Timothy Brittain-Catlin

Why some architects fail to realize their ideal buildings, and what architecture critics can learn from novelists.

Disappointment and Failure in Architecture

Bleak Houses

Edwin Rickards was the most flamboyant of Edwardian architects: his buildings were said by John Summerson to fizz like champagne. During a short working life, launched at the age of 25 by winning the competition to design Cardiff City Hall with his partners H.V. Lanchester and James Stewart, he completed four spectacular baroque buildings. Rickards’ work was unique in Edwardian architecture for his personal combination of French and especially Austrian sources. Working closely with H.C. Fehr and Henry Poole, leading practitioners of the New Sculpture, he designed two of the major monuments of the period. As well as being one of the best freehand draughtsmen in London, he was also a prodigious caricaturist. With a foot in the demi-monde and an endless appetite for architectural and personal adventure, Rickards was an unforgettable figure to everyone who met him. Illustrated throughout with stunning new photography by Robin Forster and by Rickards’ own sketches and drawings, this book portrays his close friendship with the novelist Arnold Bennett who described him, along with H.G Wells, as one of ‘the two most interesting, provocative, and stimulating men I have yet encountered’, and his meteoric career that ended with his early death.

Edwin Rickards

Provides information on analysing and interpreting architectural features.

How to Read a Building

Jan De Maeyer

Martin Bressani 

Pugin’s global influence on church architecture and material reform The year 2012 marked the bicentenary of the gothic revival architect A.W.N. Pugin. His influence as a designer not only spread fast globally, but also played a leading part in the transformation of material culture from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Pugin’s work has been comprehensively reevaluated over the last decade. In this volume sixteen leading scholars from across the globe discuss Pugin’s direct influence on church architecture and furnishing. Beautifully illustrated with a large selection of new photography, Gothic Revival Worldwide, the successor to the volume Gothic Revival published in 2000, reveals how Pugin’s ideas played a profound role in the changing face of material reform in church architecture as an expression of the evolving identity of the churches across the world from North America to Mongolia and the South Pacific. Contributors Stephen Bann (Bristol University), Jessica Basciano (University of St. Thomas, Houston), G.A. Bremner (University of Edinburgh), Martin Bressani (McGill University, Montréal), Karen Burns (University of Melbourne), Timothy Brittain-Catlin (University of Kent), Peter Coffman (Carleton University, Ottawa), Thomas Coomans (KU Leuven), Jan De Maeyer (KU Leuven / KADOC), Candace Iron (York University, Toronto), Stephen Kite (Cardiff University, Wales), Alex Lawrey (independent scholar), Peter N. Lindfield (University of Stirling), Cameron Macdonell (Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich), M. Stephen McNair, Jr. (McNair Historic Preservation), Gilles Maury (École National Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage, Lille), Henrik Schoenefeldt (University of Kent), Richard A. Sundt (University of Oregon), Malcolm Thurlby (York University, Toronto)

Timothy Brittain-Catlin

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