The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament, serves as the meeting place for the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Old Palace was a medieval building that was destroyed by fire in 1834. After the fire, a competition was held for architects to submit plans for the new building that should be in a Gothic or Elizabethan style hoping to embody the conservative values of England. A Royal commission chose Charles Barry’s designs for a Perpendicular Gothic palace. Barry’s own style was more classical than Gothic which is why Augustus Pugin’s involvement was so crucial in Barry winning the competition. Barry’s plans reflected more of his knowledge of the neo-classical style through its symmetry. Pugin was the leading authority on Gothic architecture at the time. Almost all of the remains of the Old Palace were incorporated into the new design. Their work on the Palace began in 1840 and, while most of the work was finished by 1860, the New Palace of Westminster was not complete until a decade later. One of the most identifiable features of the Palace is the Elizabeth Tower, commonly identified by its main bell, “Big Ben”. The building is also known for two main spaces; the Lord’s Chamber and the Common’s Chamber. It is well identified by its main façade which runs parallel to the River Thames. The Palace, as it stands today, has been conserved very well to best display the designs as Charles Barry and Pugin intended them to be displayed. The Palace was, and remains, the center for political life in the United Kingdom, just as it remains a major iconic landmark of London. Many articles and books have been written discussing and disputing the history and design of the New Palace of Westminster, as well as the...
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...gwood instead focuses on the morphing of the design to include parts of both men’s creative minds.
The variety of articles, books and opinions pertaining to the New Palace of Westminster were quite interesting. While it is well known that there is confusion around the roles and work of Barry and Pugin on this famous piece of architecture, the range of opinions and there supporting resources were intriguing. Robert Dell published an article filled with supporting resources that really supported the fact that A.W.N. Pugin was the “true” architect for the Houses of Parliament while Roland Quinault defended quite the opposite, barely mentioning Pugin in his work. The book titled the The New Palace of Westminster provides a very different description of the building and its history than The History of Parliament organization article on the New Palace of Westminster.
Q: Use St Peter’s basilica and Donato Bramante’s Tempietto in Rome, in opposition to John Balthasar Neumann’s Pilgrimage Church of Vierzehnheiligen in Bamburg, Germany, to argue that a rational engagement with architecture is a more effective means to comprehend and understand architectural form.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the problems that Pierre L'Enfant encountered in designing and building Washington D.C. What delays did the project have and how might they have been avoided? Why was L'Enfant dismissed from his work in 1792?
The 1931 Statute of Westminster can be seen as the logical end of the years of negotiations on change between Britain and her Dominions, which include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Newfoundland. The origins of the Statue date back to the Imperial Conference in 1926 where Lord Balfour, Britain’s Foreign Minster, suggested that all Dominions should be given the right to full autonomy in their legislations. This would result in equality amongst Britain and its Dominions It made several key provisions; British parliament could no longer nullify laws in the Dominions, the Dominions were able to make their own extra-territorial laws, and British law no longer had to be applied in the Dominions.
Hitchcock, Henry Russell. Early Victorian Architecture in Britain Volumes I and II. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954.
Architects of the Elizabethan era designed many amazingly beautiful buildings and structures. Elizabethan architecture went further than just what the architects told the builders to do and the builders are given far less credit than they deserve. They carved out amazingly intricate designs into the wood and stone of these buildings, they poured their souls into their work and were still forgotten because what are they but some random members of the lower class. Elizabethan architecture has more to it than just looks, the structures were built to last luxuriously and each has a history going back before the day they laid the foundation. The architecture descends from the Tudor Style while also admiring Greek and Roman architecture and contained many influences from when England invaded India.
"The Tower of London." Tower of London, History of the Tower of London on Britain
The church in the Middle Ages was a place that all people, regardless of class, could belong to. As a source of unity, its influence on art and architecture was great during this time. As society drew away from the feudal system of the Romanesque period, a new spirit of human individualism began to take hold; alas, the birth of Gothic. Here, the Church became a place where humanity became more acceptable, alas becoming the ideal place to visual such new ideals. The beauty and elegance of Gothic architecture is depicted most in the great cathedrals of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries—St. Denis, Notre Dame, Chartres, Salisbury, Durham, Amiens, and more. The experience of looking at one of the great gothic cathedrals is to look up towards God. Indeed, most Gothic structures emphasize the vertical, drawing one’s eyes upwards toward the heavens with the awesomeness of God. These cathedrals were built with towering spires, pointed arches and flying buttresses giving impressions of harmony and luminosity. One of the major accomplishments of the 12th and 13th centuries was to develop the engineering mastery of the ribbed vault, pointed arch and flying buttress to create a great cathedral that is at once taller, lighter, wider, and more elegant than the ones before. Even though the pointed arch could support more weight than its predecessors, there was still the problem of finding a way to support the heavy masonry ceiling vaults over wide spans. In order to support the outward thrust of barrel vaults, vertical support walls have to be very thick and heavy. What makes possible the extensive use of ribbed vaulting and pointed arches to “open” and “lighten” the walls and space of the cathedral is the flying buttress—“an arched bridge above the aisle roof that extends from the upper nave wall, where the lateral thrust of the main vault is greatest, down to a solid pier.”
