24/7 Customer support here

Old architecture

   1.1

   Saint Paul’s Cathedral, a major landmark in London, is one of British architect Sir Christopher Wren’s greatest achievements. After the Great Fire of London destroyed the old Saint Paul’s in 1666, the city commissioned Wren to design a replacement, which was completed in 1710.

    In the 18th century few English buildings followed the ornate patterns of the baroque and rococo architectures used in Europe. Rather, a more restrained, neoclassical style was introduced in Britain by Scottish architect Robert Adam. This style was based on the ancient ruins of Greece and Rome and incorporated such elements as colonnades and stone domes. English furniture and ceramics also became renowned in the 18th century. Thomas Chippendale and Thomas Sheraton were noted for their elegant furniture styles, and the ceramic designs produced by Josiah Wedgwood are still made.

    Victorian architecture borrowed from a variety of styles, including classical, Gothic, and Renaissance, and was characterized by ornate decoration. The most famous Victorian neo-Gothic building is Parliament, built between 1840 and 1870. The only truly original building of the Victorian era was the Crystal Palace, which housed the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was made of metal and glass, materials architects would come to use in constructing office buildings in the 20th century.

   Osterley Park House in Middlesex was redesigned in the neoclassical style by Scottish-English architect Robert Adam. The style, known as Georgian, is characterized by symmetry and straight lines. It was influenced by the 16th-century Palladian architectural style and inspired by classical Greek and Roman ruins.

   In the early 20th century, Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh rejected elaborate Victorian architecture styles for a more modern, functional design. His work influenced 20th-century architects and interior designers. After World War II many new buildings were needed to replace the ones destroyed during the war. Because London’s subsoil is not suitable as a foundation for tall skyscrapers, many of the new buildings erected were big and boxy with geometric designs. One of the largest examples of this style is the National Theatre in London. These cold and impersonal buildings have been criticized because they clash with the graceful London architecture that survived the war.

1.2 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

   Among notable early modern architectural projects are exuberant and richly decorated buildings in Glasgow, Scotland, by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

   Mackintosh, Charles Rennie (1868-1928), Scottish architect and designer, whose chaste, functional style exerted a strong influence on 20th-century architecture and interior design.

   Born June 7, 1868, in Glasgow, and trained at the Glasgow School of Art, Mackintosh rejected overdecorated Victorian styles in favor of a spare simplicity that featured geometric shapes and unadorned surfaces. Between 1899 and 1910 he designed several houses near Glasgow in this style, but his fame rests primarily on his designs for the Glasgow School of Art (1897-1899), with its austere rectangular framework, long, simple curves, and unornamented facade. His later addition of a library (1906-1909) was based entirely on straight lines and right angles: Its horizontal beams alternate with vertical pillars in a vigorous, rhythmic juxtaposition.

   Mackintosh was also an important interior designer, and from 1897 to 1912 he created the design scheme for the Cranston chain of tearooms in Glasgow. His furniture, usually painted white with delicately colored stencils of stylized flower patterns and occasional insets of amethyst glass, combines attenuated straight lines with subtle curves. The designs, although unmistakably art nouveau, avoided the excesses found in the work of some Continential practitioners of the style. This appealed to avant-garde designers such as the members of the Vienna Secession (see Sezessionstil). Mackintosh exhibited in 1900 at the Secessionist Exhibition in Vienna, where his designs gained an international following. His work exerted an important influence on the growing 20th-century trend toward simplification and functionalism. Mackintosh, all but forgotten, died in London, December 10, 1928; decades later, his work achieved a permanent place in the history of design. In the late 1970s the Mackintosh House, his studio-home in Glasgow, was reconstructed and opened as a museum.

1.3 NEW MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGY

   Developments in two materials—iron and concrete—formed the technological basis for much modern architecture. In 1779 English architect Thomas Pritchard designed the first structure built entirely of cast iron: Ironbridge, a bridge over the River Severn in England. At around the same time, another Englishman experimented with a compound of lime, clay, sand, and iron slag to produce concrete. Iron had been used since antiquity to tie building elements together, but after the erection of Ironbridge it took on a new role as a primary structural material. Builders throughout Europe and North America began to erect warehouses with beams of iron instead of wood and to create storefronts with cast-iron facades.

   One of the most spectacular examples of early iron construction was the Crystal Palace in London, England, designed by English architect Joseph Paxton to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. Spreading over 7.3 hectares (18 acres), the building consisted entirely of panels of glass set within iron frames. Paxton adapted two major features of the Industrial Revolution to the architecture of the Crystal Palace: mass production (in the manufactured glass panels and iron frames) and the use of iron rather than traditional masonry (stones or brick). He managed to erect this vast building in less than six months, a feat he accomplished by detailed planning and by prefabrication of the building parts off-site.

