Architecture in Oxford between the Civil War and the early Georgian period presents a fascinating picture of great stylistic change and originality, as vernacular building traditions largely inherited from the Gothic of the Middle Ages were superseded by new design philosophies derived from Renaissance interpretations of classical architecture. The new architecture was driven by an increasingly élite and academic taste, largely dependent upon expensive foreign books and even more costly foreign travel, and necessitated fundamental changes to the established building practices of the colleges, which had hitherto relied largely on local master masons for both construction and design. As architecture ‘was something outside the ken of the average Oxford don’, knowledgeable men, especially those who had travelled abroad and seen modern buildings, became important arbiters of taste, and often drifted into architecture as a result. The first and most famous Oxford man to take this path was Christopher Wren of Wadham College in the 1660s, but he was followed a generation later by Henry Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church, after whose death in 1710 the mantle passed to George Clarke of All Souls College. It is with the significance of the latter two men’s activities at Christ Church that we will presently be concerned.

One of the defining characteristics of Georgian and Victorian London is the mews, a small building for horses and coaches at the rear of a terraced house, connected to it by a garden or yard, but approached from the street by a separate alley. As a building type the mews is a particularly British and overwhelmingly London phenomenon. It is so familiar, especially in Mayfair, Belgravia and South Kensington, that its existence is largely taken for granted. This article sets out to trace its hitherto unidentified origins, to show that like so much that we consider Georgian its roots lie in the middle years of the seventeenth century, and, in particular, to highlight the role played in its development by Inigo Jones.

The first executed work in architecture of François-Joseph Belanger (1744–1818) — one of the most important neo-classical architects of late Ancien-Régime France — was a bath-house for the Comte de Lauraguais. It was built in one of France’s earliest jardins anglais, which Lauraguais had laid out in the grounds of his Paris residence, the Hôtel de Brancas, on the rue de l’Université. It is one of Belanger’s most familiar works, not least because his own drawings and description survive to record it. This wealth of documentation makes it a uniquely knowable example of Belanger’s architecture in the first decade of his professional life, before the construction of the Comte d’Artois’ folie of Bagatelle, upon which much of his reputation rests.

The architectural career of Baldassare Peruzzi has traditionally been divided chronologically into halves, each epitomized by one of his two masterpieces, the Farnesina (Figs 1–3) and Palazzo Massimo (Figs 11–33). The commission for the Farnesina was granted him about 1505 by the exceedingly wealthy financier Agostino Chigi, who seems to have taken the young fellow Sienese under his wing. The Tuscan origins of the building’s patron and architect are reflected in its simplicity and lightness, and in the linear delicacy of its details which recalls in particular the style of Francesco di Giorgio Martini, who exerted a formative influence on the young Peruzzi before he left Siena. In the setting of Julius II’s Rome these qualities seem slightly anachronistic, yet the outcome is such a harmonious balance between elegant symmetry and relaxed planning, between architectural and painted decoration, that Vasari was moved to comment that the building appears to have been born rather than built (non murato, ma veramente nato).

This article considers the history of a particular architectural drawing convention, the so-called ‘laid-out wall elevation’, which first becomes significant in English practice in the early eighteenth century and was to become a standard form of interior drawing for much of the century and beyond. Concentrating on one drawing-type the discussion will raise wider considerations about the nature and role of drawings in the design process.

It is necessary to begin by defining the essential characteristics of the drawing-type under discussion and it will help in this task if the usual term ‘laid-out wall elevation’ is rejected. Drawings thus termed frequently contain no true elevations at all, but they may well combine sections, ground plans, floor and/or ceiling plans.

The Conservation Plan currently being put into effect for St George’s Hall, Liverpool, has occasioned new research into the history of a building which, since its completion in 1855, has been universally hailed by architects and historians alike as an outstanding example of European neo-classical architecture. However, the unusual functional arrangements of the building (particularly the disposition of Crown and Civil Courtrooms either side of a Concert Hall and consequent difficulties with public access) have been subject to criticism over the past century and a half, mainly by those who have had cause to use it. This article is concerned with one part of St George’s Hall, the south front and its approaches, the form and function of which have been perhaps the most problematic aspect of the building from its conception through to the present day.

Throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Lincoln’s Inn Fields remained one of the largest open sites in central London. It was rectangular, approximately 650 by 450 ft, although sometimes referred to as ‘The Great Square’. To church architects of those years it seemingly offered the opportunity of designing a truly impressive building, one that could be seen with advantage from all sides. Few such sites were available. It is therefore not surprising that there were many proposals to use the site for this purpose.

