Quinlan Terry

ladies and gentlemen thank you for that very flattering account of me it's a great pleasure and a great privilege to come here and speak to you and particularly because you've chosen the theme classical tradition and really that's i think the reason i'm here because that's what we're all interested in i think probably before we get going it's maybe a bit elementary but it's just useful to remind ourselves of the definition of the word classical and the definition of the word tradition the oxford dictionary says of classical i've written it up here so you don't forget it conforming to the rules of greek and latin antiquity and the definition of tradition handing down from one generation to another so what we're doing as a you indicated just now is highly counter cultural here we are in the most advanced country in the world i've traveled thousands of miles to get here and our interest is building well today and rather than studying computers and all the exciting things that this world has produced we put that on one side and we concentrate on rules which were given over 2000 years ago you would say at least many people would say we must be out of our mind to go back when everything about our age is trying to go forward but that i think is really what the classical tradition is all about and i'm very happy with that as our mission statement today the rules of greek and latin antiquity are as as defined i think is is a fine definition i would just wish to extend it in two directions and there may be some controversy about this but i think uh it goes with the package and first is that the rules of greek and latin antiquity assumed the sort of buildings that were being built in greece and rome at that time which was load-bearing masonry construction they put their buildings together nearly all of them stone the jointing was lime water not cement and brickwork again in lime water the walls were thick and because that was the construction they used the buildings lasted for millennia and you have to look at the pantheon which we're showing in a few moments that's a brick building with thick walls bonded together in lime mortar now this may be obvious to many of you architects but i gather some students and lay people here but the real problem with the modern architecture is that it uses these other materials which have their uses undoubtedly but in building for longevity they have short life i'm thinking of steel and glass and reinforced concrete and plastic and all those materials have a coefficient of thermal expansion which is two or three times the curve efficient of expansion on brick brick work lime water and stone so every time the sun comes out a piece of a piece of steel expands as we know when it freezes it shrinks and this happens not only seasonally but also daily and because there is this high coefficient of expansion we have to put expansion joints about 15 foot centers whatever the centers may be we have to put expansion joints in all modern buildings and the expansion joint is covered up with with a neoprene gasket which breaks down under ultraviolet light and sooner or later the moisture and the rain penetrate the building and that is why a recent u.s report on the useful life of steel and glass buildings has been put at 25 years they may last longer but their useful life is 25 years and i've seen the same happen in london building is going up and 15 20 years later it seems to be a good site to build another building pull it down and put up another one but what people don't think about is the phenomenal cost of pulling a building down putting it up again maybe higher next time but also the environmental cost as well which people are more and more concerned about so environmentally as well as financially it's wise to use the same materials that were used in antiquity so that when we build our buildings will last at least for centuries which i think is a huge difference which people generally are not aware of they think they have a very short time span i gather builders in china just think 25 years that's good it would prof made its profit washed its face as they say financially and then put up another one but they don't think that there can be times of adversity as well as prosperity and in adversity what's the good of a building where you can't see out the windows because double glazing is all misted up you can't afford to service the lifts or the air conditioning give me any time a solid masonry building which will continue for hundreds of years and if you're passing your buildings on to your family you don't want to find that they've got to rebuild the building from scratch so i think we're not just talking about style we're talking about permanence and longevity so that's i would extend the definition just in that way excuse me secondly the rules of greek and latin antiquity originated in much earlier civilizations than greece and rome i should be talking and many of our speakers i'm sure we'll be talking about the orders the doric ionic and corinthian orders vitruvius said that those orders originated in greece in the regions of ionia doria and corinth but in fact those orders are much more antique we don't just go back we go much further and one of the characteristics of classical architecture and why i love it so much is that one's always looking back to what people did before so not some brilliant idea in my head but some much better idea which is in the head of people who knew more about building than i do and there are thousands of them and we can learn from them when you go to rome you see renaissance buildings and you think where do they get those ideas from well we know that the renaissance as its word describes renascence got their ideas from rome 1500 years earlier where the romans get their ideas from well the romans got their ideas from the nation they conquered greece which is fine that's what vitruvius thought but it goes on where did the greeks get their ideas from the persians the nation they conquered and i've been i had a job in