This is a lecture about architecture and politics in the eleventh century. First, however, I would like to say a few words about another aspect of architectural history, namely style, because it does not feature in the body of the lecture and because of the criticism it currently faces and has faced for some time. I shall append my comments to two recollections. The first of these relates to a presentation in the 1990s at which the speaker identified the different kinds of expertise needed to understand a building, including that of the palaeographer for the documentary history, of the petrologist if it was a masonry structure, and so on to the architectural historian, who was given the task of dealing with style. The second recollection concerns a conference a few years later at which one of the participants said they wished that discussion of style could be banned. The two remarks taken together lead to an amusing conclusion, but they were separate utterances and so should be considered separately. As to the first, there are of course many other contributions that the architectural historian can make, not least in terms of social history, but I am pleased to see the task of assessing the relevance of style assigned to them because, if they do not undertake it, it is unlikely that anyone else will. On the second, I have some sympathy with the speaker, because style can be such a slippery concept that at times one might think it better to do without it. But, however justified such criticism, the varying stylistic characteristics found in objects carry so much information about the choices made by innumerable individuals in the course of human history that it would be counterproductive to abandon them, regardless of the difficulties.

Between the design and the realization of a building there are a number of ‘drawing’ processes, either on the building site or in the workshop, which range from the setting out of the plan to the production of ‘shop drawings’ from which details are derived. Unfortunately, while the latter have survived in sufficient numbers to have attracted scholarly attention, the setting out of the ground plan leaves no trace. Nevertheless, it is that process that determines the building's basic geometry. While much scholarly effort has gone into attempting to divine the geometrical principles behind designs from Antiquity to the Gothic period, it has not always been informed by an understanding of the setting-out process. Without taking the constraints of that process into account, one is reduced to looking for geometrical relationships within the building, and of course one will find some. Clearly, there were geometrical principles behind almost all buildings, if only that they should be rectangular or symmetrical, but the difficulty is that a few simple rules can easily result in a large number of geometrical relationships within the building that were not used, and possibly not even recognized, by their designers. At the very least, therefore, we should consider how to distinguish those relationships that were actually used by the designers and builders from those that are merely epiphenomenal.

Re-examination of a key group of Michelangelo's sketches for the Laurentian Library, located in the monastic complex of Florence's S. Lorenzo, offers a new understanding of his design process and the project as it was built. While drawings by Michelangelo survive for all three of the library's intended spaces, this study concentrates on a number of drawings on four sheets for the entrance vestibule, or ricetto, and the two drawings for what would have constituted the third space, the unbuilt rare books room. It offers a major revision of Rudolf Wittkower's pioneering study of the library's design stages, and will also allow for the identification and discussion of key precedents and their role in the development of Michelangelo's design. These included ancient Roman and Renaissance sources, as well as his own designs both for the unbuilt façade of S. Lorenzo, and for the Medici Chapel attached to the same church (Fig. 1). Consideration of the drawings for the Laurentian Library ricetto in conjunction with letters written to Michelangelo from his Roman agent, Giovanni Francesco Fattucci, and the papal secretary Pier Paolo Marzi, recording Pope Clement VII's responses to a number of important design ideas, allows for a reliable reconstruction of Michelangelo's penultimate scheme for the ricetto, which enables the recognition of a key ancient precedent that inspired Michelangelo, and throws new light on the genesis of the final design. It becomes clear, too, that Michelangelo would later rework certain design ideas that he developed in these Laurentian Library sketches for subsequent projects in Rome, including an early design for the Palazzo dei Conservatori, and also the final form of both this palace and the Palazzo Senatorio.