On the map of nineteenth-century architectural historiographies in Western Europe, Belgium has so far remained a blind spot. While the country’s architectural history of the nineteenth century has already received some (if selective) international attention, with a somewhat disproportionate focus on the Art Nouveau, the historiography arising alongside of it has largely remained outside the picture. Meanwhile, considerations as to Belgium’s particular situation, which presumably influenced its architecture, equally apply to its historiography; for instance its design as a crossroads of influences, as demonstrated in research into the Belgian Catholic Gothic Revival and into nineteenth-century (architectural) history in general, among cases one could cite. While interesting because of its own particularities, Belgium also represents a type of ‘smaller European country’ created in the nineteenth century, whose architectural history has been characterized as ‘often fascinating precisely in the extent to which [these countries] present attempts to resolve the inherent contradictions between the major interpretive models and prescriptions of the English Pugin-Ruskin tradition, French Rationalism, and the more archaeological approach of the Cologne school’. The relatively limited corpus of Belgian architectural historiography — at least when compared with the historiographies of the United Kingdom, France or Germany — is an additional advantage, since it makes the field of study more easily definable and thus allows for more detailed study.

The Tower of London is one of the most famous sites in the world, yet its recent architectural history has been almost entirely overlooked. This article represents the first attempt to explore the architectural approach taken by the Tower authorities at the turn of the twentieth century. It analyses the on-going programme of restoration undertaken by the Office of Works during this period in the context of the Tower's singular status as military garrison, historic monument and preeminent tourist attraction, and it considers the Office's stance in relation to increasing public and parliamentary interest in the preservation and restoration of historic buildings. Historic Royal Palaces' collection of architectural drawings offers an unexplored insight into the activities of the Office of Works during this time. Through a close reading of these drawings I show that, contrary to what has previously been supposed, the Office's interventions continued well past the radical restorations of the 1880s and into the twentieth century, as they sought to control the historical narrative of the site through its architecture.

Of the many architectural theories that were being discussed during the early years of the present century one of the most comprehensive and intriguing was the theory of Organic Architecture. This theory, as expounded by its two most prominent exponents — Louis H. Sullivan (1856–1924) and Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959)—was based on the concept of organic expression — a concept which, interpreted in architectural terms, incorporated many of the underlying principles of the more popular theories associated with the Modern Movement in Architecture — ‘functionalism’, ‘rationalism’, ‘expressionism’, etc.

When John Newman wrote his two magnificent volumes on the buildings of Kent over thirty years ago, his great founding editor, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, described them as ‘the best of the whole series’. They were indeed exceptional volumes in the Buildings of England series, and it is very clear how well John knew Kent’s architectural monuments. One group of buildings, those of West Malling Abbey, could not, however, be examined in detail because they were within the enclosure of the Anglican Benedictine community. Part of his description of these buildings was, therefore, based on ‘inadequate photographs and pre-enclosure descriptions’ and are set in brackets in his text.

In July 1650 the Puritans tore down the statues of the two Stuart kings, James I and Charles I, which crowned the portico on the west front of St Paul’s Cathedral in London (Fig. 1). According to one contemporary report, under the new Republican authorities the portico’s Corinthian columns, which had been erected only a few years earlier by Inigo Jones (1573-1652), were ‘shamefully hewed and defaced’. Clearly his architecture, or certain forms of it, did not enjoy immunity from the Puritan animosity directed at royalist and religious iconography during the Civil War and its aftermath. This conflict had brought to a head the underlying religious tensions and related aesthetic sensitivities that Jones had had to respect throughout his career popularizing the antique (or all’antica) style of building. The Orders had run the obvious risk of being interpreted as foreign, pagan or — worst of all — Popish, at least by Puritans, and as such they required reconciling to English sensitivities and national identity.

The restoration of the Temple Church in the early 1840s was a major triumph for ecclesiology and a minor tragedy for several of the individuals involved. Natural hazards, from the Great Fire to Hitler's bombs, and the fashions of taste, from the age of Wren to the age of Pugin, have combined to make the Temple Church an architectural palimpsest of extraordinary interest. Its construction during the 12th and 13th centuries had been a milestone in the development of the Gothic style. The alterations of the 17th and 18th centuries represent an interesting commentary on the vagaries of liturgical fashion. Its restoration during the 19th century was an early landmark in the history of the Gothic Revival. Its partial destruction in 1941 made possible the most drastic and the most accomplished restoration of all.

Both the Inner and Middle Temple contributed to the remarkable expansion of public building during the post-Napoleonic period. In 1819 both societies appointed a new architect with a mandate for reconstruction. The Inner Temple chose Robert (later Sir Robert) Smirke.