persia for many years and i've been to persepolis and you can see to this day enormous stone columns with flutes and entities and elaborate bases and most intricate capitals wouldn't quite say they've dora garnic or corinthian but they've got animal heads and other shapes so there was a tradition of building that classical detail with historic ionic and corinthian in the persian world long before greece where did the persians get their ideas from they got them from the nation they conquered babylon remember nebuchadnezzar in the hanging gardens of babylon so that's the nation which they the the persians found out and used and uh used for their where architecture the babylonians get their ideas from well we know that um in 589 bc nebuchadnezzar came up and conquered jerusalem and he took away the temple of solomon which is supposed to be the greatest monument of the ancient world he took away the parts of it whether they were doric ionic and corinthian you can imagine i have no idea but he brought back that the beautiful ornaments from that ancient civilization to babylon so he took it from the temple of solomon we might say at this point where did solomon get his ideas from well we know that solomon was the rich the wisest man that ever lived and very rich but it was his son david who planned it and david got his ideas as all the jews at that time would have done from the temple from the tabernacle in the wilderness now the tabernacle of the widow wilderness is described in exodus accurately and it was given to moses by god and he recorded it in the book of exodus and uh i've done of my i had a somewhere i had a uh something to mark that's it that's it thank you there we are thank you um i've drawn it on on the board just to show you because actually i've studied this book description nexus many times and there's an awful lot uh that it's isn't an architectural description but it does give you the planned dimensions it gives you the outer court and it gives you the little temple the tabernacle in the middle and this is pure purely conjectural supposition there's no detail there's no other elevations there's no sections but we do know that there was a sophisticated building which had columns around the outside and those columns it's reasonable to assume would have been very simple a simple structure somewhat like just a square abacus upon a pole which was held up by guy ropes inside was the tabernacle which had five columns recorded there at the front of it and that separated the holy place from the holy of holies which had four columns now we don't know what it looked like and many people have made reconstructions and reconstructions from my view i'll tell you more about the architect who did the reconstruction and the building itself i think we're all guilty of putting our own ideas into what we read but it wouldn't have been unreasonable if you're thinking of the ornament on the top of the capital at the entrance to the tabernacle if there was some reminder of the purpose of the building which was to bring a ram in sacrifice for the sins of the person who brought it so if there were some rams horn pattern on the tap on the top of that capital it would have been highly appropriate now i'm not saying that that is the origin of the ionic order that is much more likely to be true than vitruvius's account of the greeks inventing it similarly there was this holy of holies which very few people saw because only the high priest went in once a year into that space but we do know that it was highly ornamental we know it was timber and gilded and there were special artists bezelle and herlier who did the wreathed and cunning work for it so that whatever it looks like there was this this original building way back before the greeks and romans which probably in certainly in my view i don't think it's just faith i think it's probably a fact built up a picture that these orders are actually divinely inspired now to say the orders of divinely inspired is quite a a strong statement um and i don't think everybody accepts it by any means but ray madeira if you mentioned a little earlier who really taught me everything i know because uh i didn't learn anything at the architectural school as you can imagine seven years completely wasted but he was about the last classicist and i had to say to him look i know nothing and he said well i know that and he then uh began to teach me about architecture he died in 73 and i've been carrying on what he's taught me ever since now he was not a man of any christian conviction at all he was never went to church he was just outside church things he wasn't a complete atheist i think he would acknowledge that god had made the world who wouldn't so perfectly designed but he said to me not long before he died he said i've worked in the doric ionic and classical orders all my life and they're so beautifully proportioned and they seem to work so well one with another and the whole detailing and the way architrave freeze and cornice work together imposed archival all those parts he said it's far too brilliant a system to have been made up by man he said my own feeling is that the orders are divinely inspired he said actually i don't say that to many people because they think i'm a nutter but uh that is what he believed and i think it's useful uh particularly in a conference like this to stretch this definition conforming to rules that's absolutely right we're here to conform we're interested in rules we're not like the modernists who just want to ignore the rules but we want to know what the rules are and the rules are given in antiquity we don't have them absolutely tied down we don't say that oracle has got to be eight diameters high as claddio said but we know the proportions roughly and as we use them particularly as we get older and older the more we use them the more we enjoy them and the more we see that they have a system which is thoroughly worthwhile now to say the orders are divinely inspired is really no more than saying that classical music is divinely