Précis: Annotated Bibliography

Posted: August 26th, 2021

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Précis: Annotated Bibliography

Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morris Hickey Morgan (New York: Dover, 1917), book I, chapters 1-2.

Chapter 1, “The Education of the Architect”

P. 5, line 1: “The architect needs to be equipped with a vast knowledge of all kinds, practice, and theory on principles of proportion.”

P. 5, line 2: “Architects equipped with manual skills and scholarship will attain object with authority, unlike those who only possessed one these feats.”

P. 5, line 3: “As a master of all aspects of architecture, a designer must be naturally gifted and able to follow instructions at ease.”

P. 6, line 4: “Architects need to be educated on making sketches using the knowledge of geometry, arithmetic, and optics.”

P. 6, line 5: “To be a great designer, one needs to have a vast historical knowledge of past architectural, structural ideals of all four corners of the world.”

P. 7, line 6: “Philosophy makes a person high-minded, courteous, and incorruptibly honest in one’s practices.”

P. 13, line 17: “The natural capacity to attain great talents of all disciplines requires effective training that a few can bear the pain of such acquisition.”

Chapter 2, “The Fundamental Principles of Architecture”

P. 13, line 1: “The architecture revolves around order, arrangement, alignment, propriety, as well as economy.”

P. 13, line 2: “With the order, it is easy to measure the quantity of work to be assigned individually, thus bring about balanced agreements of the whole task.”

P. 14, line 4: “The application of symmetry achieves a kind of harmonious balance among different parts to form a whole.”

P. 15, line 6: “Propriety offers an architect theinsight to make an entrance door look uniformlyto the interior design appearance.”

P. 15, line 7: “The utilization of propriety instills the sacred precincts of matching the architectural structure with natural geographically-placed resources.”

Barry Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750-1890 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), chapter 7, “New Technology and Architectural Form, 1851-1890.”

Bergdoll discusses in breadth the divergent controversies associated with the onset of Iron revolutionary technology in the European architectural industry. He analyzes the remarkable attention on how the application of iron has revolutionized the Great Exhibition of London. The mega-structure – Crystal Palace – had drawn many controversies from all kinds of architects with its chief designer Paxton due to its grandiose scale of 564 m height and 18 acres land size. A few renowned architects reviewed the mega-structure for its non-conformity to the naturalism of architectural form for itsextensive use of wrought-iron girders and cast-iron columns. For example, Ruskin sharply criticized the designer for not applying solid masonry.

The author writes how other disciples of Ruskin accused Paxton of deviating entirely from the ideals of the architectural form of art and culture. Barry Bergdoll alleges that, however much the designer received negative criticism from a majority of the European architects, they did not know that Paxton under a stringent budget and schedule. Further, Bergdoll discusses the visual effects of the interior of the Crystal Palace were also at the center of criticism in terms of chromatics.

With the Welsh architect concentrating entirely on the primary colors coupled with white, the law of simultaneous dissimilarities of colors inspired Owen Jones. According to the author, the interior of the gothic failed to reflect the natural geographical appearances of the environment but somewhat simulating the effects of optics. According to the author, the ecclesiologists and Gothic revivalists felt that the whole building was subject to endangering the Medieval European culture. For example, the interior of the structure could not control the temperature despite its truthfulness of material and rather expensive structural ideals.

Works Cited

Bergdoll, Barry. “European Architecture 1750-1890.” Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.

Vitruvius. “Ten Books on Architecture.” Morris Hickey Morgan (Trans.). New York: Dover, 1917. Print.