19th Century Theory of Architectre

19TH CENTURY THEORY
•Concepts of Viollet Le Duc
•John Ruskin
•Quatramere de Quincy
•Gottfried Semper
Ar. Shruthi S Kshirasagar | Assistant Professor , BGS SAP

Gothic architecture,
architectural style in
Europe that lasted
from the mid-12th
century to the 16th
century,
particularly a style
of masonry building
characterized by
cavernous spaces
with the expanse of
walls broken up by
overlaid tracery.
Beginning in the
16th century,
as Renaissance
architecture from
Italy began to
appear in France
and other
countries in
Europe, the
dominance of
Gothic
architecture
began to wane
The middle of the
19th century was
a period marked
by the restoration,
and in some
cases
modification, this
period is marked
as gothic revival.
mid-12th century to 16th century, 16th century, Middle 19th century,
TIMELINE

GENERAL FEATURE OF THE CENTURY
The 19th century was rich in music, painting, novel and poetry.
Gothic Revival
The century emphasizes both cultural and technical
transformation.
The revival is in a Horizontal scale
But it includes all the elements included in gothic style of
architecture.
It depicts the growth of the English empire in 19th century
BIG BEN (1843 – 1859)

• We see a similar thing
in New York. St.
patrick Cathedral.
• More direct
representation of
gothic revival (Rose
window, massive
spites, Ribbed voults
etc. (New materials
like steel are being
added.

Gothic Vaults Gothic Revival Vaults

19th Century Homes
• The revival wasn’t restricted to cathedrals and
public buildings.
• In terms of homes – 19th century homes have
adopted few basic gothic architectural styles.
• Charectristic of Gothic revival include
• Steap roof
• Cotton window
• Pointed arches
• Ledged opening- dimond pattern
• Porch in front of the house
• Dormer windows

19th Century Theory of Architectre

STICK STYLE

VICTORIAN HOME
That era was, of course, the time when Queen Victoria reigned in Great
Britain, from 1837 to 1901.2

Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc
(born Jan. 27, 1814), Paris, France—died Sept. 17, 1879, Lausanne, Switz.)
• French Gothic Revival architect,
• Restorer of French medieval
buildings
• Writer whose theories of rational
architectural design linked the
revivalism.
His philosophy was “To Restore the Building to
a state of Completeness that may never have
existed."

Architectural Restorer
• Viollet-le-Duc was a pupil of Achille Leclère but was inspired in his
career by the architect Henri Labrouste.
• In 1836 he traveled to Italy, where he spent 16 months studying
architecture.
• Back in France he was drawn irrevocably to Gothic art.
• J.-B. Lassus first trained Violletle-Duc as a medieval archaeologist
on the restoration of SaintGermain-l’Auxerrois (1838)

• Main restorations
Vezelay Abbay, France Holy Chapell, Paris Notre Dame, Paris
City wall of Carcassonne, France
Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc
Pierrefonds castle, France. Viollet le Duc let
his imagination run to rebuild this castle
near in the north of Paris.

• Viollet-le-Duc has concerned itself with the modern political
circumstances that surrounded the formation of a theory and
practice of national monument preservation.
• Historians of medieval architecture, in particular, have long
decried the heavy hand of Viollet-le-Duc's restoration, at times
involving such a thorough changing of the confused palimpsests
of the passage of time to achieve his famous paradoxical dictum
that "to restore an edifice is not to maintain it,
repair or remake it, it is to re-establish it in a
complete state that may never have existed at any
given moment in the past."
Architectural Philosophy

• In 1834 the newly
appointed French inspector
of historical monuments,
Prosper Mérimée (more
familiar as the author of
Carmen), warned that it
was about to collapse, and
on his recommendation
the young architect Eugène
Viollet-le-Duc was
appointed to supervise a
massive and successful
restoration, undertaken in
several stages between
1840 and 1861, during
which his team replaced a
great deal of the
weathered and vandalized
sculpture.
Abbey of la Madaleine

• Floor plan of Vézelay shows the adjustment in vaulting between
the choir and the new nave.
• After the Revolution, Vézelay stood in danger of collapse.
• Vézelay-1840 He replaced the later 13th-century pointed vaults
with 12th-century semicircular groin vaults in order to give a
sense of unity to the nave, but changing the character of the
building.
• The flying buttresses that support the nave are his work.