inspired we have the octave a b c d e f g h becomes the octave above or the octave below and that whole system then is taken up by the great musicians who take it as read that you have the octave and you work with the proportions that it's given and so in that sense it's not so unusual to say that something that has been used the orders that have been used for what we know is two thousand years actually goes on much further back into history well that's my first point really definition and i move on to discernment just for some people who like each point to begin with the same letter i've been moving on to discernment and keep thinking of the orders as we begin to discern what good buildings are now i have to confess that having been five and a half years at the architectural association and didn't know what to look for but when i went to rome in my first year at the architecture association there i was in rome with one or two friends we didn't know what to look for no one was there to tell us what was a good building or a bad building i don't think we even knew the difference between renaissance and roman we'd heard of michelangelo but we've never heard of viola or scamazzi or san servino or san gallo or palladio or longana or any other great masters let alone the english masters like gibbs and hawkesmore and vanbra we were taught as many of you who've been to architectural school to forget everything in history and just start now and uh do something new and exciting so it was a great uh help to me at that time to join raymond eric and it was really through him that i learned how to look at buildings one of my worries about a classical revival in england or america is that sometimes it's not very scholarly and sometimes it's not very well done i think that every time there is a revival in anything and architecture particularly that one has to be a bit patient because people are learning and as they're learning some of their works are pretty amateur we have to know this but the fact that we may be a bit amateur doesn't mean to say we shouldn't do it we should enjoy it and get better at it but my hope is that people will have a high standard in what they appreciate and what they look at and learn from various buildings and see how outstanding architects would handle such details like how balustrade joins a pedestal at the bottom of a column those sort of things need to be in our mind it's been done many times before but we're really here to learn from the masters before us how to do this sort of work and i think that i would encourage every young architect to draw and draw and draw if you haven't got a sketchbook go out and buy one immediately and not just a luffy sketchbook but a proper bound one and an hb pencil and a rubber and go out and draw what you see it doesn't matter terribly um to start with whether it's a building which is top drawer or not because the whole process of drawing is where you learn sometimes lead a group of friends about 20 of us and we go to venice or rome and some of them aren't architects at all some of them are lawyers and all sorts of people but they love these sort of holidays because i sit them down in front of a building and tell them to draw what they see and uh what i find is that if you can sit of because it's nice in rome or venice but i'm sure there's places in england and america or internally it doesn't really make much difference but the whole process of drawing is something which we must be doing constantly obviously uh i'm thinking of somewhere like venice get into a nice square find a place to sit coffee bar where you haven't got people behind you so they're not looking over your shoulder and make sure the sun is not in your eyes because then you're it's very hard to draw so you want the sun behind you and you want a good building in front of you so there's quite a few details you need to get right and then sit there from after breakfast until lunch looking at the building and as you look at it before you start putting any pencil to paper just notice that there are columns and how widely spaced the columns are where the columns are wider in the middle and closer at the end and there's three orders perhaps it's doric ironic or it might be ionic corinthian composite and how it how it works where there are arches and just before you draw just speak to yourself about what you're looking at and then you get your pencil out and start doing all that to try and get the drawing on the sheet of paper and uh i've done this many years and one of our friends larry birder is here he comes with me too and some people like just to hold out the sketchbook and then they can see what they're drawing and then put it down and just keep trying to get what they see onto that piece of paper some people say oh but i can take a photograph well a photograph is the worst thing you can possibly do because it stops your thinking and in the four hours what you're drawing that is while the process of what you're seeing put on the piece of paper enables you to begin to see how this building works and i must have filled 30 or 40 sketchbooks with um with sketches of these buildings and of course it marks it indelibly in your mind you never forget that building and you'll then begin to understand what the game is that that particular architect did and then who knows years by years ago by you finally got an opportunity oh yes i remember they did that building which had a very large overhanging impediment and this building is calling for the same sort of thing and you can go back to your library and pick it out and it's part of your repertoire for learning how to build well um i could give you an example just to encourage you to do this and i would encourage you all to draw because we're all born with some ability obviously some people are outstanding at drawing and there are many examples to see here and there are many people who and their livelihood from drawing i don't i really try to record but i also enjoy the process but i mean there's few things more beautiful