Iconic Buildings
This book presents a historical study of the accumulation of wealth through investment in buildings. The chosen territory is England, and the chosen time frame extends from the Norman Conquest to the present day. A succession of six case studies illustrates the general argument, each focussing on one of the iconic building types which help to define the vision of England. Each type is associated with the ruling class of its age. The chosen examples are Norman castles, Gothic cathedrals, Tudor palaces, Georgian country houses, Victorian civic buildings, and Modern office towers.
Iconic buildings of this type are what Bacon meant by the āworks and monumentsā through which men seek to secure their posthumous fame. A typical example is Houghton Hall in Norfolk, one of Englandās most extravagant Palladian mansions. It was built at vast expense by Sir Robert Walpole, the nationās first prime minister, and funded by the fruits of office he plucked during his 20 years at the head of government. Walpole came from a gentry family of relatively modest means, and Houghton celebrates his astonishing rise to become the most powerful man in the country, purveyor of enormous patronage and confidant of kings.
Of course, the quest for immortality is not the only purpose of investing in such a building. Since buildings fulfil a complex of economic, social, cultural, and aesthetic functions, so the reasons for investing in them are equally complex. To understand what has driven investment in each of our chosen building types, we shall examine a range of explanatory factors as they have operated in each era. To assist the clarity of the argument, these factors have been amalgamated into five key driving forces of building investment through the ages:
- Wealth accumulationāthe sources and distribution of the economic surplus which is available to be invested in buildings;
- Functional imperativeāthe demand for buildings as means of production, means of consumption, and stores of wealth;
- Structural innovationāthe impact on built forms of technological progress interacting with aesthetic shifts in architectural style;
- Symbolic authorityāthe use of built forms by the ruling class as a whole to provide a cultural expression of their hegemony; and
- Competitive spurāthe desire of individuals within the ruling class to construct more striking buildings than their peers in the quest for immortality.
Though the subject of the book is the buildings of England, the discussion has to veer between England, England and Wales, Great Britain and the UK depending on the sources being used and the subject under discussion. As far as quoted statistics are concerned, estimates prior to the Acts of Union usually refer to England alone, or occasionally England and Wales; after the Union, they typically cover Great Britain and then the UK, although in some cases England may be separated out. The appropriate geographical area may also be a matter of choice and judgement: it makes sense to talk of an English aristocracy, but not an English Industrial Revolution. What are not addressed are those issues of national identity, as between Englishness and Britishness, which have recently attracted the attention of historians.
The Buildings of England
An invaluable guide has accompanied the study at every stage. The buildings of England are the subject of one of the greatest works of European scholarship of the twentieth century. Between 1951 and 1974, the German architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner, together with a small and devoted band of assistants, compiled 46 volumes describing the most significant buildings of every type and age in each county of England. No other work of comparable scope and depth has ever been attempted, before or since.
Published originally by Penguin Books, The Buildings of England series became a classic, to be reprinted and revised many times over. Each revision has expanded the range and detail of the coverage, so that in its current form, now published by Yale University Press, the collection of volumes is far weightier than the Penguin originals. Despite its growing complexity, the essential character of the survey has remained unchanged. It has become both a cultural phenomenon and an essential work of reference. To be listed in Pevsner is a mark of distinction for a building; to visit any part of the country without taking the relevant volume of Pevsner is unthinkable for a growing body of devotees.
To understand what made Pevsner the phenomenon, we need to understand what made Pevsner the scholar (Draper 2004; Harries 2011). He was born in Leipzig in 1902, of Russian Jewish stock. Having studied art history, principally at Munich and Leipzig, he was appointed lecturer at the University of Gƶttingen in 1929. He was dismissed in 1933 when the new National Socialist government forbade Jews to be employed in universities and other public sector organizations. As a result, he was forced to seek employment abroad. He started his search in Italy, without success, and then switched his attention to England, which he had visited on a study tour three years previously. It was thus in October 1933 that he travelled to England to restart his career as an art historian.
