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This research paper considers the history of a particular moment in the development of the interior decoration/design business. Although the history of interior design practice has been well charted as 'art/design history,' the business and professional history has been somewhat neglected, except for work on particular firms. The issues examined relate to four particular aspects. The first covers the distinctions between decorators, upholsterers, furnishers, and architects and how these differences were reflected in the work undertaken. Related to this is a brief examination of why many architects ignored interior work. Secondly, is the nature of the customer base and how it reacted in response to changing social and economic factors. Thirdly, there are the issues of marketing and promotion that were aimed at a much wider audience than architects would expect, and finally a consideration of the house furnisher as a foundation for the development of the professional interior decorator/designer. To address these issues, the paper offers an overview of the rise, maturity, and change of the house furnisher as the most important contributor to the supply of interior design/decoration advice and products in the second half of the nineteenth century. By taking case studies of important players in the field, the paper will consider why architects gave up their role as arbiters of taste in interior works, and how the house furnishing businesses took over. This is of some interest as it not only explores an issue that still remains in the interior design world-the notion of who controls the work, but also explores the nature and pre-history of professional interior design service providers in the period. Although the scope of this essay is potentially wide ranging, it is limited to the second half of the nineteenth century and focuses on London for its case studies. Through a consideration of primary sources, often using the trade press for commentaries, a sense of the contemporary issues is made. In addition, the recent work by scholars in the field is used to interpret the changes described. As a foundation for the subsequent development of a profession, the house furnisher had laid a number of ground rules. Apart from the issue of the control of work, they encouraged the development of specialized knowledge, and they recognized the importance of training and education, and to some extent, exercised control of access to the industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1724 Antiquarian William Stukeley stated that Bath, England, was a "The small compass of the city has made the inhabitants crowd up the streets to an unseemly and inconvenient narrowness… a disgrace to the architects they have there." Within forty year of this statement Bath had become a 'Jewel in the Georgian crown' and is now a World Heritage site. Architect John Wood the Elder had a vision for the city of Bath that contained elegant streets, squares and crescents. These were not just individual buildings but they were an integrated plan that reformed a city from a place where people came to 'take the waters' of the hot springs for their health into a desirable city of elegant residences where the fashionable elite spent the social season. Wood was a prolific writer and published several books in his lifetime. In these books he considers architecture and history. He wrote a history of Bath, which was more folklore than history, that was openly challenged at the time. His history moved the historic focus of Bath away from the Romans and it emphasised the importance of the native Britons. This paper examines how Wood used architecture to memorialise the past, not through style, but through measurements and elements. He had a unique way of 'writing' history into his architectural plans and in this way he reinvented the past into a new and distinct architecture that remains aw-inspiring to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What narratives may a micro-study within a school reveal about past lives, roles and design? What traces may be contained within a single room? This paper focuses on an oral history of a 'welfare room' in a postwar Infants school as told by a welfare assistant. The school is an early example of school designed by Mary (Crowley) Medd opened in 1949. Mary, together with David Medd, was to play a significant role in postwar school design through their work at a local authority level, particularly in Hertfordshire and more widely at a national and international level through the Ministry of Education Architects and Building Development Group (1949-1972). This study, part of a wider investigation of three of the Medds' postwar schools, reveals three features of architectural intention lived out in the habitation of the space. There is an attention to the 'in-between' as part of a reconfiguring of learning spaces, to comfort and care linked to design, which promotes growth, and to craftsmanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis on the partially built architecture designed by Andrea Palladio. It is said that Palladio is one of the most famous architects in the history of architecture in England. It is cited that several drawings that he created can be found in London's Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) archives, and at the Palladio CISA Center of Vicenza. It is discussed that Palladio's drawings are made with pencil and China ink on large sheets of paper, which have the geometric drawing of the structure.

The plan produced by Lutyens and Abercrombie in 1944 for the city of Kingston upon Hull is perhaps the least known of a celebrated series of wartime plans for the reconstruction of provincial cities, such as Plymouth and Coventry, despite the contemporary fame of its authors. The paper seeks to remedy this deficiency. It outlines the Plan's key proposals, describes their formative influences and looks at their relationship to developments in planning during that period. The paper analyses the Plan from the perspectives of both general planning principles and those aspects which were very specific to Hull itself. It identifies a number of imaginative proposals, particularly in the fields of integrated traffic and neighbourhood planning, and the remodelling of the city centre. The paper concludes that the Hull Plan, whilst containing features which would not find acceptance now, deserves wider recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the architectural restoration of the Radley Hall in Oxfordshire, England. The Radley Hall is a fine baroque country house made by John Stonehouse of Radley and William Townesend and Bartholomew Peisley of Oxford on June 28, 1721. The paper also focuses on the characteristic baroque plan of such architecture to find a late eighteenth-century plan. It is noted that the house has two plans in which the front door leads directly to the garden door designed to help bring the sunlight into the north-facing hall.