than for instance an ionic capital just the mere fact of the ionic capital and it has as you can as i'm drawing here something like this you can see that what we call the abacus which runs across the top and then it would have the loot of the ionic capital which runs here this is a roman ionic and that it's just that process of drawing what you see it runs across here and then there'll be this this what called the echinus which runs back underneath and then the the return of the ionic what's so nice about the roman ioni because it isn't just four corners like that but it actually has a bolster at the end so it goes it returns like you have a sort of baluster return and then this comes round and then goes down on the on the column and just to sit there in the sun on an afternoon is a pleasant experience and it also teaches you to look at it now the ionic order as most of you know uh the palladian ionic order has on top of it an architrave freeze and cornice i know that to some of this i'm teaching my grandmother to suck eggs but i'm just telling you that and the other thing to do is as you're looking at it and the more you know the better easier it is but on top of it is architrave freeze and cornice and here they are and it's quite good just to to work out what is going on in the architectures and corners for for instance the architrave has a cyber reversal and a plate and then a another sign reversal or a bead then a bead at the bottom and if you know that draw it in section we also know that palladio tended to make his interpreters in a proportion of four for the architrave three for the freeze and five for the cornice it's not an invariable rule but it's a useful rule of thumb so you have a call you have the freeze this could be a pulvernated freeze and then you have the the so there's the freeze and then the bed molds of the cornice which is over cavetto and overload then a medallion on the more interesting ones which had little so you've got a medallion running here and then on top of the medulla and the corona which runs up here and a top cymer so that is your cornice and your freeze and your architrave and that's in the proportion of four to three to five and it helps to know that because as you're drawing it you may find that some of the lines are a bit close and you need to sort of raise them all for them and then if you take it out if you run these lines like this so you're seeing it as it were from the seat where you're looking you can draw these these moldings on the return so you've got your architrave running here and then the the um carbonated freeze which which is some quite popular and then on the return you've got the cavato i don't know half of you can't see this can you but still then there's an overload and then you have these medallions and these medallions have a little bed mold on top of them they run back like that then they come back and you have another medium it's typical typical uh example of you can see that actually you can see plenty of them in um in this city as well and and between that and then there's the the career that runs along here you can then see between that is a coffer and in that coffer is usually some sort of rosette then the corona overhangs here and then the top simmer so that is the what you're really looking at runs away here and then there'll be another um another medulla in that position and a um overload in the corner well having got that on your piece of paper your sketchbook and you've sort of begun to see how the various parts work together look also and give yourself all the time in the world because you don't want to be in a hurry but just look also at how these moldings are enriched on an important building enrichment is really for the rich i mean the people who can afford it but also it on on more grandeur so on a on a alzheimer reversal you would have a typically a little leaf which is carved into the geometrical shape so it's called leaf and tongue so this little pattern would would enhance the shape i mean the purpose of enrichment is to enhance the shape and at this me being a sima a cyber is really an overload and then a cavetto so it's terribly simple assigned that's the cyber rector the cyber reversal is like at the top here it's a gavetto followed by an overload and really those are all you've got to think about because you've got the cavetto here you've got the overlay there and you've got the two of them the cymer there and between that you've just got the horizontal which are beads so it's not that difficult but some people get frightened about it because they don't quite understand it because people haven't explained it to them how how beautiful it is and this of course goes back well before greece so you have that you have the same treatment in this molding here cavetta is not easy to enrich because it's already carved out but the overload is very well very well seen that you frequently see the egg and tongue which which is an egg with a tongue or a dark between and then you get another one running up like this and then you get these these uh enrichment inside so look at the the perspective look at the enrichments and also look at the shadows because historically our forefathers looked at buildings and saw how the sun cast shadows on the building during the course of the day in fact if you stay there for four hours you can see the shape moving around and quite often what i do is in the afternoon i go to a different site then the next day if i hadn't finished the drawing i'd come back to the same place sun's in the same place and then you can sort of put the shadows in but when you put the shadows on bear in mind the sun is coming it casts hard and soft shadows so that this overload here on that would call quite a hard shadow here this if this was in the sun this would be going into shade so there's a sort of soft shadow along that side these shadows would would come around here this is the abacus it's it's in shadow that's in shadow this goes into shadow as well but this is in sun and this one goes