La Sainte Chapelle
• Sainte Chapelle suffered from several fires (1630, 1777) and one
flood.
• The outside ornamentation was damaged, especially the spire.
• Restorations were made in the second part of the 19th century.
• A new spire was built (1853) And Restoration of the inside
ornamentation was almost complete.

La Sainte Chapelle
• Interestingly, the chapel incorporated a form of iron
reinforcement, with two ‘chains’ of hooked bars encircling the
upper chapel, the main part of the structure.
• Further, there were iron stabilizers across the nave (with a vertical
tension bar).
• Two meters' worth of glass was removed to facilitate working
light and destroyed or put on the market.
• Its well-documented restoration, completed under the direction
of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in 1855, was regarded as exemplary by
contemporaries and is faithful to the original drawings and
descriptions of the chapel that survive.
• Completed in 1855 under the direction of Viollet-le-Duc, the
project was considered exemplary by contemporaries.

Much of the
chapel as it
appears
today dates
from this
19th century
recreation of
what
restores at
the time
thought it
might have
looked in the
13th century.

INSPIRATION
• August Ferret was inspired by his ideas and steadfastly clung to
them throughout his life.
• Frank Lloyd Wright continually acknowledged his debt to the
great restoration.
• Mies van der Rohe even has admitted his influence. And if his
ideas might seem more closely related to the steel and glass
building of this architect.
• Russian constructivist El Lissitsky who found his stimulus in
Viollet-le-Duc's L' A rt Russe—it is as well to remember that his
theories have not been inimical to the creation of such works as
the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and the chapel at Ronchamps.
• Antonio Gaudi's highly original architecture was directly inspired
by the writings of Viollet-le-Duc.

JOHN RUSKIN
(8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900)
Modern Painters 5 vols. (1843–1860)
The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849)
The Stones of Venice 3 vols. (1851–1853)
Unto This Last (1860, 1862)
Fors Clavigera (1871–1884)
Praeterita 3 vols. (1885–1889)
“Qualityis never an accident, It is always the result of intelligent
efforts”

First book of John Ruskin- Modern Painters
• Modern Painters (1843–1860) is a five-volume work by the
eminent Victorian art critic, John Ruskin, begun when he was
24 years old based on material collected in Switzerland in
1842.
• Ruskin argues that
recent painters
emerging from the
tradition of
the picturesque are
superior in the art of
landscape to the old
masters.

Second book of John Ruskin-
King of the Golden River
Effie Gray

• In 1849 John Ruskin published an
article called The Seven Lamps of
Architecture. In this he distills the
essence of the Gothic Revival down
to seven “lamps”. They are as
follows:
• Sacrifice
• Truth
• Power
• Beauty
• Life
• Memory
• Obedience
Second book of John Ruskin-
The seven lamps of architecture

• Sacrifice –Let me borrow from the Bible to explain this.
“Do everything as unto the Lord”. Do it well as if you were
trying to please God with your design and craft.
• Obedience - “The architecture of a nation is great only
when it is as universal and as established as it language”.
John Ruskin asserted that England should have one school of
architecture, a type of Gothic that was peculiarly English.
• Power – A building is a shape, a mass. Its immensity in
comparison to man has its own effect apart from its
ornamentation. The architect’s job is to display this shape to
its best effect.

• Life –Building should be made with human hands, and by this
he means skilled human hands, masons and carvers and
carpenters. The life of the builder must be in the building.
Those who build their own houses can relate to this. Ruskin
was against the mass production of buildings and any
innovation that decreased the skill content of the buildings.
• Truth – Your buildings should be honest in how they present
themselves. No fancy facades hiding poor construction. No
wood pretending to be stone.
• Memory – Buildings (and houses) should reflect the culture
and what went on before. They in turn will inform the culture
that follows. John Ruskin was not a big fan of innovative
disruption. Even gradual change is something to be
distrusted. In some ways he was the ultimate cultural
conservative.

