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George Meikle Kemp, Walter Scott Memorial, Edinburgh, 1838-44. Kemp's
monument, the winning entry in a competition held in 1838, was conceived
as a great tabernacle in the Gothic style.
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Public Buildings
The commemorative or symbolic aspects of official buildings and
administrative headquarters were often enhanced by the architect's
choice of style. This is evident in London's Neo-Gothic Houses of
Parliament designed by Sir Charles Barry
(1795-1860) and A.W.N. Pugin (1812-52). Vienna's city hall
(1872-84), designed by Friedrich von Schmidt, is another example of
Neo-Gothic, as is the Hotel-Dieu in Paris, by Emile Gilbert and
Arthur-Nicholas Diet, and the Prefecture de Police on the Ile de la
Cite (1862-66). A more spectacular use of new-structural technology
was evident in buildings destined for educational and cultural use.
Fine examples include Berlin's Bauakademie, designed by Karl
Friedrich Schtnkel between 1831 and 1836; the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
in Paris by Felix Duban and Ernest-George Coquart (1871); the
Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve (1843-30); and the Bibliotheque
Nationale in Paris (1854-75), designed by Pierre-Francois-Henri
Labrouste (1801-75). Joseph Due's design for the Palais de Justice
in Paris (1857-68), with its mixture of Italian inspiration and Far
Eastern ornamentation, shows how various stylistic influences could
be combined. A wealth of Neo-Baroque details, including colonnades,
tympani, and cornices underline the complex structure of Joseph
Poelaeit's Palais de Justice in Brussels (1866-83), making an
impressive monumental whole. At a time when industry and commerce
were expanding, the designs for stock and commodity exchanges were
particularly varied. A typical example was London's Coal Exchange
(1844-49) by James Bunstone Bunning, whose circular building had
galleries and walkways surrounding the trading floor, surmounted by
a wide, glazed dome.
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Friedrich Weinbrenner, pyramidal monument, Karlsruhe, 1823.
As Inspector of Buildings from 1800, Weinbrenner initiated the
Neoclassical revival in Karlsruhe. He designed the
Kari-Friedrichstrasse and the Kaiserstrasse (1802-05), the
Schlossplatz (1806), the Town Hall (1821), the Palace of the States
General (1822), and the Mint (1826).
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Pierre-Francois-Henri Labrouste, reading room of the Bibliotheque
Nationale Paris, 1858-68.
The characteristic ribbed vault roofing, supported by slender
cast-iron columns, represents an early synthesis of engineering and
architecture and demonstrates the aesthetic possibilities of iron
structures.
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Joseph Poelaert, Palais de Justice, Brussels, 1866-83.
This late example of the Neoclassical style is a gigantic building,
which dominates the centre of Brussels.
In this respect, it bears comparison with the religious buildings of the
ancient East.
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Theatres and Museums
Traditionally, certain types of building had been provided to
accommodate cultural and recreational activities. Notably, these
included theatres (for operas, concerts, ballets, and plays) and
stadiums for spectator sports. The stadiums often housed sports
events such as horse racing, cricket matches, and tennis
tournaments, which people attended primarily in order to socialize.
There were also large cafes in city centres and parks, hotels that
catered for the increasingly popular habit of taking seaside
holidays and health cures at spas, and casinos for gambling. The
theatre's shape reached what was virtually its definitive layout by
the end of the 19th century. By this time, the elements particular
to this architectural form - the seating area, foyer, sloping
aisles, galleries, and a division of the internal space between
stage, proscenium, and the ceiling over the auditorium -were all in
place. Jean-Louis-Charles Garnier's Paris Opera (1861-75), Karl
Friedrich Schinkel's Schauspielhaus (1818-21) in Berlin, the San
Carlo theatre in Naples (1810) by Antonio Niccolini, and the Carlo
Felice theatre (1825-28) in Genoa by Carlo Barabino, as well as many
other theatres and opera houses, have these component parts in
common, although differently arranged and with varying interiors,
suitable for plays, opera, music, or ballet. The importance that
nationalist governments attached to museums and their close ties
with metropolitan and urban life encouraged their proliferation.
Museums assumed the role of guardians of record and power in a full
range of cultural spheres. Exhibition space, planned within the
wider context of the city, was to become an essential theme for
architectural developments during the 20th century. In 1793, the
Louvre opened in Paris; a few years later, the museum now known as
the Kaiser Friedrich Museum was inaugurated (1797) in Berlin, and,
in 1809, a museum housing the Accademia di Belle Antidi Brera, was
opened to the public in Milan. Further testimony to the close
interest taken by governments is clear in the number of specialized
establishments that were erected all over Europe: the Glyptothek in
Munich (1815-34), designed by Leo von Klenze; Karl Friedrich
Schinkel's Altes Museum in Berlin (1823-1830); the South Kensington
Museum in London (1856-1909), designed by F. Fowke, Captain H.Y.D.