When considering the evolution of twentieth-century church-building, two topics are inescapable — the Liturgical Movement and developments in Modern architecture — and this article therefore argues that in order to appreciate the evolution of the twentieth-century Catholic parish church it is essential to take both liturgical and architectural developments into account. It focuses on such churches in Belgium because that country played a particularly important role in developing relevant theory, Belgian clergy having been founding members of the Liturgical Movement. However, the movement took more than half a century to develop fully there, during which time other initiatives also appeared, such as Domus Dei (the Belgian Diocesan organization for church-building, set up in 1952) and Pro Arte Christiana. Moreover, other factors — ecclesiastical, social, economic, political and cultural — also prove to be crucial in reaching a full appreciation of twentieth-century church-building, for instance, the impact of diocesan guidelines for church-building, and of bodies such as Catholic Action (Katholieke Actie) and Parish Action (Parochiale Actie). This article demonstrates that, despite few apparent formal similarities (if any) between churches built in Belgium before and after World War II, the developments of the inter-war period were fundamental to post-war developments in Belgian church-building.

In Scotland, as in England, architecture was not a fully-developed profession until well into the nineteenth century. There were, of course, some able practitioners of architecture in Scotland in the eighteenth century, but few if any of them were professional architects in the sense in which their Victorian successors would understand the term. Many of them were builders before they were architects, and even those who were primarily architects might on occasion act as building contractors. Far away in London their compatriots Robert and James Adam might insist (in their dealings with a client) that ‘it is of little consequence to us, what the practice is, among professional builders. We are not builders by profession, but Architects & Surveyors, & live by those Branches’. But even in London it was with difficulty that an architect could sustain such pretensions in the 1770s. In Edinburgh it would have been impossible. Sixty or seventy years were to elapse before the posture adopted by the Adam brothers became the norm, before architectural practice in Scotland had progressed from a situation in which both design and execution were in the same hands — those of the master craftsmen — to one in which design had become the exclusive business of the architect. Those sixty or seventy years also saw the gradual emancipation of the architect from the patronage which had nurtured him in the eighteenth century, so that by the middle of the nineteenth century he had achieved the economic independence of a professional man and the social status of a gentleman.

Recent research has transformed our understanding of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a phase in the wider process of the Gothic Revival. While historical writing on the Gothic Revival had previously tended to see the significance of the period between 1790 and 1820 largely in terms of its academic contribution to the later development of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture, emphasizing especially the role of antiquarian scholarship in providing a basis of archaeological accuracy upon which subsequent architects could draw, more diverse angles have been opened up within the last couple of decades. Research by Simon Bradley, Chris Brooks and others has illuminated debates on the origins of the Gothic style itself and the patriotic language underpinning them, and has added greatly to our understanding of the associations between Gothic and ‘Englishness’. Rosemary Hill has investigated the ambiguous and problematic religious connotations of Gothic. Simon Bradley has authoritatively anatomized the increasingly enthusiastic take-up of Gothic by the Anglican Church in the first few decades of the nineteenth century, and has uncovered a rich prehistory of ecclesiological principles before the foundation of the Camden Society and all its powerfully misleading retrospective propaganda.

Previous studies of the arrival and diffusion of Palladianism in England have usually concentrated either on influential architects or on the principal building types. Enquiries have centred on the work of Lord Burlington and Colen Campbell, while Sir John Summerson’s Cantor Lectures of 1959 marked out the formal development of the classical country house, and its relation to the villa. The reception of the new style by groups of patrons has seldom seemed a rewarding approach, largely because few groups can be identified with sufficient precision to make them significant.

The title of this lecture may arouse false expectations. Some of you will have come hoping for a disquisition on high theory. If you have, you will be disappointed. This talk is not about linguistics or philosophy. It is not even about architecture. Probably I should have called it ‘buildings, words and the body’ or just ‘living with buildings’. Far from uniting three lofty academic disciplines, as the title seems to do, this paper seeks to remind us of what we have lost by operating with such distinct and lofty categories. Instead of celebrating the separate natures of building, talking and thinking, it endeavours to draw attention to their inseparability. If it succeeds you will by the end be more aware of the extent to which none of these activities can happen without the others being involved. What is argued is that the making of buildings and the experiencing of buildings are both associated with distinctive mental operations and that this association is apparent in our use of language. To put it another way, we use metaphors from architecture to articulate our thoughts because the processes of design and construction and the experience of using building relate to basic mental operations and basic psychological needs. In other words, when we derive from building design the metaphor ‘plan’, as in ‘five-year plan’, or from building construction the expression ‘foundations’, as in ‘foundations of economic theory’ or from the experience of a building once constructed the concept of ’pillars’, as in ‘pillars of society’, we do so because there is a uniquely close relationship between building and thinking. It is on this relationship that I want to reflect. Since the topic is as vast as the worldwide history of architecture and thought, I will probably not get very far this evening. But I hope at least to demonstrate its importance, not just for architectural historians, but for linguisticians and philosophers as well. As I will argue, the study of architectural metaphors sheds light equally on the history of architecture, the history of language and the history of thought.