Robert Adam (architect)
Robert Adam , FRSA (born July 3, 1728 in Kirkcaldy , Scotland , † March 3, 1792 in London ) was a Scottish architect , interior designer , furniture designer, father of British classicism and main exponent of the Adam style .
Life
Robert Adam was the son of the leading Scottish architect William Adam (1689–1748). From 1754 to 1758 he studied ancient monuments in Italy (especially imperial times), and in 1757 at Diocletian's Palace in Split , about which he published a book in 1764.
He made friends with Giovanni Battista Piranesi and took the architectural draftsman Charles-Louis Clérisseau into his service. He studied and used Robert Wood's publications on Baalbek and Palmyra . This resulted in the merging of ancient and English building traditions. After the Palladian generation around Campbell and Burlington, he went straight back to antiquity. From 1758 he was in London. He built the University of Edinburgh and numerous houses in London as well as especially mansions like Saltram House in Plympton near Plymouth .
Around 1770, Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield commissioned him to design a sofa that would sit upright but still be extremely comfortable. This Chesterfield seating is still widely used today.
Nikolaus Pevsner wrote about him: “His work stands between a picturesque classicism and a classically restrained neo-Gothic. His works have the attitude of informal propriety, unpedant learning and inconspicuous prosperity, precisely the cultivated world of his clients. Feeling that it was neither civil nor wise to break existing traditions, he created a classical style that was more graceful and cheerfully elegant than that of the Palladian followers who preceded it or the followers of the Greek Revival, who followed him. "
In 1788 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .
In John Soane's Museum are 8000 large-format drawings by him. 1773–79 he published his buildings in a folio.
Important buildings
Apsley House
Luton Hoo
Kedleston Hall
Paxton House
Saltram House
- Apsley House , London (1778)
- Bowood House , Wiltshire
- Charlotte Square (north side), Edinburgh (1791)
- Culzean Castle , Maybole, Ayrshire Scotland (1792 ff.)
- Edinburgh University Old College
- Home House , London (1777–1784)
- Kedleston Hall , Derby (1759-1765)
- Kenwood House , Hampstead , London (1768)
- Luton Hoo , Bedfordshire (1766-1770)
- Mistley Towers
- Osterley Park , London (1761–1780)
- Paxton House , Berwick-upon-Tweed (1758)
- Pulteney Bridge, Bath (1770)
- Saltram House , Plympton near Plymouth
- Shardeloes interior, Buckinghamshire (1761)
- Syon House interior, Brentford (1762–1769)
literature
- Adam, Robert . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 1 : A-Androphagi . London 1910, p. 172–173 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ shaper RSE Fellows 1783-2002. Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed October 3, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Adam, Robert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Scottish architect |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 3, 1728 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kirkcaldy , Scotland |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 3, 1792 |
| Place of death | London |