Architects From England

"Being subject to headache which hindered his learning his father laid aside all thought of breeding him a scholar, and finding himself also grow very infirm through age and sickness, wholly neglected his further education, who, being thus left to himself, spent his time in making little mechanical 'Toys, (as he says) in which he was very intent, and for the Tools he had successful; so that there was nothing he saw done by any Mechanick but he endeavoured to imitate, and in some particular could exceed (which are his own words).' His Father, observing by these Indications, his great inclination to Mechanicks, thought to put him Apprentice to some easy Trade (as a Watchmakers or Limners) he shewing most inclination to those or the like Mechanical Performances; for making use of such Tools as he could procure, 'seeing an old Brass Clock taken to pieces, he attempted to imitate it, and made a wooden one that would go: 'Much about the same time he made a small Ship about a Yard long, fitly shaping it, adding its Rigging of Ropes, Pullies, Masts, &c. with a contrivance to make it fire off some small Guns, as it was Sailing cross a Haven of a pretty breadth: He had also a great fancy for drawing, having much about the same Age Coppied several Prints with a Pen, that Mr. Hoskins (Son to the famous Hoskins Cowpers Master) much admired one not instructed could so well imitate them."

"From his Youth he had been us'd to a Collegiate, or rather Monastick Life, which might be some reason of his continuing to live so like an Hermit or Cynick too penuriously, when his Circumstances, as to Estate, were very considerable, scarcely affording himself Necessaries. I indeed, as well as others, have heard him declare sometimes that he had a great Project in his Head as to the disposal of the most part of his Estate for the advancement of Natural Knowledge, and to promote the Ends and Designs for which the Royal Society was instituted... But tho he was often solicited by his Friends to put his Designs down in Writing, and make his Will as to the disposal of his Estate to his own liking in the time of his Health; and after when himself, and all thought, his End drew near, yet he could never be prevail'd with to perfect it, still procrastinating it, till at last this great Design prov'd an airy Phantom and vanish'd into nothing. Thus he dy'd at last without any Will and Testament that could be found."

"He always exprest a great Veneration for the eternal and immense Cause of all Beings, as may be seen in very many Passages in his Writings, and seldom receiv'd any remarkable Benefit from God without thankfully ackowledging the Mercy; never made any considerable discovery in Nature, invented any useful Contrivance, or found out any difficult Problem, without setting down his Acknowledgement to the Omnipotent Providence, as many places in his Diary testify, frequently in these or the like words, abbreviated thus, DOMGM. and was a frequent studier of the Holy Scripture in the Originals: If he was particular in some Matters, let us leave him to the searcher of Hearts."

"All his Errors and Blemishes were more than made amends for, by the Greatness and Extent of his natural and acquired Parts, and more than common, if not wonderful Sagacity, in diving into the most hidden secrets of Nature, and in contriving proper Methods of forcing her to confess the Truth. ...There needs no other Proof for this than the great number of Experiments he made, with the Contrivances for them, amounting to some hundreds; his new and useful Instruments and Inventions, which were numerous, his admirable Facility and Clearness, in explaining the Phænomena of Nature, and demonstrating his Assertions; his happy Talent in adapting Theories to the Phænomena observ'd, and contriving easy and plain, not pompous and amusing, Experiments to back and prove those Theories; proceeding from Observations to Theories, and from Theories to farther trials, which he often asserted to be the most proper method to succeed in the interpretation of Nature. For these, his happy Qualifications, he was much respected by the most learned Philosophers both at home and abroad: And as with all his Failures, he may be reckon'd among the great Men of the last Age, so had he been free from them, possibly, he might have stood in the Front. But humanum est errare."

"When he went to Mr Busby's, the schoolemaster of Westminster, at whose howse he was; and he made very much of him. ...There he learnd to play 20 lessons on the organ. He there in one weeke's time made himselfe master of the first Vl bookes of Euclid, to the admiration of Mr. Busby... who introduced him. At schoole here he was very mechanicall, and (amongst other things) he invented thirty severall wayes of flying, which I have not only heard him say, but Dr. Wilkins (at Wadham College at that time) who gave him his Mathematical Magique which did him a great kindnes. He was never a King's Scholar, and I have heard Sir Richard Knight (who was his school-fellow) say that he seldome sawe him in the schoole."

