Tales of the esoteric

Dear all,

As I some of you already know I am currently researching and writing a book for the RIBA on the history of the architectural profession, (co-authoring with Paul Crosby at the Architectural Association). It’s turning out to be an excellent lockdown hobby, though I am very excited about the reopening of the British Library next week as my bank account and bookshelves really can’t take much more ‘I need it for my book’ ‘essential’ book buying.

I have waded through the history of architects in Ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome; explored and deciphered the links between the masons and the renaissance in 15th and 16th century Europe; discovered how Henry VIII’s break from the Roman Catholic Church impacted the construction economy in England; followed the adventures of the architectural amateurs through the Elizabethan country house building boom and am now working my way through the industrial revolution and the impact that urbanising the economy had on how we practice architecture.

It is (mostly) a thrill to sit down with my pile of out of print or very niche books, read between the lines of some of the more outdated opinions and play one long dead critic against another (I realise my definition of thrill is perhaps slightly esoteric!). I’m very much enjoying getting in contact with academics around the world to ask for hints- and constantly surprised at how generous people are with their knowledge and time.

It’s been strangely reassuring to note that the concerns and quibbles of life in architectural practice really do not change much century to century - there are always clients who do not pay, projects that do not happen, cowboy builders, inflated egos and no one has yet agreed on what an architect actually is, or how they should be educated.

I’m enjoying geeking out over how specifications were written in ancient Greece and learning how building sites were run during the construction of Europe’s gothic cathedrals. I have read 10 times more than I can fit within the word count and the ‘to-read’ pile grows every time I turn another page.

However, the greatest joy is in the stories I am finding, and the (perhaps obvious) realisation that people are just people, and always have been. Roman architect Vitruvius rails against fashion in carved stone in the early years of the Roman Empire; Greek architect Dincorates stripped naked and covered himself with a lion skin to get a job from Alexander the Great; Brunelleschi feigned illness to solve a contract dispute in renaissance Italy, at which point the head of a competing guild had him arrested; one medieval architect was congratulated on his arsonist wife by his client- a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church; and during the closing of the profession in the 1800s the architects of the time were very keen to point out they were not (horror) surveyors and certainly not builders… this paragraph could get very long!

In between the slightly eccentric men (I am only up to the early 1900s so it is largely men) I am seeing tiny glimpses of other stories. There was a woman ‘of the house of Gaddi’ who competed with Brunelleschi for the design of the dome of Florence’s cathedral; one female French aristocrat seems to have revolutionised domestic design by insisting on mad things like dining rooms close to kitchens; a Nigerian born man made his way to the UK to study as an engineer and architect at the height of the British Empire, before returning to Nigeria and eventually helping form the shape of his country when it became independent; and the Maharaja of Jaypore was for some reason an honorary fellow of the RIBA.

I can’t wait for the research libraries to reopen to see if I can find a few more of these, to try and tell some of the story of the people who practised a little more on the margins of what was usual for the time, wrapping some pursuit of the architectural arts into something more accepted- charity work perhaps? In so doing perhaps i’ll discover why the practice of architecture has become what it has. I don’t doubt I will find some of these people, architecture has always attracted the slightly eccentric (myself included!) and has a uniquely addictive combination of, literally, concrete creative expression, academic study and artistic pursuit (helpfully wrapped up in the sort of job your parents don’t disapprove of)… of course it wasn’t just white men who practised it in the Britain of the 18th and 19th centuries- how could it be?!

Still, these are musings and explorations for another day.

In other news, I have been given much food for thought by the Church of Englands new(ish) report on the housing crisis; publishing house Salani commissioned an architect to reimagine the Harry Potter locations as contemporary architecture (this must have been so much fun to work on this) and I spun a new hobby into a column on craft and building for my BD piece this month.

I hope you’re all keeping well and enjoying our small steps towards normality this week!

Until next time

Eleanor

P.S I will, of course let you know when I have a publication date- I think it will probably be autumn 2022 sometime- we need to write quite a lot more first!