The article examines the architectural history of the Blickling Hall, a Jacobean building, in Norfolk, England. It discusses various extensive building accounts from the Lothian papers in the Norfolk Record Office and surviving documents concerning the mansion's construction and personnel involve, such as the full summary drawn up by Richard Burton, the steward of Sir Henry Hobart, the first Baronet of the Blickling Hall. The architectural drawings of the house provided by the master craftsmen Robert Lying, which shows the design for a banqueting house in the east garden, and other documents which includes the total expenditures and service contracts are presented

Arthur J. Penty, an English architect in private practice in York at the turn of the century, became associated with Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin as a freelance designer and exerted a fundamentally important (though largely unsung) influence on the stylistic principles now associated with Parker and Unwin's work at the First Garden City, Letchworth (founded 1903) and at Hampstead Garden Suburb in London (commenced 1905). He was a competent Arts and Crafts designer during a late phase of this idiom's effectiveness in England, believing it to be both culturally and socially appropriate in its reflection of the English temperament and its demand for high quality production. His concerns for the latter prompted him to be an architectural theorist, to popularize the work of Voysey and Lethaby, and to advocate greater on-site collaboration between architects and craftsmen and the virtual abolition of designing on paper. It also persuaded him to become a political activist and to originate a movement--Guild Socialism-- which placed great faith in the potential governance of education and production by restored crafts guilds and which enjoyed a brief moment of success in the form of a National Guilds League just after the First World War. Medievalism is the key concept linking all aspects of his life's work--his devotion to the teachings of Morris, his respect for likeminded 19th-century practical idealists, his wish to encourage a return to systems of quality, control and production effective in the Middle Ages, and his "medievalist" detailing of several of Parker and Unwin's landmark buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the architectural authorship of the mid 18th century design of Holkham Hall in Norfolk, England, with a particular focus on the architect William Kent. The role that the architects the Earl of Burlington and Thomas Coke (who is also referred to as Baron Lovell, Earl of Leicester and Lord Leicester) played in designing the Holkham Hall is discussed. An overview of the architectural researcher Leopold Schmidt's perspective on the Holkham Hall's authorship is provided.

Aldo van Eyck, in an interview twenty-five years after John Voelcker died [1], remembered him as follows:There were, of course, other highly interesting men in Team 10, for their personality and intellect and passion; one of them was John Voelcker. He really thought about the great problems of urbanism. He was one of the first people, in Aix already, who talked about quantity, number and identity and in such a way that I thought ‘hey, now I have a new scale; somebody is tuned in rather differently, with a completely other approach […]He wasn't the kind of person to organise himself to build. He did build several things, but not much. He was younger […] and anyway with the kind of ideas he had it wasn't easy to hook onto British building practice. His ideas went very far, though they were not utopian. John was a quintessential Team 10 thinker. He was urbanistically the best of the Team 10 thinkers, by far. He knew a lot, he was interesting, inclined and open. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Eighteenth-century architect-builders were a small group, but important for understanding the market strategies of knowledge-based experts in an age of rapid growth in technical information before the creation of modern professions. This article confronts a teleological historiography of emerging professionalization. It is focused on Robert Mylne and several of his contemporaries in Edinburgh and London, including a number of successful London-based Scots who were active as architects, builders, engineers, and surveyors, and self-styled in all these areas when it suited them. It supplies an account of what it took for building experts to establish themselves and flourish in big cities and the ways in which such experts navigated, controlled, and accommodated an environment of unregulated expertise that largely suited contemporary practitioners. Individual, family, and collective market strategies are examined in detail and the final section is a close analysis of the activities of the Architects Club in the 1790s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the contours of the post-industrial work of Italian radical architecture group that asserted itself in the subsequent decades in London, England. It investigates the career-long fixation of Italian Radical Architecture collective Superstudio with architecture and paying special attention to their relationship with popular culture and mass media forms. It notes that the groups attitude towards mass culture point an escalating difficulty in finding spaces with capitalist system from individual action.

