A History of Building Types
A History of Building Types is an English book written by the art historian Nikolaus Pevsner and published in 1976 . The German title is: Funktion und Form. The history of the buildings of the West and was published in Hamburg in 1998. Here the author deals with different building types and their historical and stylistic classification. It is considered to be one of the first essential overview works of often overlooked architectural and public buildings. It was awarded the Wolfson History Prize in the year of its publication .
content
A History of Building Types comprehensively describes numerous architectural examples and their special features in 17 chapters. Nikolaus Pevsner shows “extensive knowledge of the history of architecture and its fluent, pictorial writing that precisely captures the essentials”. In addition to the stylistic classification, Pevsner examines the function and material of the buildings. He also considers the building in isolation from the city and ignores the role of the building in the urban space. The book contains more than 700 black and white illustrations on 352 pages. With a few exceptions, the entire work deals mainly with European and American architectural examples, most of which date from the 19th century .
After the preliminary remarks and the introduction, the first chapter of the work follows, which deals exclusively with national monuments and monuments for important personalities. Then it is about government buildings from the period between the 12th and 17th centuries . American buildings are mainly used here as examples that value their significant facades. The government buildings are divided into parliament buildings, ministries and authorities as well as town halls and courts of law . Here and also with the theater buildings , the functionality in connection with the style is examined in more detail. In the case of the libraries , only the external features of the buildings are named and the interior fittings are disregarded. This does not play a major role when examining the presentation of museums . After the buildings of the arts have been inspected, the book is devoted to the mundane buildings of cities such as hospitals or prison architecture , which is left out in most of the other overview works due to their apparently identical design. Now the author illuminates hotel architecture as well as stock exchanges and banks . The next named building types are warehouses and office buildings . From here, Pevsner puts train stations at the center of the investigation. Then the author is concerned with market halls , greenhouses and exhibition buildings. The overview work also deals with various shops, business and department stores, which take up an important part of the urban space. Finally, the investigation concludes with a look at various factory buildings . The author summarizes his thoughts and observations in a final consideration. The last part of the book consists of the obligatory references, notes, a list of illustrations, picture credits and an index of persons and subjects. In the German edition of the work there is also an afterword by Karen Michels before this section of the book.
literature
- A History of Building Types (= AW Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts 19 = Bollingen Series 35, 19). Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1976, ISBN 0-691-01829-4 (In German: Function and Form. The History of Buildings in the West. With an afterword by Karen Michels. Rogner & Bernhard bei Zweiausendeins, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3 -8077-0189-3 ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Betthausen, Peter et al .: Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexikon. Two hundred portraits of German-speaking authors from four centuries, Stuttgart [u. a.] 1999.
- ↑ Previous winners ( Memento from February 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) wolfson.org.uk. Retrieved June 15, 2015.