The Story of Architecture
Chapter 16 Romantic Classicism
“Modern architecture is a product of Western
Civilization. It began to take shape during the later
eighteenth century with the democratic and industrial
revolutions.… .”
Romantic Classicism
Baroque and Rococo came to an abrupt
end. Normally an artistic phase dies out
over several decades. With more sober and
ponderous empires, Europe turned to a
matching classical architecture.
 The artificiality of Rococo art and
architecture was seen as symptomatic of
the corruption of the ancien régime

The Philosophes
“…believed it was imperative to strip
away the corrupting influence of the
culture of the ancien régime to arrive at
the natural condition of humankind
 “…to create a new, purer more
functionally and structurally expressive
architecture from the deliberate and
rational design of a new social order…”

Frontispiece of
Marc-Antoine Laugier,
Essai sur l’architecture
(Paris, 1753)
“…the purest architecture
(is) that most suited to
fundamental human needs
and to basic human
society
… architecture had to get
back to basics”
18th Century


A multiplicity of architectural options
A growing yearning for a return to
clear forms and proportional relationships with the revival of Palladian
architecture in England by the
publishing of Palladio’s Four Books
Vitruvius Britannicus, (3 volumes)
by Colen Campbell

It was not a treatise but a catalogue of design;
engravings of buildings by Inigo Jones, Sir
Christopher Wren and other prominent architects,
as well as Campbell himself; it was instrumental
in popularising neo-Palladian
Architecture in Great Britain
and America as well as being
self-promoting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colen_Campbell
Houghton Hall
Colen Campbell 1722

An Inigo Jones-type house with
a 40-foot double cube room
Houghton Hall
Colen Campbell
Palladio’s
Villa Rotunda
Mereworth Castle
Colen Campbell

“... was built in the 1720s
as an almost exact copy of
Palladio's Villa Rotunda.”
Rotunda
Long Hall
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mereworth_Castle http://aestheteslament.blogspot.com/2008_06_24_archive.html
Chiswick House
1725, outside London


Richard Boyle, Third Earl of
Burlington, with William Kent,
architect.
The English developed
an appreciation of the
proportional clarity of
Palladio. Variation on the
Rotonda theme. This is
based on Villa Capri.
Charles Cameron
Cameron Gallery
Tsarskoe Selo, Russia 1787
Palladian-style wing to the imperial palace
with an Ionic colonnade facing the park.
Invited by Catherine the
Great to St. Petersburg
James Gibbs, St Martin-in-the-Fields,
London 1721-26
Gibbs studied the Baroque under Fontana in Rome.
Here he combines a classical portico with a spire.
The spire is taller than it looks
– a typical Baroque feature
James Gibbs, Senate House,
Cambridge University 1722-30
- dignified symmetry
William Kent and Lord Burlington,
Holkham Hall, Norfolk 1734

England was going through an agricultural revolution that
transformed the appearance of the rural landscape. The
surface of the house was local yellow brick fashioned after
Roman brick.
Central
rectangular
block plan with
a Palladian
portico entrance
Holkham Hall, Norfolk 1734

Brown-on-white alabaster pillars
(based on the Temple of Fortuna)
support the coved ceiling
http://www.holkham.co.uk/#
John Wood the elder and
John Wood the younger,
Queen Square, Bath 1729

The elevations of the streets
are conceived as a continuous
Palladian frontage

A pediment gives
emphasis to the
centre of the North
side of Queen Square
Royal Crescent
Bath
- dramatic
Palladian frontage
English Landscape Movement


“Where there were straight lines and geometry,
the new English landscape design would use
serpentine curves and irregular shapes. Under
the influence of designers such as William Kent
and Capability Brown, there was a dismantling of
formal gardens in favor of natural gardens. As
much as these designers fought against the
forced control provided in formal gardens, they
also strong-armed nature into their own ideal.”
This led to a total reversal of the Baroque
relationship between inside and outside. p221
http://www.landscapedia.info/content.php?contentID=12
Andre le Nôtre Château
of Vaux-le-Vicomte,
France 1657
Sir Henry Hoare, Garden,
Stourhead, England 1841-81
View of the Pantheon, Stourhead
Bridgeman

Stowe is a landscape
garden with political
meaning. it represents
opposition politics
through allegorical
monuments
http://hercules.gcsu.edu/~rviau/i
ds/Artworks/bridgeman.html
Hagley Park
Sanderson Miller, sham Gothic ruin
Hagley Park, Worcestershire,
England 1747
Church of Sainte
Genevieve,
(Pantheon)
Church of Sainte Genevieve, (Pantheon)
Paris 1755-90
Church of Sainte
Genevieve, (Pantheon)
Stuart and Revett
Restoration drawing
of the Parthenon,
Athens c. 1785
Robert Adam
Horace Walpole,
Strawberry Hill,
Twickenham,
begun 1748
Hameau (Hamlet) Versailles, France 1778-82

http://www.chateauversailles.fr/templates/v
ersailles/map/MapMain.php
Claude-Nicholas
Ledoux, Barriere
de la Villette,
Paris 1784-89
Boullée, Newton Cenotaph 1784
Boullée, Newton Cenotaph interior
Claude-Nicholas Ledoux,
Fabrication des Cercles
Claude-Nicholas Ledoux, poster
Claude-Nicholas Ledoux,
Royal Saltworks, Chaux, Arc-et-Senans,
near Besançon, France c. 1775
Leo von Klenze, Glyptothek (Sculpture
Gallery) Munich, Germany 1816-30
38
Schinkel Altes Museum, Berlin
39
Schinkel Altes Museum, Berlin (1822-30)
40
Altes Museum Plan Main Floor
41
Schinkel, Altes Museum,
Berlin 1822-30
42
Robert Adam, Library, Kenwood House
London 1767-68
Urban Squares - Nancy, France
Place des Vosges, Paris
Piranesi, Plates
from the Carceri
1745-61
Thomas Jefferson, Virginia
State Capitol, Richmond,
Virginia 1785-89
Early Iron Engineering
Coalbrookdale Bridge, England 1777-79
The Age of Enlightenment:
An Architecture of Rationality


By the mid-eighteenth century, architects
began to reject the visual excesses of
Rococo architecture in favour of a
structural discipline shorn of extraneous
ornament
In France, the evolving bourgeois middle
class brought with it a new secular culture
and architecture inspired by egalitarian
ideals and industrial enterprise