II CRAFTS

2.1 HISTORY OF CRAFTS  

   Crafts are as old as human history. Originally fulfilling utilitarian purposes, they are now a means of producing objects of intrinsic aesthetic appeal. Among the earliest basic crafts are basketry, weaving, and pottery. Nearly every craft now practiced can be traced back many hundreds or even thousands of years.

   Craftwork formed the basis of town and city economies throughout Europe until the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. Once items could be mass-produced, however, individual artisans were no longer needed. In reaction to the effects of industrialization, the Arts and Crafts movement began in England in the late 19th century, led by the designer and social reformer William Morris.

2.2 ARTS AND CRAFTS AND RELATED MOVEMENTS

   The Arts and Crafts movement was started by Morris in reaction to the decorative excess of the Victorian style and the lifelessness of mass-produced products. The furniture, textiles, and wallpaper are all handmade. The Arts and Crafts Movement, which began in England around 1860 and continued into the first decade of the 20th century, shared many of the ideas of art nouveau. The movement’s earliest proponents reacted against cheap manufactured goods, which had flooded shops and filled houses in the second half of the 19th century. The Arts and Crafts ideal they offered was a spiritual, craft-based alternative, intended to alleviate industrial production’s degrading effects on the souls of laborers and on the goods they produced. It emphasized local traditions and materials, and was inspired by vernacular design—that is, characteristic local building styles that generally were not created by architects.

   English designer William Morris sought to restore integrity to both architecture and the decorative arts. The Red House (1859) in Kent, designed for Morris and his family by English architect Philip Webb, demonstrates the architectural principles at the heart of the English movement. The unpretentious brick facades were free of ornament, the ground plan was informal and asymmetrical, and the materials were drawn from the area and assembled with local building techniques.

   Spurred by the experience of furnishing his home, Morris set up a studio with several associates, including Webb and English artists Dante Gabriel Rosetti and Edward Burne-Jones. They designed everything—from wallpaper to stained glass, books, and teapots—according to the highest standards of craftsmanship. The idea of the house as a total work of art, with all of the interior objects designed by the architect, emerged from this studio and remained standard practice throughout the Arts and Crafts movement.

2.3 SHOPS THAT SELL CRAFT WORKS

   From ceramics to silversmithing, calligraphy to textiles, hot glass to bookbinding, crafts have played a rich and complex role in the social, cultural, and artistic history of Britain.

   There are lots of places where u can buy art and craft work in the UK. It is wrong to think that Publicly-funded galleries , both local authority and independent, only show the works of art or craft, they may run their own craft or fine art shop. The other place to buy craft work is a Craft fair. Participation in the Craft fair gives a great opportunity to buy something directly from the hands of the person whose work it is. The other places to visit are: department stores, trade fairs, various studious and you can even order something with the help of your e-mail.

2.4 SOME FACTS AND FIGURES ABOUT ARTISTS IN UK

How many visual artists are there?

• 93,200 artists, commercial artists, graphic designers, according to analysis of the 1991 Census
• 16,892 craftspeople, according to the 1994 Crafts Council survey
• 52,372, according to AN ARTISTS INFORMATION COMPANY

Where do they live?

• 30% of artists and photographers live in London, according to a report in 2000 by the London Development Agency
• 50% of artists live in London, statistic from an Arts Council of England report, as quoted by Lynda Morris in AN Magazine 08/00
• AN ARTISTS INFORMATION COMPANY estimates that 25% of visual and applied artists live in London.
• 6% of artists live in Scotland, according to analysis of the 1991 Census
•14% of craftspeople live in Scotland, according to the 1994 Crafts Council survey

How do they make a living?

According to the 1990 Visual Arts Survey, London Institute/Arts Council of Great Britain:
• 25% of visual artists make their main income from selling work.
• 33% make a main living from residencies and commissions
According to the 1996 National Artists Association report into artists' fees and payments:
• 20% of artists cited teaching as their single most important source of income
• 20% cited sales from exhibitions as the most important source
• 19% said private sales were the most important source
• 16% put workshops, residencies and community arts in this category

What do they earn from their practice?

According to research in 1995 by the National Artists Association into artists' fees and payments:
• 37% of artists earned less than Ј5,000
• 62% earned less than Ј10,000
A 1995 socio-economic study of artists in Scotland showed:
• 37% had incomes of less than Ј5,000 a year
• 29% earned no income from artistic work
In Creative Futures: what do artists and designers do? Published in 1994 by the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services:
• The average visual arts and design salary two years after graduation was Ј7,800 or 63% of the average graduate salary.

1  2

BACK TO ARCHITECTURE