Pevsnerās first years in England were difficult. He struggled to come to terms with his adopted country, and still entertained the vain hope that the Nazi regime in Germany would moderate its anti-Semitism. He failed to obtain a university post, and had to support himself through occasional lectures, journal articles, and research contracts. Following the outbreak of war, he even suffered the indignity of a brief period of internment as an enemy alien. Despite these setbacks, he was slowly building his reputation as an art historian, undertaking a long march into the academic establishment which culminated in 1949 in his appointment as Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge.
As early as 1936, Pevsner had published Pioneers of the Modern Movement, a landmark book which grew out of a long-established interest in modern architecture and design. In 1941, following his release from internment, Penguin commissioned him to write An Outline of European Architecture, first published in 1942 and repeatedly expanded and reissued. In 1945, he proposed that Penguin commission him to write what became The Buildings of England series. His model was Georg Dehioās Handbook of German Cultural Monuments, a topographical survey of the most important historic buildings in Germany published in five regional volumes between 1905 and 1912. To his surprise, the proposal was accepted.
The first of the county volumes, Cornwall, was published in 1951; the last, Staffordshire, appeared in 1974. Pevsnerās intention was that he, or later his collaborators, would personally visit and record every building in the survey. It is the buildings that matter, less so their setting or their historical context. Reflecting his German training, the written style is formal and analytic. However, that does not mean that his opinions are not strongly expressed. Many entries in the early volumes are famously brief and often acerbic: āperhaps the most offensive of the modernistic atrocities along this road of typical by-pass factoriesā (the Hoover Factory in Middlesex 1951: 130). At other times, he is expansive and even eulogistic: āone of the most perfect and also historically most interesting buildings in Europeā (Durham Cathedral in County Durham 1953: 79).
Pevsnerās central concern was to ālocate English architecture in the European context and at the same time demonstrate its uniquenessā (Harries 2011: 382). This aim lay behind the 1955 series of Reith lectures he gave on the theme of The Englishness of English Art, published in book form the following year. The Germanic perspective he applied to English art and architecture generated considerable controversy. Some saw it as condescending; others, even more damningly, condemned it as un-English. He was virulently attacked by both the radical Left and Tory Right, and to this day remains an anathema to sections of the English architectural establishment (Crossley 2004: 3). Nevertheless, it has now become universally recognized that Pevsnerās monumental work has been Germanyās loss and Englandās gain.
Multiple Functions
To understand the drivers of building investment, we should start by recognizing that buildings perform a multiplicity of functions. These functions are subsumed within a particular built form, so that form and function are closely intertwined. To invest in a building is to invest in the duality of its physical form and its bundle of functions. Since buildings are the most durable of human artefacts, both their form and function can be transformed several times in ways that prolong their existence. The history of a building can be written in terms of the transformations it has undergone during the course of its life (Camerlenghi 2011). Let us consider four main functions of a building: as means of production, means of consumption, store of wealth, and symbol of status and authority.
At their most utilitarian, buildings can function as what economists call āmeans of productionā. They form part of the capital stock which is employed in the processes of production. Mills and factories were an essential component of the means of production in the industrial economy of the nineteenth century. They were designed and built by engineers, for whom function took precedence over form. More functional still were the canals and railways which made up the infrastructure of the Industrial Revolution. These works were buildings too, in the purest sense of means of production. Many of these industrial buildings no longer exist; they have been demolished because the shrinkage and transformation of the manufacturing economy has made them redundant. However, some have been preserved as symbols of a bygone age of economic greatness, to be operated as education centres and leisure destinations. In other words, they have been transformed by acquiring a new set of functions.
As a mirror image of means of production, buildings can function as āmeans of consumptionā. They house activities which people consume as personal services. The most obvious example is residential buildings. A dwelling houses the domestic activities of family life, such as eating, sleeping, and leisure. Each of these services can also be consumed in commercial buildings specially designed for the purposeāin restaurants, hotels, cinemas, theatres, and concert halls. Over time, the locus of these activities...