round like that similarly the cavetto the the the lower part of the uh carbonated freeze will be out of the sun and here in the cornice you get a hard shadow on a on the top of the cornice there but then this begins to go into shadow again so it's a soft shadow as it just turns away gradually and as you look at that you can begin to see why these moldings are piled up one on top of another and why in a particular order because it's all done from looking at this this detail and of course here although technically all this would be in shadow because this corona sticks forward you'll see the shadows like that so all that's in shadow but the the front part of the medallion comes right forward and the whole reason for that architecturally is although this is all in shadow the the little medallion the little bit you see there picks up the shape so that as you look at it you're going to see all this dark but the the medallions coming through until you get right to the bottom and a lot of buildings and you'll see some pictures of them in a moment where you see the light at the top on the corona and then this little light going on all the way along on the on the medium so it just helps to show you what's going on and actually particularly in england when the light is so dim you get a lot of shadows or return shadows in here and you can see all this detail it's not as if it's wasted but it's a question of how strong the the light and the dark is so that is my third d which is drawing and i think now what i'll do is show you some pictures so you'll have definition discernment drawings and designing and when i show these pictures really they follow the same process there's a building uh one at mars or ielts ma then i draw it and having drawn it the opportunity comes to use it again so if you'd like to put the pictures up we'll have the first one where better to start than at the parthenon in athens which i think many of you have seen next slide next now it's important to draw what you see and uh this really gives you the various parts it's also important to know the names and why they're there again i'm probably teaching my grandmother to suck eggs but just just remember the words because as you're drawing you got the column uh greek stoolos that's style that's from which we get style then you get that round piece on the top of it on top of the flutes that comes from the greek word equinus which means hedgehog and on top of that a square abacus greek which is table so that gives you the doric order that you see on the on the parthenon then on top of that is the architrave we've just been talking about that rk is great in greek tribes is latin for beam so that's the great beam the architrave and then on top of that is the freeze with its triglyphs and metaphy triglyph trigloof triglyphos three grooves and the metaphy between then above that is the cornice this one has mutuals not medallions as you should just know and then there's the corona and the overlay at the top and then the top syma of the pediment so those are the parts which one draws and if you've assimilated that and you've got it in your sketchbook learn behold the opportunity arrives when a client comes and says i want a building which well particularly i one had next slide wherein um in darning college which has a history of greek revival buildings so what you've learned from years of drawing is then immediately useful to pick together next then we move on to the sort of moving historically in principle i want to move from doric to ionic to corinthian just so there's some sort of former formation to what i'm saying that is um is some marx and you can see that not a greek gorick it's a roman doric a column eight diameters high and on top of that is an architrave freeze and cornice next and there is the detail that schemazi was the architect and you can see the architrave you can see the top of the column the capital with eggs and tongues and then uh the archival that's the curve part underneath with the lion's head on the keystone and as i say it's not a very good drawing it's one i did but um just draw because whoever you are that's how you learn as you begin to put pen to paper to what you see and sure enough i'll show you an example of it next at a house in ireland which i finished last year i have some more photographs to show you in a moment but there is the same ingredients that really uh we've seen before actually the lion's head is somewhat more ornamental and it has a medallion cornice there are differences but the things that one has learned in uh drawing and looking are what one does coming up next is another example i mean i'm really just reading off examples of of the doric order that's at the prince's um queen mother square the prince of wales is actually one of the great supporters of classicism in england and he's not helped because the riba have taken away the the right of the prince's school to give a degree um he's remarkably patient and very consistent and likes classical architecture so it's a it's an honor and privilege to work for him on on these doors but that's that's a colonnade in the square there's another picture of the same colonnade with um there you've got arches and elastas between them next and of course so that's another example of the same next now i'm moving from doric back one really to tuscan i haven't talked about the task in order my view is the tuscan is a simplified doric some people have other theories about it but that's how it's usually presented and i don't there are five orders i think there are three but this is just simpler but that's inigo jones a lovely building in london and that was really the basis i mean you can't always use your examples perfectly next for the um the um your infirmary at the raw hospital but again it is a tusk and order um with um the thing about the tuscan the palladian tuscan has a very very long uh projecting um medallion not quite moving real fast this is another example of the same it's a it's a it's some arms houses we built near um near us in