About the Book
This is the first comprehensive study of the reception of classical architecture in different regions of the world. Exploring the impact of colonialism, trade, slavery, religious missions, political ideology and intellectual/artistic exchange, the authors demonstrate how classical principles and ideas were disseminated and received across the globe. By addressing a number of contentious or unresolved issues highlighted in some historical surveys of architecture, the chapters presented in this volume question long-held assumptions about the notion of a universally accepted ‘classical tradition’ and its broadly Euro-centric perspective.
Featuring thirty-two chapters written by international scholars from China, Europe, Turkey, North America, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, the book is divided into four sections: 1) Transmission and re-conceptualisation of classical architecture; 2) Classical influence through colonialism, political ideology and religious conversion; 3) Historiographical surveys of geographical regions; and 4) Visual and textual discourses. This fourfold arrangement of chapters provides a coherent structure to accommodate different perspectives of classical reception across the world, and their geographical, ethnographic, ideological, symbolic, social and cultural contexts. Essays cover a wide geography and include studies in Italy, France, England, Scotland, the Nordic countries, Greece, Austria, Portugal, Romania, Germany, Poland, India, Singapore, China, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. Other essays in the volume focus on thematic issues or topics pertaining to classical architecture, such as ornament, spolia, humanism, nature, moderation, decorum, heresy and taste.
An essential reference guide, The Routledge Handbook on the Reception of Classical Architecture makes a major contribution to the study of architectural history in a new global context.
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: A ‘World’ Reception of Classical Architecture Nicholas Temple, Andrzej Piotrowski and Juan Manuel HerediaPART I: TRANSMISSION AND RE-CONCEPTUALISATION OF CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE 2.The Fates of Fornix Juan Manuel Heredia 3. Architects, Architecture and the City: Some Themes on the Continuity of Classical Ideas Relating to the Latin Middle Ages Christian Frost 4. Rethinking Ornament in Classical Architecture: Spolia and Architecture as institutio Clare E. L. Guest 5. The Persistence of Natura Naturans from Classical Architecture John Hendrix 6. On Moderation: The Ancient Virtue and its Reception in Architectural Theory Esra Sahin Burat 7. Classical Columns, Mannerism, and the Other Antiquity Andrzej Piotrowski 8. Neoclassical Taste and Antiquarian Scholarship: The Royal Academy of the Three Noble Arts of San Carlos in Mexico, Alexander von Humboldt and Pedro José Márquez Oscar Humberto Flores 9. Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Classicism in England: John Soane’s Language and ImaginationYue Zhuang PART II: CLASSICAL INFLUENCES THROUGH COLONIALISM, POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS CONVERSION 10. Honour and the Classical Tradition in Architecture: The Matter of Slavery Charles Burroughs 11. Dismemberment of the Orders and their Reassembly across Portuguese Overseas Settlements Pedro Guedes 12. The Reception and Involution of Classical Architecture in Jesuit Missions in China (1583-1759) Xiao Jing 13. The Gods that came from the Sea: The Classical Tradition in New Spain Santiago de Orduña 14. Indo-Portuguese Architecture in Kerala during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Helder Carita 15. Neo-classical Architecture in the Straits Settlements: Singapore’s Civic Square (1819
About the Author :
Nicholas Temple is an architect, Professor of Architecture and Director of the Centre for Urban Design, Architecture and Sustainability (CUDAS) at the University of Huddersfield, UK. A graduate of Cambridge University, he previously served as head of the School of Architecture at the University of Lincoln and was an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Temple was a Rome Scholar in Architecture at the British School at Rome, a Paul Mellon Rome Fellow and Bogliasco Fellow and has collaborated on research projects on the history and theory of architecture and urbanism in Europe and China. His most recent research is a British Academy-funded project with Professor Cecilia Panti on Lorenzo Ghiberti's 3rd Commentary. He was shortlisted for the International CICA Bruno Zevi Book Award in 2014 for his book Renovatio Urbis: Architecture, Urbanism and Ceremony in the Rome of Julius II (Routledge, 2011), and is chief editor of the Routledge Research in Architectural History series and co-editor of the Journal of Architecture.
Andrzej Piotrowski, an architect educated in Poland and Professor of Architecture at the University of Minnesota, USA, combines in his scholarship theory and history of architecture. His Jeffrey Cook Award-winning research focuses on the epistemology of design. Covering global issues of architecture, religion, politics and culture, his findings have been presented in many architectural and cross-disciplinary conferences. He is the author of Architecture of Thought (2011) and co-editor with J. Williams Robinson of The Discipline of Architecture (2001). Currently, he serves as an associate editor of the Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review and is working on a book entitled A Heretical History of Architecture.
Juan Manuel Heredia is Associate Professor of Architecture at Portland State University, USA, having completed a PhD and Master of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a Diploma of Philosophy from Universidad Iberoamericana/Mexico City. Heredia studied and practised architecture in Mexico before moving to the USA in 1999 to pursue graduate studies. His research focuses on architectural theory and history, especially of the twentieth century. His work has been published in Arquine and Bitacora (Mexico), On-Site Review (Canada) and Arkitekten (Denmark). In 2009 he co-organised the Second International Architecture and Phenomenology Conference held in Kyoto, Japan. His current writing focuses on twentieth-century architecture in Mexico and Latin America. He is the author of the forthcoming book The First Modern Building in Mexico (2020).
Review :
"While accomplishing its ambitions to examine the reception of classical architecture around the world, this remarkably edited collection is no mere compilation of scholarship under set ideological assumptions. Beyond impeccable and original historiography, its great merit is a critical openness to the complexity of cultural, social and political issues raised by the topic. Given the European origins of global technological civilization, the particular adoption of the classical tradition in diverse postclassical and modern historical contexts is a timely topic to orient our conversations about appropriate architectural practices." - Alberto Perez-Gomez, Bronfman Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture, McGill University, Montreal, and author of Attunement, Architectural Meaning after the Crisis of Modern Science
"This book clarifies the decisive differences between the style we call classicism and the ideas and practices that define the classical tradition, as received and revised in Europe and beyond. Readers will discover how the tradition’s creative nucleus re-established itself throughout the world, thus authorizing comparably creative revisions for any one at work in architecture today." - David Leatherbarrow, Professor of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania
"Was it the same 'classic' architecture the Romans took to Libya, the Jesuit missionaries to the Kangxi Emperor and Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker got the Indians to build in Delhi? Or is it all more brutal, as Goethe thought:: 'classical is healthy, romantic is sick'. If you have wondered about such matters Temple's, Piotrowski's and Heredia's book offers a unique panorama of such problems." - Joseph Rykwert CBE, Professor Emeritus of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania
