings can be read in many ways. Do they stand as witnesses to the rapacity and self-delusion of empire? Are they monuments to a world of lost glory and forgotten convictions? Do they reveal battles won by indigenous cultures and styles? Or do they simply represent an architectural style made absurdly incongruous in relocation? Empire Building is a study of how and why Western architecture was exported to the Middle East and how Islamic and Byzantine architectural ideas and styles impacted on the West. The book explores how far racial theory and political and religious agendas guided British architects (and how such ideas were resisted when applied), and how Eastern ideas came to influence the West, through writers such as Ruskin and buildings such as the Crystal Palace. Beautifully written and lavishly illustrated, Empire Building takes the reader on an extraordinary postcolonial journey, backwards and forwards, into the heart and to the edge of empire.