essex uh again a central doric tuscan order with the overhanging cornice impediment next you can see there and again those medallions you see how they pick up the sun because the other moldings the bed bulbs are somewhat put away in the shade but you get this centerpiece with six columns and a big touch impediment and really a very plain building otherwise this old people's building and it seemed to us that the tuscan order suits people who actually need the help of the state you've got the veterans at raw hospital chelsea these are old people the next slide that well that's a for the next slide that's cervida papa julia you can see again a tusk and order with a very enriched art between next and this is um jimmy's wing at ted worth which is for wounded soldiers who come back from afghanistan and it was felt that they needed some well it was it's a big old house but this was part of their accommodation which made them feel that at least they were valued by the country rather than putting in some sort of health center next so we move from the doric to the ionic there is the um i suppose the seminal work the eric theon at athens the greek ionic and actually the ionic capital particularly the greek ionic capital is incredibly beautiful next it's a drawing of it by my son francis he likes to draw those sort of details and you can see the volute and how it goes round and all the ornaments underneath next there's a view looking up of the same you can see that i was talking about earlier the bolster and the volute next and they're in the front of um another lodge which is opposite the american ambassador's residence in um regent's park next and there it is and you can see here it's got this front and also two little doric lodges as well next moving from greek ionic to roman ionic that's palladia the basilica and vicenza you get a corinthian you get an ionic order you can see there how the medallions really show and then you have a a minor ionic order supporting the imposed an archival between and really uh i think i think that palladio is my sort of probably a top architect he seemed to understand it you know a simple way to write about it and and his book the quattro librius is essential reading for anyone really who takes classical architecture seriously next it's just a drawing i did of it and again you can see that front view which i talked about in the side view it's the combination of the two which is so beautiful next just an example and once a house in in england again you can see how the medievalians pick up the light that's the house again in regents park the ionic villa next yes well that's that's re that's baker street and there you can see exactly i mean it's a good example of how the shadows hide everything except that medium and the great minds that designed these moldings were always thinking of how to pick up the rays of the sun not just that also to weather because it's throwing the water off the building that's part of the purpose of these horizontal lines across the building that the water doesn't run down the face of the building so it has a practical purpose as well but also architectural next that's the where it is in the middle of a block next in baker street which shows you the length of the of all it's actually all all new but it's just sort of main entrance to the office building next near hill williamsburg you don't have to make them all in um in stone although there's caps of stone but the in tabulator is actually molded brickwork which is quite tricky actually it's probably more difficult doing in stone but it's fun to do and you get these these moved on but you can see the base of the column and that's the group of buildings that colonial will network next that's just an example of how it isn't just major buildings but small houses this is just a small house in the country next and it just gives some sort of value to that centerpiece a lot of people have seen that photograph of that book a lot of my ordinary clients say that actually that's the sort of house they'd like to live in and you know i think a lot of what one's doing is just pleasing your customer if they like a simple house with an ionic uh entrance that gives them what they're looking for a really simple no bearing masonry structure well they're all load bearing masonry structures but with a window in the middle next there's one not so far from here again an ionic order somewhat larger i'll call a giant order next the corinthian just as before we come to the corinthian um one of the things i learned from ray madirith was that every person is one of the three orders and um he would quite often come back from a client and say you know she was doric and so was he and um we must uh definitely give them a doric house the last one i showed you was the client was definitely ionic and when i did downing street um i had one of the rooms which mrs thatcher had and mrs thatcher is definitely corinthian so i think i could probably say to most of you i've talked to for five minutes which order you fit into so you must remember that you are one of the free orders and it's important when you marry hopefully to marry someone who's the same order as yourself that that is that is the um the pantheon and really that is the one of the wonders of the world and there it is 2 000 years old load bearing masonry brick and uh it's still there and those columns amazingly uh they're about six foot in diameter huge scale next slide well when i was a rome scholar um it was scaffolded and um can you go back to the last picture when i was a rescue it was scaffolded and you can i haven't got a pointer but you can see at the side there's a little door that comes out at the back at the top and i managed to get out of that door i've got permission from the community roma and climb along and up the um the pediment and then over the top to measure that uh cornice next slide and that that is the measurement my drawing of the measurements of it and you can see me in the corner and you can see how big the eggs are in the egg and