"Anno Domini 1658... he was sent to Christ Church in Oxford, where he had a chorister's place (in those dayes when the church musique was putt downe), which was a pretty good maintenance. He was there assistant to Dr. Thomas Willis in his chymistry; who afterwards recommended him to the honble Robert Boyle, esqre, to be usefull to him in his chymicall operations. Mr Hooke then read to him (R.B. esqre) Euclid's Elements, and made him understand Des Cartes' Philosophy."

"Anno Domini 1662 Mr. Robert Boyle recommended Mr. Robert Hooke to be Curator of the Experiments of the Royall Society, wherin he did an admirable good worke to the Common-wealth of Learning, in recommending the fittest person in the world to them. Anno 1664 he was chosen Geometry Professour at Gresham College."

"Anno Domini 1666 the great conflagration of London happened, and then he was chosen one of the two surveyors of the citie of London; by which he hath gott a great estate. He built Bedlam, the Physitians' College, Montague-house, the Piller on Fish-street-hill, and Theatre there; and he is much made use of in designing buildings."

"As he is of prodigious inventive head, so is a person of great vertue and goodnes. Now when I have sayd his inventive faculty is so great, you cannot imagine his memory to be excellent, for they are like two bucketts, as one goes up, the other goes downe. He is certainly the greatest mechanick this day in the world. His head lies much more to Geometry then to Arithmetique."

"'Twas Mr Robert Hooke that invented the Pendulum Watches, so much more usefull than the other watches."

"He hath invented an engine for the speedie working of division, etc., or for the speedie and immediate finding out the divisor."

"The next moneth he published another little... pamphlet,—Discourse of a new instrument he haz invented to make more accurate observations in astronomy then ever was yet made, or could be made by any instruments hitherto invented, and this instrument... performes more, and more exact, then all the chargeable apparatus of the noble Tycho Brache or the present Hevelius of Dantzick."

"If one was told that monkeys had built it, one could only say, 'What wonderful monkeys — they must be shot in case they do it again.'"

"[A man every day should do] probably self-assess. Do I do it religiously? Not consciously, but I like to think that in one form or another I do question, yes. I would be being pretentious and untruthful if I said that I devote a bit of time just for introspection and consciously do that, but in one form or another I suspect I do. And if I don't, I think it would be a good thing to do anyway."

"Part of the art of being an architect is to be a good listener. But I also believe in always providing strong leadership. Something that is designed by committee, in the end, tends to be compromised."

"[Makes a good architect] an open mind, energy, an appetite for hard work, a willingness to explore new solutions and push boundaries. A sense of humor is also helpful."

"The most amazing lesson in aerodynamics I ever had was the day I climbed a thermal in a glider at the same time as an eagle. I witnessed, close up, effortlessness and lightness combined with strength, precision and determination."

"I'm amazed to be here still and doing all this. But then I look at Oscar Niemeyer in Rio, who was a hero of mine when I was a student at Manchester. Oscar's still busy at work at 102, so there's hope. In any case, I just wouldn't know how to stop."

"I like to find things from unexpected sources. I tend to move between turtlenecks and shirts and ties. I don't really have a uniform in the sense that some people might."

"Allowing, therefore, the great usefulness of the Government Schools, the Exhibitions, and the Museums both public and private, the question now arises as to what are the impediments to our future progress. The principal ones appear to me to be three."

"I have been brought up in the 13th century belief, and in that belief I intend to die."

"There are two great uses of antiquarian studies. One of them is to enable us to conjure up as if by the magician's wand the dress, furniture, architecture, &c., of past ages, so that we can live, as it were, in many centuries almost at the same moment. This is a very great and a very pleasant species of knowledge, but it is not particularly useful in this work-a-day world; and it sometimes, like other knowledge, renders its possessor far from happy, more especially when he goes to the theatre, and sees all sorts of anachronisms and impossibilities a. The other use of antiquarian studies is to restore disused arts, and to get all the good we can out of them for our own improvement."