Scott, and Aston Webb; Robert Smirke's British Museum (1823-47),
also in London; and the Osterreichisches Museum fur Kunst und
Industrie in Vienna (1868-73), designed by F. von Ferstel. Natural
history museums also sprang up in the capital cities, including the
Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna (1871-91), the work of Gottfried
Semper and K. Hasenauer, and London's Natural History Museum
(1871-81), designed by Alfred Waterhouse.
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NEW MUSEUMS
The 19th century saw profound changes in the organization and role
of the museum. Although there are precedents in earlier periods, it
was after 1800 that scientific systems of classification took over
from personal taste as the rationale for the formation and
arrangement of collections. The Great Exhibition, held at Crystal
Palace in 1851, symbolizes the urge to classify objects into a
strict taxonomic framework. Elaborate catalogues and advanced
techniques of display reflected these priorities. Profits from the
Exhibition were used to found the South Kensington Museum - renamed
the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1899 - which applied these
principles to the fine arts and decorative arts as well as
scientific collections. Similar museums were founded in Europe and
the US. notably in Vienna and New York (the Metropolitan Museum,
1870). The development of art history as a discipline also had
implications for museum organization. The conversion of the Louvre
in Paris from a royal palace to a museum, which opened in 1793,
instigated a debate as to whether displays should be "sumptuous" or
"systematic". Like the Louvre, the Hermitage in St Petersburg,
rebuilt by Leo von Klenze in the 1840s and opened by Nicholas I in
1852, compromised between clarity and spectacle in its displays. The
move towards a scientific curatorship influenced the founding of the
Altes Museum in Berlin, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
Smaller museums with specific functions, intended to act as a
celebration of local history or great figures, also appeared in the
19th century. The Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen results from the
desire of the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1768-1844) to establish a
monument to his own genius. In 1837, he gave his collection to the
city: the museum which bears his name, designed by Gottlieb
Bindesboll, was opened in 1848.
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Interior view of the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, 1852.
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CAMILLO BOITO
After spending his formative years in Padua and
Venice; Camillo Boito (1836-1914) taught
architecture at the Accademia di Brera in Milan from
1860 until 1908, An impressive lecturer, a
cultivated scholar, and a relentless traveller, he
amassed photographs of works of art from all over
the world and wrote countless articles on
architecture. Despite his involvement in the
demolition of belle-epoque Milan and its subsequent
reconstruction, his restoration work showed respect
for a building's history. However, his architectural
work, including the Porta Ticinese in Milan and the
Pinacoteca Civica in Padua, was uninspiring. He
eschewed the prevailing eclecticism and developed
his own version of the "veracious" style, resembling
Italian Romanesque-Gothic. Luca Beltrami (1854-1933)
was one of his pupils.
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Camillo Boito, Pinacoteca Civica, Padua, Italy, 1879.
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M. G. B. Bindesboll, Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen,
1839-48.
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Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Altes Museum, Berlin, 1823-30.
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CEMETERIES
In the wake of Napoleonic decrees that forbade individual burial
within the confines of inhabited areas, cemeteries required specific
consideration as far as town planning was concerned. In his
Historical Dictionary of Architecture, Quatremere de Quincy
singled out the Camposanto at Pisa as a model. He contributed to the
diffusion of axial symmetry design in cemetery layout. Tombs and
chapels on the other hand received a freer treatment, inspired by
both the classical and the medieval repertory.
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Temple of Antonio Canova, 1819-20, Possagno,
Italy.
This famous funeral monument is based on the Pantheon.
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G. B. Rezasco, Staglieno Cemetery, Genoa,
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Louis Hippolyte Lebas, La Petite Roquette, Paris, 1826-36.
Conceived as a correctional institute for juveniles,
this building is constructed on the radiating plan inspired
by Jeremy Bentham's "panopticon".