In 1594, a new Chapel Royal was erected at Stirling Castle, for the baptism, on 30 August of that year, of Prince Henry, first-born son and heir to James VI King of Scots and his wife, Queen Anna, sister of Denmark’s Christian IV. James saw the baptism as a major opportunity to emphasize, to an international — and, above all, English — audience, both his own and Henry’s suitability as heirs to England’s childless and elderly Queen Elizabeth. To commemorate the baptism and associated festivities, a detailed written account was produced, entitled A True Reportarie and attributed to William Fowler. It provided a remarkable piece of Stuart propaganda, as testified by many subsequent reprints, including during the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. James no doubt had in mind the example of the celebrations at his own baptism in December 1566, which ‘took the form of a triumphant Renaissance festival, the first that Scotland — and indeed Great Britain — had ever seen’. Despite apparently being constructed within a mere seven months, the new chapel achieved its aim of being both impressive and symbolic of the aspirations of the Scottish king (Fig. 1). It can claim to be the earliest Renaissance church in Britain, with its main entrance framed by a triumphal arch, flanked by Italianate windows. However, even more significant is the evidence that the chapel was deliberately modelled on the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

The aim of this article is to bring to the attention of readers a series of significant examples of texts printed prior to 1700 and illustrated with images of medieval architecture in continental Europe. British illustrations of buildings and ruins from the Middle Ages have received relevant attention from modern scholarly writers, but studies of analogous continental examples are lacking. Illustrations of medieval architecture have been little considered in most studies of the Early Modern period, as compared with those of their sixteenth-to eighteenth-century counterparts. In addition, the few studies that do exist of the interest in medieval buildings and illustration of them, prior to the ‘age of mechanical reproduction’, have generally been restricted to monographs on individual antiquarians or else have focused on Enlightenment, Romantic and Positivist criticism, and have tended to concentrate on medieval revivalism. Furthermore, with the exception of a few studies on the perception of the Romanesque, the most frequently investigated category has been the Gothic. Hence, despite the existence of some crucial works, the perspectives adopted in research into Early Modern attitudes to medieval architecture have inevitably been limited. We still lack any comprehensive overview of the architecture of the Middle Ages as a whole (that is, including the Late Antique / Early Christian era), or any studies showing genuine interest in the late Renaissance and Baroque roots of subsequent antiquarian medievalism. This article, therefore, attempts to begin to fill such a lacuna by studying the architectural aspect of those pre-Enlightenment illustrations of medieval antiquities that appeared in continental Europe, and by considering scholars’ awareness of the entire medieval millennium.

Thomas Rickman has been credited, perhaps for too long, as the first figure to ‘discriminate’ the styles of medieval architecture and create a chronological analysis of Gothic architectural forms. Not only were there several authors who published on the subject immediately before Rickman, but there was also, as early as the mid-seventeenth century, considerable interest in the discernment and classification of periods in medieval architecture. One of the chief figures in this was John Aubrey, who pioneered a method for deducing the date of a medieval building by analysing the shapes of its windows. This intellectual initiative, 150 years before Rickman, has been either overlooked or interpreted as a ‘false start’ in Gothic revivalism. It is, however, worthy of fresh appraisal as a significant development in historical method and as an indicator of one way in which architecture was understood in the seventeenth century. Aubrey’s idea was that objects of a given type, in this case medieval windows, had a particular shape during a particular historical period, and that their morphology could be used to create a system for establishing the date of any given building. The context for this scheme was the innovative proposal of several early modern antiquaries that shapes in themselves could convey historical information, and that specific historical periods had their own distinctive forms. These scholars, many of whom were associated with the Royal Society, took faltering steps towards taxonomies of historical form which foreshadowed the methods of analysis that became — and arguably remain — central to the discipline of architectural history. That their interest focused upon medieval architecture at a time when the Gothic was largely rejected as irregular and barbarous is also notable. Examining the origins of a technique for dating historic buildings through visual analysis reveals how an intellectual circle of the seventeenth century perceived and understood architecture at a time when in England architectural commentary and criticism were still in their infancy.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, country-house tourism became increasingly popular in England. By 1770, hundreds of tourists were visiting the country’s greatest estates every summer. The nature of the attraction varied from house to house. Some, such as Kedleston Hall and Stowe, were considered ‘elegant’ modern buildings, while others, such as Blenheim Palace, were already seen as historical sites. Although country-house visiting as a concept dated back to the seventeenth century, there had never been so many tourists, nor such a variety of them. While one needed to be relatively wealthy and genteel in order to travel and gain admission to great houses, tourists included not only those who had their own estates but also those who could only be spectators. Early country-house tourists have been examined by a number of historians, but the ways in which the houses themselves were presented have hitherto been little studied. A better understanding of this manner of presentation illuminates the nature of tourists’ experiences and how the country house itself began to be identified as an attraction during this period. In essence, in an effort to cope with the influx of visitors, country-house owners began to formalize the terms under which their estates were open to the public. As part of this process, houses were metaphorically ‘remade’ in order to function as tourist attractions as well as private residences. It was not enough for owners simply to allow entry. They had to decide what would be shown to visitors, and how to provide visitors with information about the house and its contents. At first, these problems were solved by instructing housekeepers to guide visitors, but, as certain houses became exceptionally popular, a new practice developed: publishing guidebooks. This article considers the methodologies by which the interior spaces of country houses were remade in guidebooks (a type of re-presentation that can still be observed in many properties that are open to the public today), as well as the effects of this process.

