English Architecture

Fülszöveg

THE WORLD OF ART
English Architecture
A Concise History David Watkin
309 plates
Every generation needs its own history of English architecture: new facts are discovered, old assumptions may turn out to be wrong, time's perspective brings different facets into prominence. David Watkin, one of Britain's most brilliant younger architectural historians, here provides a brief but highly readable outline of the whole story, from Saxon times to the present, centred on buildings that people^can actually see today. His European perspective illuminates England's surprisingly close stylistic links with France, from the impact of Jumieges Abbey in the eleventh century to that of Le Corbusier in the twentieth. The great flowering of Romanesque under the Normans, the development of the Gothic style through its various phases - Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular - are clearly described, taking account of the latest research (for instance, the French origins of Perpendicular). After... Tovább

Fülszöveg

THE WORLD OF ART
English Architecture
A Concise History David Watkin
309 plates
Every generation needs its own history of English architecture: new facts are discovered, old assumptions may turn out to be wrong, time's perspective brings different facets into prominence. David Watkin, one of Britain's most brilliant younger architectural historians, here provides a brief but highly readable outline of the whole story, from Saxon times to the present, centred on buildings that people^can actually see today. His European perspective illuminates England's surprisingly close stylistic links with France, from the impact of Jumieges Abbey in the eleventh century to that of Le Corbusier in the twentieth. The great flowering of Romanesque under the Normans, the development of the Gothic style through its various phases - Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular - are clearly described, taking account of the latest research (for instance, the French origins of Perpendicular). After sections on the Tudor and Jacobean periods, the Renaissance, Baroque, Palladianism and Neo-Classicism, come the two chapters that will no doubt arouse the most controversy: those on Victorian and modern architecture. Unlike previous historians, Dr. Watkin sees no falling off in quality in the nineteenth century, nor does he regard the Modern Movement as the logical consummation of all architectural progress, but simply as a style like any other, destined to be eventually superseded.
David Watkin was born in England in 1941 and has spent most of his life in Cambridge where he was an undergraduate at Trinity Hall and is now a Fellow of Peterhouse and a University Lecturer in History of Art. His previous publications include Thomas Hope and the Neo-Classical Idea (1968), The Life and Work of C. R. Cockerel/ (1974), Morality and Archi-Q tecture (1977) and (with Robin Middleton).Architettura Moderna (1977).
On the cover: Garden front of Castle Howard, Yorkshire, by Sir John Vanbrugh (photo A. F. Kersting). Vissza