| Henry Wotton (1568 – 1639) did not intend The Elements of Architecture to be just another philosophical treatise for the architecture student. As the first Englishman to produce a serious work on the subject of architecture, Henry Wotton found himself in a unique and advantageous position to spread it beyond architects as he himself had not been trained as an architect.
During his time in Florence, Transylvania, Poland, Germany, Rome, and later as an ambassador to the Venician Republic from 1604 to 1653, Wotton realized the incomparable advantage of including architecture in the common person’s day to day lifestyle. He sought to educate the lay English public with a summary and categorization of true architecture principles. He wrote as a critic. The Elements of Architecture was a short, easy book that might be found in any person’s sitting room. It expressed a new enthusiasm for the art of architecture in popular society. Vitrivius Influence |
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Wotton relied heavily on Ten Books of Architecture by Marcus Vitruvious Pollio, as did every writer on architecture at the time. He also heavily referenced drawings by Andrea Palladio which Palladio had used for his fundamental work I Quattro Libri dell’ Architecttura (The Four Books Of Architecture). Wotton acquired these drawings during his time in Italy. Wotton made a gift of them to rising architect Inigo Jones, who first started the trend of Palladian architecture just before the publication of Wotton’s book.
Wotton thus gave power to common man, as in every great step forward in human technology from the printing press to the personal computer, not only by education of timeless principles but also through practical applications and recommendations for the English context. Thus began Neo-Classicism.
Modern Utilitarianism
The writings of Wotton revered Vitruvius and the principles he laid out yet didn’t hold them as the unbending truth. He rejected Vitruvius’ reverence for the circle as the foundation of architectural form, as natural forms seemed to him to pragmatically spring from more useful origins. Wotton cared about function and less about prescribed form derived from rigid proportional principles. Indeed, Wotton totally changed the Vitruvian criteria of form, dismissing proportional order and composition.
This is expressed in Wotton’s early assertion that “every part is to be determined by its use.” This swing toward utilitarianism and lead to Louis Sullivan to say “form follows function.” Eventually the emphasis on function would be so overplayed that modernists would be making up useless functions just for the sake of abolishing form. A healthy relationship of form and function would need to be sought out.
It is important to realize that it was under these conditions that classical Italian architecture began to prevail in England. The English society became Puritan under King James I, yet values were at the same time shifting away from puritan conservative principles. Wotton himself was far removed from dignity. He was famously involved in spying scandals and in thwarting assassination attempts, he was often heavily in debt, and his reputation was besmirched as a dishonest diplomatist for the king. He was hardly the image of a pure soul. Oscar Wilde’s character named Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Grey was a Hedonist, superciliously living by the mantra that only beauty and pleasure are worth pursuing.
Empirical Thought
This book’s influence on England is profound. Wotton’s new value for utility, scientific proof, and empirical experience came concurrently with the scientific advances of Francis Bacon. If the great realm of architecture were to be brought down to the every-man’s level, it would certainly need to lose the mystery, the mystic in people’s minds. It deals less with the spheres of the universe and more with the soil conditions prudent for a single-family home. Beauty didn’t come from the names of great artists or styles, but from logical solutions to every day issues.
As Oscar Wilde wryly noted, however, this often gets taken too far. It could lead to loose morals, an over-emphasis on worldly pleasures, dehumanization, and self-defeating close-mindedness. The endeavors of the British Empire were great, and it is safe to say England wasn’t always humanely-minded. The Italian villa became a popular style following Wotton’s new architecture, but the villa in Wilde’s story which started out as a pleasure palace ended as a prison.
With this new ability given to the larger populace to control their environment, with time-tested principles but also with pragmatic flexibility and in conjunction with civic and other scholarly studies, England quickly advanced.
In my own short experience, I have seen a unique enthusiasm for architecture in England. A map of total visits to my architecture website which documents many projects around the world reaveals two cities that are by far the most interested in architecture: London, and not far behind it, New York City.
The practice of writing about architecture for the common person continued throughout Europe and continued on in the Americas, a practice that has advanced architecture in ways that are not fully appreciated.
Excerpt from Introduction to The Elements of Architecture by Henry Wotton
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