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.

When the horticulturist Joseph Paxton first published his proposal to house the 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations inside a glasshouse of enormous scale at Hyde Park, London, the scheme was praised as a more practical alternative to an earlier idea that had been put forward by the Royal Commission for the Great Exhibition’s own Building Committee. However, the feasibility of Paxton’s idea soon became the subject of concern. The use of glasshouses for the cultivation of plants was well established, but could this type of building now be adapted to the task of accommodating artefacts? Could it also provide visitors to the Exhibition with a comfortable environment? A particular worry was the issue of cooling, given that the Exhibition was to take place in summer. Prospective exhibitors anxiously made reference to the hot and humid conditions inside greenhouses such as the Palm House at Kew Gardens and the Conservatory at Regent’s Park, and they criticized Paxton’s idea as a risky experiment. Paxton did not ignore the challenge. He pointed out that his design incorporated shading devices, provision for evaporative cooling and natural ventilation, all of which were intended to maintain comfortable temperatures on hot days. He argued that his proposals had been informed by his previous experience with conservatory design, claiming that he had validated the effectiveness of his ventilation and cooling strategy through smalls-cale experiments at Chatsworth House. That Paxton’s plans were accepted and realized was largely due to good fortune. His design was considered to be the only one that could be constructed in time for the opening of the exhibition, which had already been advertised internationally. The Executive Committee, however, requested that conditions inside the building be carefully monitored. In effect, the Great Exhibition Building at Hyde Park became a significant early experiment in what would now be termed ‘environmental design’ (Fig. 1).

The British architect Oliver Hill (1887–1968) was an important and influential figure in the inter-war period. His ability to cross the boundaries of architectural style ensured career longevity and success, but invited a reputation as a half-hearted Modernist, lacking the rigour of his Modern Architectural Research (MARS) Group contemporaries. This view was acknowledged by the MARS chairman Wells Coates (1895–1958), in an early group memorandum of 1933, where he asserted that: ‘Certain people [including Oliver Hill] who are popularly and notoriously known as “modern” architects do not qualify in our sense.’ Unquestionably, there were two sides to Hill’s architecture, as he himself recognized in 1937: ‘Today, my love is divided between the new and the old.’

While the MARS Group stuck rigidly to the dogma of the Modern Movement, Hill’s understanding and application of Modernism developed throughout the 1930s. Hill’s Modern buildings chronicle his shifting concept of modernity, reflecting the numerous sub-movements and strands of Modernism in inter-war Britain rather than any halfheartedness in his approach. Commonly remembered for his glitzy early examples of ‘the new’, such as Joldwynds (1930–32) and the Midland Hotel in Morecambe (1932–33), Hill’s Modernism was initially based upon a use of glass and silvered surfaces that straddled Art Deco and the International Style. Yet opulence was gradually replaced by a social concern focused on children’s welfare, evident in a series of exhibits, unrealized projects and school buildings. Hill’s later inter-war Modernism also reflected a wider move toward local materials and construction techniques that acknowledged the peculiarity of English conditions. This article contextualizes Hill’s adoption of Modernism and explores his public work of the late 1930s that combined his fascination for the new with his respect for national tradition.

