NEO-CLASSICM

HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE –II

 Neoclassicism
• Started in the mid 18th century
• Against the Rococo style
• Derived from the style of classical Greece
& Roman
• Europe and North America
 Neoclassicism
• Sincere desire for perceived unity of Roman,
Greek and Renaissance classicism
• Classical style technique
• Vocabulary of the orders Doric, Ionic,
Corinthian, Composite proportional to any
scale
 Phases of Neoclassicism
• Palladianism
• Roman Revivals
• Greek Revivals
• More Neo than classical
• Empire style
 Palladianism
• Classicism originated in England.
• At the time when Italy, Spain and Germany were
socializing in the Baroque, England turned to
Palladianism
• A movement - by Richard Boyle who fell under
Palladio’s spell when he visited Italy in 1719
• Palladio- the most classical, the most educated and
the least Mannerist of Italian late Renaissance
architects.
 Palladianism
• His own villa at Chiswick, near London
• A near replica of the Villa Rotunda and a more
sophisticated variant with a sequence of highly
decorated rooms around a central, domed
octagon.
Richard Boyles’ villa at Chiswick, near London
 Palladianism
• Burlington’s version of Palladio was highly
selective,
• Concentrating more on elements that Palladio
shared with Ancient times than on those peculiar to
himself.
• The use of the orders, a portico and a rusticated
basement was enough to merit the name
‘Palladian’.
 Roman Revivals
• Mid-18th century
• Roman models accelerated
• England and France
• While in other countries, within a relatively short
time, it entirely superseded the Baroque
• An architect’s reputation was improved, if he had
studied in Rome or had published original
research on ancient buildings
 Roman Revivals
• Thomas Jefferson advised the Virginia State Capital at
Richmond (1785) should be a replica of the Maison Caree at
Nimes
 Roman Revivals
• Pierre-Alexander Vignon’s church of the Madelaine,
in Paris (1806) is externally virtually a Roman temple
out of its time.
 Greek Revival
• Doric order became the favorite, followed by Ionic,
Corinthian was rarely used
• Indeed buildings in theory could not be higher than
the height of the column with its entablature (plus,
possibly an attic storey).
 Greek Revival
• U.S.A. - that the Greek Revival produced its
most abundant crop and every city had Greek
banks, capitols and churches
 More Neo than classical
• Before and during the French revolution
• No archaeological references,
• Geometrical and suited to the carrying of
symbolic messages,
• Impressive schemes, very few were actually
built because of political unrest.
 More Neo than classical
• Etienne-Louis Boullee - remained on paper: National Library,
National Theatre and a monument to Sir Isaac Newton(1784), all
based on simple forms such as spheres and cubes
 More Neo than classical
• Friedrich Gilly - Germany a vast monument to
Friederich the Great in Berlin (1797) (another
Parthenon) and a National theatre both unrealized
 Empire style
• The last phase of Neoclassicism
• Association with Napoleon
• Most fully expressed in interiors and furniture,
using motifs from Imperial Rome and Ancient
Egypt –
• Impression of monumental splendor.
• In France, its architects were Charles Percier
and Pierre-Francois Fontaine.
• In England- Regency
• In Germany - Bidermeier
 TYPE OF BUILDINGS
• Palaces and Ministries
• Monumental layouts
• Domesticity
• Culture and Commerce
 Palaces and Ministries
• Up to the mid-18th century the major projects
were royal.
• The largest comparable palace was the Palace
of the Caserta built for the King of Naples.
• Classical in geometry and its repetitive facades,
it incorporates amazing features such as the
staircase and theatre.
 Palaces and Ministries

Fig. Interior of Palace of the Caserta, Naples

Fig. Palace of the Caserta, Naples
 Palaces and Ministries
• In the 18th century, central governments grew large
enough to need separate buildings to house their
departments
• be impressive for prestige purposes.
• The point of monotony in every capital of the western
world are
– the central porticoes,
– the long range of windows,
– the projecting end pavilions that say government offices.
 Palaces and Ministries

Four Courts Building in Dublin (1776) by James Gandon are

highly original designs giving monumentality to a small city
Fig. Four Courts Building in Dublin
 Palaces and Ministries
• The commonest variant was the row of giant columns,
an expressive symbol of power; so that the city of
Washington D.C. for instance suffers severely from
what has been called ‘columnomania’.
 Fig. St. George’s Hall, Liverpool (1842) by H.L. Elmes, an
ingenious combination of law courts, assembly room &
theater.
Fig. St. George’s Hall, Liverpool
The Capitol, Washington begun in 1792 &continuously
enlarged through out the 19th century by a succession
of architects.
 Monumental layouts
• A new kind of city in which functional planning
replaced the grand Baroque gesture

• The circus and crescents of Bath,

• The squares of London;
• The sequential spaces gridded streets,
• Squares,
• Circus of Edinburgh New Town,
• The white colonnades of Calcutta founded by the
British in 1690s
 Monumental layouts
• The new streets and places of Paris, notably the Place
de la Concorde

• The setting of Washington to focus on the Capitol in

one direction but (originally) open on the other at the
Potomac river as a symbol of the new nation’s infinite
possibilities, etc.
 Monumental layouts

• Place de la Concorde,
Monumental layouts

• Hellenic
Academy, Athens
 Domesticity
• In the 18th century
• Private houses - architectural kind
• Order, refinement, modesty, educated
taste came together with wealth
• Technical expertise with a combination of
private comfort and public display.
 Culture and Commerce
• The Neo-Classical Period coincided with the coming of
many institutions, ( Virginia University Campus,1817)
that demanded their own type of building: in the
cultural sphere, museums, art galleries and theaters;
in the commercial banks and warehouses.
Virginia University Campus,1817
 Culture and Commerce
• Before 1750 all art galleries and museums were
private
• During the next 40 years the idea of national
museums grew up all over Europe –
• By Napoleon’s reorganization of the Louvre and the
1820s saw the designing of the two great
masterpieces of the genre.
Culture and Commerce
• Karl Friedrich Altes
Museum and
• Robert Smirke’s British
Museum, London, both
used the motif of the giant
free standing colonnade
 Classicism and Christianity
• One church stands out for its ambitious
scale and the novelty of its design.
• Soufflot’s Genevieve in Paris, now known
as the Pantheon, this was to be France’s
answer to St. Peter’s in Rome and St.
Paul’s in London
Classicism and Christianity
Fig. Soufflot’s Genevieve in Paris