Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

The meaning in buildings is not fixed in them. For example, the cottages that were built by agricultural workers for their own use were not considered as a form of artistic expression, but as serviceable shelters (Figure 2). However the romantic poets saw the simple cottages of the rural poor as an expression of tenacious virtue in bleak circumstances, which meant that they were seen as gestural, and then by the end of the 18th century there was a fashion for small-scale rural retreats (cottages ornées), which certainly should be seen as artistically expressive, and were designed that way. There has been a long tradition of looking at agricultural workers as virtuous and romantic that started somewhere in the ancient world. It was already a tradition when Virgil wrote his Eclogues in the first century BC. Already then there was a sentimental interpretation of agriculture that could develop because there was a class in that society that did not have an everyday involvement in agriculture, but who could see it from a distance and think of it as enviable, or innocent. The most famous architectural expression of this sensibility in the ‘modern’ world is the hamlet that Marie-Antoinette commissioned at Versailles, where she could step aside from her duties as the queen in the world’s most splendid court, and pretend to be a simple milkmaid, in touch with nature and her feelings. The gesture is a blend of innocence, naïveté and sauciness. Another example is Blaise Hamlet near Bristol, that was designed by the architect John Nash as a self-consciously pretty and well-managed group of houses for retired employees of the Blaise estate, a genuine but highly visible gesture of benevolence on the part of the landowner. This has particular poignancy because Nash was also responsible for one of the most extravagant princely dwellings of this or any other time: the Royal Pavilion at Brighton (Figure 3). Even in small illustrations, there is no doubt about the relative status of the inhabitants of the dwellings shown in Figures 2 and 3. Without any specialized knowledge of architecture, we know how to read the signs. Even if we thought that the building in Brighton was relatively normal, it would be clear that it was not the low-cost option, and in fact it was stylistically outlandish and novel. It was not only extravagant, it also relished the display of that extravagance, and still today sweeps visitors along with the sheer exuberance of its display. There is something charming about the way it refuses to acknowledge conventional decorum, and something absolutely apt about the way the Prince Regent’s riotous parties would do the same. There is a surprisingly close relation between the form of the building and its function.

_{2. Traditional cottage, uncertain date, but pre-20th century; no architect. This hovel is a representative example of the types of dwelling that were built by the rural poor until the 19th century. Living conditions could be bad, but the worst cottages were made of earth and have long since disappeared. Stone dwellings, such as the one shown here, would have been built with stone that was either quarried locally or that had been cleared from the fields. This example would have been too small to adapt to modern needs, but many similar slightly larger buildings are still occupied, connected to electricity and with modern plumbing, which makes them very different from the places they once were. In Britain, most cottages are now inhabited by people whose income does not come from farming the plot of land on which the house sits, but by people who either have jobs in towns, or who have retired from their town work. Most cottages therefore function as part of a city, even though they can still look idyllically rural.}