Modern society is characterized by an exaggerated worship of theory, an attitude that reflects the human predicament and insecurity. We think that in it we can find salvation from the threat of chaos. But we must realise that pure theory without feeling cannot create anything. You cannot set up series of methods applicable to the most varied circumstances; only intuition can help here. Let me put it this way: theory and methodology should form a basis for an intuitive working method. The question is not which dominates the other, but how to co-ordinate them. Method is not the antithesis of art, not its enemy but its prerequisite. (Alvar Aalto, speech at Jvyäsklylä Kesäpäivät (Summer Days), 1965)

When it opened in March 1958, the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, was the first new professional theatre to be constructed in Britain for nearly two decades and the country’s first all-new civic theatre (Figs 1 and 2). Financially supported by Coventry City Council and designed in the City Architect’s office, it included a 910-seat auditorium with associated backstage facilities. Two features of the building were especially innovative, namely its extensive public foyers and the provision of a number of small flats for actors. The theatre, whose name commemorated a major gift of timber to the city of Coventry from the Yugoslav authorities, was regarded as the herald of a new age and indeed marked the beginning of a boom in British theatre construction which lasted until the late 1970s. Yet its architecture has hitherto been little considered by historians of theatre, while accounts of post-war Coventry have instead focused on other topics: the city’s politics; its replanning after severe wartime bombing; and the architecture of its new cathedral, designed by Basil Spence in 1950 and executed amidst international interest as a symbol of the city’s post-war recovery. However, the Belgrade also attracted considerable attention when it opened. The Observer’s drama critic, Kenneth Tynan, was especially effusive, asking ‘in what tranced moment did the City Council decided to spend £220,000 on a bauble as superfluous as a civic playhouse?’ For him, it was ‘one of the great decisions in the history of local government’. This article considers the architectural implications of that ‘great decision’. The main design moves are charted and related to the local context, in which the Belgrade was intended to function as a civic and community focus. In this respect, the Labour Party councillors’ wish to become involved in housing the arts reflected prevailing local and national party philosophy but was possibly amplified by knowledge of eastern European authorities’ involvement in accommodating and subsidizing theatre. In addition, close examination of the Belgrade’s external design, foyers and auditorium illuminates a number of broader debates in the architectural history of the period. The auditorium, for example, reveals something of the extent to which Modern architecture could be informed by precedent. Furthermore, the terms in which the building was received are also significant. Tynan commented: ‘enter most theatres, and you enter the gilded cupidacious past. Enter this one, and you are surrounded by the future’. Although it was perhaps inevitable that the Belgrade was thought to be unlike older theatres, given that there had been a two-decade hiatus in theatre-building, the resulting contrast was nonetheless rather appropriate, allowing the building to connote new ideas whilst also permitting us to read the Belgrade in terms of contemporary debates about the nature of the ‘modern monument’.

Higher Education in Britain expanded dramatically during the 1950s and 1960s. The trigger for growth was the Barlow Report of 1946, which recommended an immediate doubling of the number of science students and an increase in the total number of student places, of which there had been c. 50,000 in 1939, to 70,000 by 1950 and 90,000 by 1955. The 1963 Robbins Report continued and accelerated this expansionist policy, proposing that half a million student places be created by 1980. In the event, although funding was less generous than Barlow had recommended, the numbers achieved were far greater, and 85,000 students were in Higher Education by 1950. The impetus for this growth, which included the foundation of seven new universities (the so-called ‘Shakespearean Seven’) and the enlargement of existing institutions, stemmed from an ambitious vision of the role of universities after the Second World War. Higher Education, and particularly scientific training, was seen as one way to maintain Britain’s position on the world stage. Equally important was the principle of widening access, and a concern to broaden the social base of university education found expression in a range of new approaches to design. Within this context, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge also witnessed significant expansion, but in a very particular way and with distinctive results on account of these universities’ collegiate structure. As elsewhere, buildings at Oxbridge for teaching and research were dependent on finance from the University Grants Committee, but the semi-autonomous colleges could draw on their own (sometimes considerable) resources when it came to building. Furthermore, college dons could exercise significantly more influence over the choice of architect than was possible elsewhere. The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge therefore provided an important environment in which new architectural ideas could be explored. An early contribution to the debate was made by the Erasmus Building, a residential block at Queens’ College, Cambridge, designed by Basil Spence in 1958 (Fig. 1). Although the history of Spence’s design is inextricably bound up with its Cambridge context, as an attempt to reformulate the collegiate ideal it also offers a foretaste of the debates that shaped the new universities in the decade that followed.