"We now come to a third evil, namely, our very unsatisfactory, not to say ugly, furniture. It may be objected that it does not much matter what may be the exact curve of the legs of the chair a man sits upon, or of the table off which he eats his dinner, provided the said articles of furniture answer their respective uses ; but, unfortunately, what we see continually before our eyes is likely, indeed is quite sure, to exercise a very great influence upon our taste, and therefore the question of beautiful versus ugly furniture does become a matter of very great importance. I might easily enlarge upon the enormities, inconveniences, and extravagances of our modern upholsterers, but that has been so fully done in a recent number of the "Cornhill Magazine" that I may well dispense with the task."

"The great feature of our medieval chamber is the furniture ; this, in a rich apartment, would be covered with paintings, both ornaments and subjects; it not only did its duty as furniture, but spoke and told a story."

"Nothing is more perishable than worn-out apparel, yet, thanks to documentary evidence, to the custom of burying people of high rank in their robes, and to the practice of wrapping up relics of saints in pieces of precious stuffs, we are enabled to form a veiy good idea of what these stuffs were like and where they came from. In the first instance they appear to have come from Byzantium, and from the East generally; but the manufacture afterwards extended to Sicily, and received great impetus at the Norman conquest of that island; Roger I. even transplanting Greek workmen from the towns sacked by his army, and settling them in Sicily. Of course many of the workers would be Mohammedans, and the old patterns, perhaps with the addition of sundry animals, would still continue in use; hence the frequency of Arabic inscriptions in the borders, the Cufic character being one of the most ornamental ever used. In the Hotel de Clu^ny at Paris are preserved the remains of the vestments of a bishop of Bayonne, found when his sepulchre was opened in 1853, the date of the entombment being the twelfth century. Some of these remains are cloth of gold, but the most remarkable is a very deep border ornamented with blue Cufic letters on a gold ground; the letters are fimbriated with white, and from them issue delicate red scrolls, which end in Arabic sort of flowers: this tissue probably is pure Eastern work. On the contrary, the coronation robes of the German emperors, although of an Eastern pattern, bear inscriptions which tell us very clearly where they were manufactured: thus the Cufic characters on the cope inform us that it was made in the city of Palermo in the year 1133, while the tunic has the date of 1181, but then the inscription is in the Latin language. The practice of putting Cufic inscriptions on precious stuffs was not confined to the Eastern and Sicilian manufactures; in process of time other Italian cities took up the art, and, either because it was the fashion, or because they wished to pass off" their own work as Sicilian or Eastern manufacture, imitations of Arabic characters are continually met with, both on the few examples that have come down to us of the stuffs themselves, or on painted statues or sculptured effigies. These are the inscriptions which used to be the despair of antiquaries, who vainly searched out their meaning until it was discovered that they had no meaning at all, and that they were mere ornaments. Sometimes the inscriptions appear to be imitations of the Greek, and sometimes even of the Hebrew. The celebrated ciborium of Limoges work in the Louvre, known as the work of Magister G. Alpais, bears an ornament around its rim which a French antiquary has discovered to be nothing more than the upper part of a Cufic word repeated and made into a decoration."

"We have no architecture to work from at all; indeed, we have not even settled the point de depart... our art... is domestic, and... the best way of advancing its progress is to do our best in our own houses... if we once manage to obtain a large amount of art and colour in our sitting-rooms... the improvement may gradually extend to our costume, and perhaps eventually to the architecture of our houses."

"The thirteenth century, in particular, was Burges’s chosen field, and he modelled his style of draughtsmanship on the famous sketchbook of in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris."

"He was almost the first artist I ever knew... He used to give the quaintest little tea-parties in his bare bachelor chambers, all very dowdy, but the meal served in beaten gold, the cream poured out of a single onyx, and the tea structured in its descent on account of real rubies inside the pot. He was much blinder than any near-sighted man I ever knew, and once, when with me in the country, mistook a peacock seen en face for a man. His work was really more jewel-work than architecture, just because he was so blind, but he had real genius, I am sure."

"There is a babyish party named Burges"

"At present the fashion appears to have set in in favour of two very distinct styles. One is a very impure and bastard Italian, which is used in most large secular buildings; and the other is a variety of the architecture of the thirteenth century, often, I am sorry to say, not much purer than its rival, especially in the domestic examples, although its use is principally confined to ecclesiastical edifices. It is needless to say that the details of these two styles are as different from each other as light from darkness, but still we are expected to master both of them. But it is most sincerely to be hoped that in course of time one or both of them will disappear, and that we may get something of our own of which we need not be ashamed. This may, perhaps, take place in the twentieth century, it certainly, as far as I can see, will not occur in the nineteenth."

