Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in excellent condition. Pullouts in back are present. Some light tanning due to age. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> Today with regard to architecture the average man is a fool and the average architect is a snob.’ Can ‘today’ refer as well to 1970 as to 1933? The profession of architecture has become more arcane since Sir John Betjeman wrote GHASTLY GOOD TASTE a discursive essay on what is finest and strongest in English archi- tecture and a trenchant attack on modern canons of ‘good taste’ and ‘refeenment’. Self-conscious architecture speculative building the destruction of the great achievements of the past to make room for colossal hideosities-these crimes against our environment are still being perpetrated willy-nilly every day and the average man is less able now than at any time in history to exercise an educated judgment and expect that it will carry any weight. Architecture began in England in an age of faith and the art was logical and fear- less. The canons of architectural taste passed after the Reformation into the hands of the aristocracy whence after a period of stylistic uncertainty and incon- gruity called by the author ‘Jacobethan’ came the architecture of the English Renaissance-autocratic educated hard and reasonable. The upper classes held sway through the Regency but pride of purse and ostentatiousness produced the machine-made Gothic of the last century. (LL)