Elizabethan architecture is reign of Queens Elizabeth I of England (1558-1603), influence by the European Renaissance styles, though often somewhat provincial in treatment. Hardwick Hall located in Derbyshire, built for the Countess of Shrewsbury (Bess of Hardwick), in 1591~1597. Hardwick Hall, “More glass than wall.” was a popular saying in the time where great expanses of glass were an ultimate luxury and a symbol of immense wealth. It was designed by the architect Robert Smythson(1535–1614), an exponent of the Renaissance style of architecture. The shape of the house is unusual as other house in Elizabethan, with its six great towers, is exploited internally by many permutations and combinations, the towers in their different stages sometimes contain one or two self-contained and comparatively small rooms; sometimes portions of the staircases; sometimes are opened up into the great rooms and enliven their shape.
Gothic art evolved from Romanesque art and lasted from the mid-12th century AD to the end of the 16th century. It was a particular style of Medieval art and was led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture, established by the Basilica of St Denis. Through the influence of historical design methods, such as Islamic/Romanesque architecture and the impact the spread of Christianity had on Europe, Abbot Suger was able to develop a new style of architecture through his reconstruction of St Denis. This led to the development of taller buildings with thinner walls and bigger rooms on the inside.
When the Chateau was first constructed in 1623, it was constructed as a hunting lodge made of brick, stone, and slate (3-1 Internet 3). When the New Chateau was constructed around 1631 and it was decorated in the Baroque style. The style expressed the power and authority of the head of state. Baroque architecture combined in new ways as classical and renaissance elements as columns, arches, and capitals. Sweeping curved areas replace orderly rectangular areas and sculpture and painting played a greater part in building design, helping create an illusion of great space. Interest in the relationship between buildings and their surroundings led to a greater emphasis on city planning and landscape design. This emphasis was used greatly in the construction of the palace at Versailles. Baroque buildings in Austria, Spain, and Latin America were especially ornate and elaborate. The baroque architecture in France was more classical and ordered (pg 85, World...
A few key questions being asked in this examination of Kenwood are: why has this building been extensively written about? And, what are the influencing factors on its importance of inclusion at several points in the historical record? It is my opinion that Kenwood House gains and keeps its stature and relevance in architecture, through its association with a few key noteworthy and influential figures. Without the role of the first Earl of Mansfield, or the first Earl of Iveagh, Kenwood would have never became noteworthy, or would have suffered and decayed at the expense of time. It is an important building today as much for who owned it and lived there, as it is for any one architectural reason.
Palace of Westminster (2013) Architecture of the Palace. [Online] Available from: http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/architecture/ [Accessed: 24th February 2014]
Vidler, Anthony. The writing of the walls: Architectural theory in the late enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1987.
The first sign of a new architectural era was seen in Britain. With the production of new materials, Sir Joseph Paxton was able to design the Crystal Palace (1850-1851, 1852-1854) which boasted an intricate lattice frame work of prefabricated iron and glass panels set into wooden frames. The Crystal Palace served as a greenhouse with an impressive square footage of 770,000, the largest structure within its time. This structure was a monumental one and exhibits Britain’s advancement in the development of superior steel.
The role of the architect is a question that evokes a spectrum of answers from Norman Foster’s definition; ‘Architect is an expression of values… the way we build is a reflection of the way we live.’ [Foster, cited in Tholl, 2014: Online] This debate of who and what an architect should be and do is not a recent one to emerge but has lead many architects and designers as far back as Vitruvius [15BC] to produce documentation on what they believed to be the make-up of an architect. In Vitruvius’ ‘The Ten Books On Architecture’ he quickly establishes two fragments that make an architect, the manual skill and the theory and scholarship.