"What I set myself to do was this, to write a sort of grammar of thirteenth-century architecture, and to illustrate it with carefully measured details. I moreover resolved, when I did measure details or buildings, to do the part I wanted, and not to waste time by trying to make a finished drawing by means of the surroundings. The plan of the book fell through, for I had scarcely been at work two months before the advertisement of M. Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionary appeared, and I then continued tho drawings for my own instruction and without any intention of publication."

"If we copy, the thing never looks right [and] the same occurs with regard to those buildings which do not profess to be copies; both they and the copies want spirit. They are dead bodies... We are at our wits."

"The civil engineer is the real 19th century architect."

"Use a good strong thick bold line so that we may get into the habit of leaving out those prettinesses which only cost money and spoil our design."

"Pugin says in one of his works that had he a cathedral to build, one of the first things he would do would be to set up a to turn the smaller columns."

"Since the great French Revolution all colour has been gradually dying out of the male costume, until we have got reduced to our present gamut of brown, black and neutral tint; which, combined with the chimney-pot hat and the swallow-tailed coat, form a costume by no means particularly adapted to refresh the eye seeking for form or colour."

"The real mission of machinery is to reduce pounds to shillings and shillings to pence."

"Decidedly the best application of art to industry is when a great many copies are made from an exceedingly good pattern."

"Great praise must also be given to the Society of Arts for beginning the movement and carrying it on to the present time; and although the sphere of its action must necessarily be infinitely smaller than that of the Government Schools, yet we should always remember that the initiative of our great English exhibitions of industry came from the Society, and that it is to those exhibitions that we owe the stirring among the dry bones of industrial art which is now taking place."

"Of course there is no prima facie reason why cheap things should be ugly, for a die or mould of a good design costs no more than a bad one; but still the fact remains that the objects in use in every-day life are not beautiful, and it is to effect a change in this respect that the Government have established Schools of Design and the excellent Museum of which I shall have to speak hereafter."

"It has been well observed that the world, more especially the English portion of it, during the last half century, has been in its working dress; that is to say, although we have done some very wonderful things in the way of mechanics, and have produced other things which are marvels of cheapness, yet as regards the production of really beautiful objects, particularly those required in every-day life, we have been behind most other epochs of civilization."

"A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth."

"Architecture has its political Use; public Buildings being the Ornament of a Country; it establishes a Nation, draws People and Commerce; makes the People love their native Country, which Passion is the Original of all great Actions in a Common-wealth…. Architecture aims at Eternity."

"Christopher Wren, the leading architect of London's reconstruction after the great fire of 1666, lies buried beneath the floor of his most famous building, St. Paul's cathedral. No elaborate sarcophagus adorns the site. Instead, we find only the famous epitaph written by his son and now inscribed into the floor: “si monumentum requiris, circumspice”—if you are searching for his monument, look around. A tad grandiose, perhaps, but I have never read a finer testimony to the central importance—one might even say sacredness — of actual places, rather than replicas, symbols, or other forms of vicarious resemblance."

"Perhaps you have heard the story of Christopher Wren, one of the greatest of English architects, who walked one day unrecognized among the men who were at work upon the building of St. Paul's cathedral in London which he had designed. "What are you doing?" he inquired of one of the workmen, and the man replied, "I am cutting a piece of stone." As he went on he put the same question to another man, and the man replied, "I am earning five shillings twopence a day." And to a third man he addressed the same inquiry and the man answered, "I am helping Sir Christopher Wren build a beautiful cathedral." That man had vision. He could see beyond the cutting of the stone, beyond the earning of his daily wage, to the creation of a work of art—the building of a great cathedral. And in your life it is important for you to strive to attain a vision of the larger whole."

"Sir Christopher Wren Said, "I am going to dine with some men. If anyone calls Say I am designing St. Paul's.""

"He was of opinion that what we now vulgarly call the Gothick, ought properly and truly be named Saracenick Architecture refined by the Christians."

"When debtors once have borrowed all we have to lend, they are very apt to grow shy of their creditors' company."

"Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil. Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation."

"No man worth having is true to his wife, or can be true to his wife, or ever was, or ever will be so."