tongue over six foot high corners we you know whoever we are now even you know great rich countries we don't build cornices in that side it just shows the vision and the determination of the romans to be able to put together buildings on that scale next there's a renaissance example belladio san giorgio and as you look at it you realize that i've sketched this many times you realize that there's a composite order composite corinthian almost the same really but there's a composite order on a pedestal then you see at the sides there's a smaller corinthian order and then at the either side of that there's another corinthian order and inside if you go in there's about 10 different corinthian orders and it's only by having your sketchbook with you begin to notice all these things otherwise as i say isn't it beautiful take next photograph but when you analyze these and when you sit and look at them then you really learn next that's a drawing of it you've got the capital composite capital with a swag between the next one and these composite mediums which are very different and then running up into the pediment next that's another example that's actually an uncut one which palladio did on the giorgio in stone next that's another building not so far from here corinthian order next next that's um downey college corinthian actually there you've got a composite order in the center and a corinthian at the side i mean it's really very straightforward it's got the pedestal in the palladium proportions with a column which is 10 diameters high and then the entablature at the top which is another two diameters and really the architectural purpose of it is to is to use the little features like the rustication and the spacing of the columns to make it interesting next yes there's a front view we haven't talked about um barack but um you notice that door in the middle it's part of the trouble about sketching is that um another thing arith used to say to me is that book looks sketchbooky or a building an architect an architect may be full when he's done lots of sketches hasn't had many clients the poor client comes along he finds he's got every sketchbook worked out onto his design and um i was getting very interested in baroque architecture and what uh what long gain i did and you you may know the door in san giorgio which which has that door with an impediment which is cut in like that and as this was a sort of theater we felt a bit possibly appropriate so um although you've got the orders you've still got varying thousand different ways of expressing them and barack is one of them next and uh of course uh quattro fontani boromini he was a master at iraq and you can see there he uses a serpentine front i sometimes think and as i get older i think i learn more that the baroque really took off when people got a bit bored doing straight lines and i think when you've been doing this sort of thing as i have for over over 50 years you think well do i have to do another doric order which is absolutely straight couldn't i put some sort of curvature onto the building there's all sorts of theories of how baroque architecture started and whether it was really debased but i think it's really that people who are doing it just think of other ways of doing it because it makes it more interesting next and there's a drawing of it again if you see it and like it measure it get your sketchbook out and measure tape so at least you've got the details as i did there which is very useful when i designed the corinthian villa next regents park which has this this serpentine front and then with it you have these unusual capitals and then spirally included columns and it gets more and more um baroque and more interesting next you see those capitals they do all the sort of things in the opposite direction which is what one learns by studying architecture like boromini and bernini next now that is um in krakow and uh that um habsburg empire architecture is very interesting really there's um i had a client recently and we were discussing how if the grand tour had gone through czechoslovakia and and prague and krakow a lot of the examples that were used on english buildings in the 18th century would have been very different and um i said you know if you'd rather we could not just have an ordinary doric thing i've done hundreds of them before we could do something more baroque he said yes that's what i'd like next and um well that's the drawing of it that's the the actual building in krakow it's it's such a help to have spent half a day drawing it because then when you have to do the working drawings it's somewhat easier next there's a house in sussex recently finished which has this door front next and another one with this shell and swag running and broken pediment and the loots and little scrolls at the side all sort of detail that you won't find in palladio's book but it's also part of the classical tradition and i think it's important that we don't just keep doing the same there will be varied on according to each job next well that's richmond riverside which is about 15 separate buildings and i've hit the two have been talking about the doric ionic encryption orders as if the order has one order for each building but um i now want to towards the end i want to show you examples where you have more than one order in fact you can have all three orders on one building next and um familiar territory the colosseum you've got a doric with a superimposed ionic and a superimposed corinthian and superimposed corinthian stroke composite it's quite a sophisticated that's a very sophisticated building and all the games mathematically that you have to work out while the triglycerides fit into the freeze on the lower order then you have to work out that it gives you the right spacing for the medallions on the ionic order above and then you want the medallions on the corinthian order which are closer because the scale is smaller and of course the building is reducing your height so that does really show whether you know how to manage