During the years following the Second World War, there were efforts in several European countries to grasp the opportunity to re-imagine school created through the need to rebuild on a mass scale. This article examines in detail an episode in the exchange of knowledge between English and Danish architects and educators during a period of intensive activity. Through a micro-study of documents that have survived in archives in both countries, the study tour is revealed as a key agent of exchange and as such a mapping of sites of specific interest in two countries is discussed. The origins of English-Danish exchanges are explored in the context of the rise of the modernist movement and its relationship with progressive education. A prosopographical perspective is used to understand the complexities of the social and professional relationships underpinning these exchanges. This is pursued through a detailed discussion of the meetings and site visits made during the study tours in Denmark and England during 1954. Finally, the impact of the various exchanges is assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented examining the history of 16th century fortification-building in England and the different forms of expertise that were used by the state. Details are given overviewing the adoption of domestic builders as experts after failures in dealing with previous Continental workers. Further analysis is offered comparing the dynamics between experts by knowledge or experts by experience within the arrangements.

This article explores the suggestion by architect Will Alsop that the future prosperity and influence of Northern English cities will be best achieved through merging into one discrete urban entity facilitated by the M62 motorway corridor. The article will locate Alsop's plan within the concerns of literature drawn from the mobilities strand of social science research, as well as architectural theories of urbanism and contemporaneous governmental policy. The article concludes by looking at the Northern English region and Alsop's plan within a national, European and global context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the architectural projects which are considered to be catalysts for urbanization in Great Britain. It also discusses the Thames Barrier Park in the London Dockland, at London, England. According to architect Aldo Rossi, artifacts which aid in the process of growth and development of urban collections. It mentions that the Thames Barrier Park was developed by the London Docklands Development Corp. (LLDC), after the decline in industrialization and criticisms faced by LLDC regarding its urban planning projects.

The article discusses the relevance of the Manchester Assize courts to architectural designs and how its architect, Alfred Waterhouse, adapted the various parts of the building to its purpose. It describes the courthouse as exceptional and functional providing ample accommodation compared to other courts. The author expresses her admiration to Waterhouse and believes that the complexity of his designs sets him apart from the others.

The "pavilion plan" for hospital design originated in France in the 18th century and was popularised in England by John Roberton and George Godwin in the mid-19th century; the underlying rationale was that with improved ventilation the mortality rate (at that time exceedingly high) was significantly reduced. Among the enthusiasts for this new style was Florence Nightingale (herself a miasmatist)--who had experienced astronomically high death rates in the hospital at Scutari during the Crimean War (1854-6). One of the leading exponents of this style of hospital architecture was Henry Currey (1820-1900) whose greatest achievement was undoubtedly the design for the new St Thomas's Hospital on the Lambeth Palace Road. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on theorist and architect M. Viollet-le-Duc and his influence in nineteenth-century England. Most of his contemporary architects failed in an understanding of his ideas. In England, in part owing to the fact that his major writings were not translated his ideas made even less impact. Although, his "Dictionnaires" were widely used, however, they were looked upon as works of reference, repositories of information, providing brief and reliable histories of a whole range of buildings and features. Several architects have been proposed to bear witness to a general admiration for Viollet-le-Duc--especially the Viollet-le-Duc of the Dictionnaires.

The article focuses on the system of contracting in gross for buildings in England. Between the years 1800 and 1830 there was much contention about the best mode of contracting for a building. The subject came under discussion in Parliament, and was a topic of inquiry by official committees. Limited competition among chosen tradesmen was a safeguard against this danger, and in the 1820's it was employed by the Office of Works for all new building. Fears that a contractor would lose by his contract, or hopes that he would enrich himself, largely derived from the architect's lack of care in drawing up his specification and supervising the work. It might seem that these difficulties could be overcome when drawing up the contract by the architect's specifying the mode of measuring to be followed. But it has been seen that contracts in gross might give rise to disputes if extras and alterations were undertaken. Thus by the 'sixties when the Royal Institute of British Architects set up a committee on professional practice, there was general agreement that the system of measurement and a schedule of prices only led to disputes, and in many cases to frauds, and the best and most economical course for the Government was by contract in the gross.