• Beauty – Here John Ruskin refers to skin and ornamentation.
He draws heavily on nature, because nature is our school
master for beauty. Therefore art in our buildings should be
imitative of the forms and lines and shapes we see in nature.

QUATREMÈRE DE QUINCY
• Antoine Chrysostôme
Quatremère de Quincy
was born on October 28,
1755 in Paris, France.
• Studied law and later
learned sculpture.
Commissioned to write the first formal dictionary
of architecture.

In 1791 quatremère de quincy transformed the
church of st. Genevieve into the parthenon.
• Quatremère de
Quincy was the author of
numerous articles and
books. From 1788 to
1825,
• He wrote the
three Architecture volum
es of the Encyclopédie
Méthodique.
• His Dictionnaire
historique de l'Architectu
re was published in 1832-
33.
QUATREMÈRE DE QUINCY

Gottfried Semper
29 November 1803, Altona,(later greater Hamburg)
• He was among the
principal practitioners of
the Neo-Renaissance
style in Germany and
Austria.
• He was the most
influential and prolific
German theorist on
architecture in the
nineteenth century.
• He developed ideas
about technology,
architecture and art
history.

• His book published in 1851,
it is an attempt to explain
the origins of architecture
through
the lens of anthropology.
• The book divides
architecture into four
distinct elements
❖ Hearth – metallurgy,
ceramics
❖ Roof – carpentry
❖ Enclosure – textile,weaving
❖ Mound – earthwork
Publications

• Hearth – metallurgy, ceramics
• as when the first men lost paradise, the
setting up of the fireplace and the lighting
of the reviving, warming, and food
preparing flame. Around the hearth the
first groups formed: around the hearth the
first groups assembled; around it the first
alliances formed; around it the first rude
religious concepts were put into the
customs of a cult.
• Roof – carpentry
• the roof, the enclosure, and the mound.
The protecting negations or defenders of
the hearths flame against three hostile
elements of nature

• Enclosure – textile,weaving
• Enclosures (walls) were said to have their
origins in weaving. Just as fences and pens
were woven sticks, the most basic form of a
spatial divider still seen in use in parts of
the world today is the fabric screen. Only
when additional functional requirements
are placed on the enclosure (such as
structural weight-bearing needs) does the
materiality of the wall change to something
beyond fabric.
• Mound – earthwork
• Semper's Four Elements of Architecture
was an attempt at a universal theory of
architecture.

1852 - Science, Industry, and Art (Proposals for the Development of a
National Taste in Art at the closing of the London Industrial
Exhibition)
-Talks about the necessity of inventions and the advancement of arts
and sciences.
1852 - Comparative Theory of Building
-Reviews all building types, their locations, methods of building, and
histories thereof
1859 - Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts or Practical Aesthetics
-Discusses extensively the use of materials within arts, crafts, and
architecture. Reviews the detail involved in the tectonic arts.
Analyses architectonics in antiquity and current architecture.
Provides mathematical formulas to categorize different styles.
Other Publications

Views of the Acropolis in Athens
These are colored depictions from Semper’s
early travels around Europe. Details that are
depicted come from Semper’s own
investigations around the temples.

Works in Architecture
Dresden
-Hoftheater -1841 (destroyed by fire in 1869)
-Villa Rosa -1839 (destroyed in WWII)
-Semper Synagogue -1838 (destroyed during
Kristallnacht 1938)
-Oppenheim Palace -1848
-Painting Galery -1848
-Neues Hoftheater (Semeperoper) -1878
Zurich
-Polytechnical School (ETH Zurcih) -1864
-Observatory -1864
Winterthur
-City Hall – 1864
Vienna
-Municipal Theater -1888
-Museum of Art History -1889
-Natural History Museum -1891
Semperoper
Municipal Theater, Vienna

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19th Century Theory of Architectre

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