not just one order but three orders together next there's palladio's great example gerta said if he had to say one building choose the best building he'd ever seen he said that the convent of in venice was his choice it's um it's a very consummate example of how plaudio handles the three orders i mean this is really s level stuff you've got the doric and then all the medallions and all the things you look for in their proper order and the reducing in the right proportion next well i was frustrated i had couldn't get all three so this was a richmond riverside we had the doric and the ioniq but again it's it's um it's a pleasure to use the two orders together next and this is actually not yet built it's starting in about three months time this is the other side of queen mother square at poundbury where you've got a corinthian building on a pedestal and then on the at the corner where the queen mother's statue is going to be put is you get the three orders doric ionic and corinthian next other examples less well somewhat sort of simpler um slightly more like mckinney and white where you have a rusticated base and then a giant ionic with a super impaired giant corinthian next see the same detail and the type of detail and then of course when you want the greater height of course you've got bronze windows with two heights of windows in one height of column next this is um a building which has the three orders it's the new brentwood cathedral doric on the outside next and inside it's actually got a tuscan order between the doric you've got the doric at the corners and the arches with the tuscan next and then an ionic can't really see it but at the axis is an ionic thick next you can see it yes you can see the ionic there on the side door a side window next and then a corinthian order on the organ next you've got again all all the parts we're talking about in my sketch you've got the leaf you've got the dentals you've got the overlay you've got the coffers you've got the rustication and the rosettes as well as the carving on the leaves next downing street well the three rooms needed to be completely well they were wholly neglected bits of them were there but that has um a doric order new doric order on the central room in the three state rooms so you've got derek in the middle with a new ceiling which is takes up all the enrichments next ionic in the pillared room new ionic uh over mantle next and the corinthian which was mrs thatcher's favorite room and there's the corinthian order in the corner rather similar to the corinthian villa next and just a few oh yes this is another house where the three orders are used there's corinthian on the outside that's a fern in dorset fern park next it is from a distance on the other side next you can see the ionic order to the entrance next and the hall inside which is doric so it's quite nice to have the three orders in one house just to give the sort of variety next this is um my last house i'm showing you um this is a house neck neck can you go back um houston island near kilkenny wonderful opportunity uh island such a beautiful country and um this client wanted everything to look at it's next it's got a very pronounced mutual daric order in um irish it doesn't grant it it's alan a slow limestone with a buff colored it doesn't show on these pictures but the contrasting color is quite important with the softness and the the grayness of the columns so we've got a doric order on the outside next now you can see more the detail the mutuals the triglyphs the gutty there's more detail the columns looking up into the detail and these these just go back a bit these um that corner stone we call a cornerstone in masonry construction that stone it's on the end on the slope it's also leaning out it has to be a massive stone actually that stone the one at the top uh weighed over 20 tons when it was being lifted up and you need this and why it's interesting to me is that when you go around the um policy of not coliseum the um in the various parts of of ancient rome in the ruins of it you can see these very big stones and they're nearly always the corner stairs because they have to stay in that position next i know carved cartouche that sort of detail it was an opportunity to do things properly next it's got a big that's and it just moved in so it's hardly furnished but it's got an elliptical dome next ionic see ionic order with an ellipsoidal dome with uh coffers going round next and then the corinthian order to one of the rooms you can see there the same detail going around next i don't know if you many of you go to ireland but um the irish in the beginning about 1800 were very very interested in in ornamental ceilings and francini was a great stockadore and he came from bavaria and they are very unique and this irish client felt it was most important to have that irish character so we went trotting off to bavaria to measure ceilings my son made a great speciality of these sort of details next and these are the sort of drawings that we did next more detail on on how to put it together next and then you can see the whole ceiling and there's various birds worked at the ceiling next and then a couple of ho ho birds fighting over an eel so all that's the sort of detail which i think particularly gathering like this is important because you know there are people here who are involved in plaster work and people are involved in painting and iron work and stone work and it's bringing all these trades together and although we would do a drawing of a her hobart part of it is actually working with the man who's actually making the ornament and that's really what makes our job so interesting so i say as we said at the beginning have fun enjoy your job do something you enjoy like that and you'll enjoy working i think that's really all i have to say and uh a try or attempt to answer any questions

Channel: ctcslc

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Id: _HlUfy79arg

Length: 65min 48sec (3948 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 13 2014