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Gaols and Hospitals
The architecture applied to prisons and hospitals during
this era illustrates how specific functional needs were
linked
to stylistic and symbolic expressions of a new political and
social climate. Penal institutions in large cities
experimented with ever more effective solutions. The
"panopticon", first devised by Jeremy Bentham in 1787.
allowed prisoners to be kept under very close surveillance,
and consisted of a central control area from which wings,
housing the cells, radiated outwards. The whole construction
was punctuated by courtyards and enclosed by a high brick
perimeter wall. This architectural plan was used in the
House of Correction in Bury St Edmunds, England (1803-05),
and La Petite Roquette in Paris (1826-36) by Louis Hippolyte
Lebas. In some cases, adding a Neo-Gothic style gave the
prison an imposing and austere appearance, as in Bunning's
Holloway Prison (1849-51) in London, making it seem like a
castle, an impenetrable fortress. The effects of medical
procedures and hospital organization on the mortality rate
were researched between 1760 and 1790 by Howard, Tenon, and
Hunczovsky in England. France, and Austria respectively.
Their statistics proved that it was vital to build hospitals
divided into separate wards rather than the traditional
multifunctional buildings for the sick. The guiding
principles for the construction of hospitals (endorsed by
the Academie des Sciences in 1786 and analyzed by
Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand in his Precis des lecons
d'circhitechire of 1809) were exemplified in the rebuilding
of the Hotel-Dieu (1772-1788), one of the largest hospitals
in Paris, designed by Bernard Poyet. The hospital interiors
were to be subdivided, with the spaces organized according
to the various pathologies. Large areas were devoted to
bedded wards for in-patients, sited so as to ensure the best
sanitary conditions possible, and set in green open spaces.
Enclosed walkways linked the various hospital facilities.
During the 19th century, many hospitals adopted this layout,
including the Lariboisiere in Paris, designed by Martin
Pierre Gauthier (1846-54); the Royal Herbert Military
Hospital at Woolwich. London (1860-64); and St. Thomas'
Hospital, also in London (1865-71).
In the late 18th century, new laws requiring burial in
designated sites outside the populated areas meant that by
the second half of the 19th century, cemeteries of an
alternative layout and style to the traditional compact
enclosure emerged. Plots allotted to family tombs were
designed as funerary monuments, chapels, and buildings in
miniature, using the expressive potential of sculpture, and
a new symbolic language, to portray the distinctive
characteristics of the departed.
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Martin Pierre Gauthier, Hopital Lariboisiere, Paris, 1846-54.
Originally named the Louis-Philippe, the hospital's layout of
pavilions met the most modern hygiene requirements.
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Gustave Eiffel,
Garabit railway viaduct over the
River Truyere, France, 1880-84.
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BUILDING BRIDGES
Structural engineering was one of the disciplines to reap
the greatest benefit from the new technology and materials
introduced during the 19th century. The Coalbrookdale Bridge
in Shropshire, England, built over the River Severn in 1700
to a design by Abraham Darby and John Wilkinson, had a span
of nearly 30 metres (100 feet) and was constructed entirely
of cast iron. It was the first in a long line of
bridge-building feats that clearly illustrated the
virtuosity of contemporary structural engineering. In 1801,
the American James Finlay patented a design for the
suspended level floor. This construction method was later
developed by using wrought iron "chains", a process patented
in 1817 by Samuel Brown and Thomas Telford. The chain
suspension technique was employed to build many bridges in
the British Isles: Thomas Telford's Menai bridge in Wales,
1819-26; the Union Bridge over the Tweed at Berwick, by
Samuel Brown, 1820; and Clifton Bridge near Bristol by
Isidore Kingdom Brunel, 1829. Further advances in suspension
bridge construction were made when J. White and E. Hazard
bridged Schuvlkill Falls in Pennsvlvania (1816), and when
the Seguin brothers constructed their bridge at Tain-Touron
(1825) over the Rhone. In both cases, drawn metal cables
were used instead of chains. During the second half of the
century, designers concentrated their efforts on building
structures that used less iron and, increasingly, switched
to steel for tensile strength. The famous French engineer,
Gustave Eiffel, built the first viaducts over the River
Douro at Oporto, Portugal (1876—77), and the Truyere at
Garabit, France (1880-84), with a parabolic vertical section
supported by hollow columns. Towards the end of the century,
moving bridges were introduced with London's Tower Bridge,
designed by Horace Jones and John Wolfe Barry. Built between
1886 and 1894, its two large towers, with an upper and lower
iron structure running between them, were linked by abutment
towers and land ties, and by the chains to the shore spans.
The lower level, divided into twin bascules, carried traffic
when lowered but could be raised in drawbridge fashion to
allow ships to pass.
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John Wolfe Barry and Horace Jones, Tower Bridge, London, 1886-94.
The central structure can be raised to allow ships to pass up and
down the Thames.
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G Rothlisberger, Paderno Bridge, Paderno d'Adda, 1887-89.
This strong iron construction inspired by the arch bridges of
Gustave Eiffel consists of a straight truss,
supported by a parabolic arch with a span of 150 metres (495 feet).
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