How to Read a Building

Introduction

Architecture is for everyone

Architecture is everywhere: it is part of our lives, and its continuing development is a central theme in the history of mankind. Learning to read a building is the route to understanding a major part of our cultural inheritance.

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Great architects

The greatest architects of the western world created buildings that are not only international icons but have also come to symbolize the culture of a city and its people. London would be unthinkable without Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral, Sydney without Jørn Utzon’s opera house, or Paris without Charles Garnier’s opera house and Hector Guimard’s art nouveau Metro stations.

Whether you live in a small flat or a detached house, you can find traces of architectural history all around you. Architecture is not just about style, although historical styles have made buildings memorable and beautiful for hundreds of years. Architecture is the sum of many small parts, some as small as a door or a window, as well as being the general term for the study of why people choose to build the way they do. Learning to read buildings starts with enjoying architectural details and discovering how much pleasure can be derived from looking around you and understanding your own environment.

The first thing we can all do when embarking on a discovery of architecture is to try to analyse what we see in a room we know well. Are the doors flush or panelled? How do the windows open? Is there a plaster cornice, or a decorative skirting board? Is there a consistent pattern to the features inside the house? How does the layout of the rooms work? Even if these are the same as they are in the flat or house next door, they will very probably make a statement about what sort of home we live in, and how that home relates to the story of architecture as a whole. After all, an outline of architectural history will only make sense if it is broad enough to include the majority of buildings we all live and work in.

With experience and enthusiasm it becomes possible to classify visual ideas into clear stylistic traditions which govern the form of every part of a building from its general outline to its detail. These common patterns are the major historical traditions, in particular the ‘classical’ and the ‘gothic’; both styles have roots in a series of important historical buildings which have long influenced architects and artists, and anyone interested in the subject must know what they are.

Buildings are not only about style, however: they are also a record of the way in which people have lived and worked in the past. The choice of a building material, or a type of chimney or roof tile, may be related to local resources. The way in which craftsmen have worked and finished those materials is often a sign of the natural characteristics of the materials themselves. To some extent therefore one can say that when a region of a country has developed a very distinct way of building because of the types of materials and skills prevalent there, we have an example of a further and unique type of style. Indeed, some of our most memorable buildings have resulted from the combination of a local style with one of the great international traditions of formal architecture. Your own home is unlikely, of course, to satisfy your own curiosity. The centre of your nearest town, however, will almost certainly bear witness to the major traditions of architecture. It is quite possible that there may be a church or a public building there that testifies to an important phase of national architecture. At all events, you will soon start to uncover fascinating aspects of architectural style and history from the buildings that you pass every day.

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The architectural profession

The present-day profession of architecture in Britain developed in the early nineteenth century. Until that time, the people who designed buildings were builders or carpenters, engineers, surveyors, or simply gentlemen – and lady – amateurs. Sir John Vanbrugh, the designer of Blenheim Palace, had been a professional soldier and playwright before he started calling himself an architect.

1 The elements of architecture

Evidence of the great historical styles of the past is all around us. Whoever built your home was working within a tradition – even if at first sight it might seem as though there is nothing special about it. For every house, in every style, belongs to the developing history of architecture. With careful analysis of what you see every day, you can step into the world of architectural history, and begin to appreciate the many beauties of the buildings of our towns and cities.

Analysing your home

The first step towards understanding architectural history is to analyse exactly what you see around you. What are the major component parts that your house is made of? What do they look like, and how were they put together?

Walls and roofs

If your house is built with plain brick or plastered walls, the chances are that you have never given them much thought. And yet these are the most important parts of any home. The purpose of a house from the beginning of time has been to build somewhere that is protected from the elements. The very first houses were shelters created out of whatever material was available. In England, with its dense woodlands, sections of tree trunks were tied together to form a rigid tent, and its surface was covered with woven twigs and leaves. Sometimes walls were built up using mud and clay. Once sturdier materials could be moved from place to place, the first upright masonry walls began to appear.

The wall and the roof are still the most important elements in architecture, and very probably their appearance was the first thing that the builder of your house decided on.

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Wattle and daub

The walls of old timber-framed buildings were often filled in with wattle and daub. Wattle refers to a wickerwork infill built of rods and twigs, and daub was a coating made of clay, dung, horsehair and other materials. Wattle and daub panels were then usually plastered.

The walls

Step outside your home and look carefully at the surface of the outer walls:

• is it made of timber?

• is it made of brick?

• is it made of stone?

• is it covered in plaster, or render?

• is it made from a concrete frame?

The location of your house may well account for the material of the outer face of the walls. It is only comparatively recently in the history of architecture – for most people, less than two hundred years – that it has been economically viable to move heavy building materials around the country. Well into the twentieth century such expensive transportation was still avoided if possible. That means that in most cases the surface of the walls will be made from a material that can be found locally. If you live in a more recent home, you need only look at the fronts of older buildings to get a clear idea of what the local building material is.

Timber walls

Walls built with timber frames are comparatively rare in Britain, although many have survived from hundreds of years ago. Originally, numerous houses were built with timber frames and covered with timber clapboarding, but as brick and stone became increasingly available, and because the priority in a wet country was to keep warm and dry, the timber cladding was often later replaced with brick. On the other hand, when English settlers arrived in the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they found plentiful supplies of timber which could be easily felled and worked. The result was a style of architecture which has remained popular ever since, especially on the east coast of the United States.

Builders traditionally used local building materials, which accounts for the wonderful variety of brick and stone in our houses. This modern house echoes that tradition.

English settlers in the New World used plentiful local timber to build in a way that was familiar from home.

A timber frame with timber cladding is not necessarily inferior to masonry construction. Units can be prefabricated and transferred quickly and cheaply to site, and because of their natural appearance can easily blend in with any other local material. Nowadays, thermal insulation standards can be met with thick layers of mineral wool or other modern materials, and so the protective properties of the external layer are less important than they were traditionally. In fact, the Nordic countries with their plentiful forests make great use of timber-framed, timber-clad structures for modern high-quality housing, and it is likely that their use will spread.

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Cavity walls

Since 1945 most brickwork walls have been built with a cavity to prevent rain and moisture reaching the inside of a house. Builders began to use cavity walls in the early nineteenth century. The cavity is now used also as a place to put internal thermal insulation.

Brick and stone

The most solid building materials are found under the earth. In Britain, there is a large selection of stones and clays which have provided a tremendous variety of building materials. In the south-east of the country, around London, the clay is just right for making bricks, and so for many people who have seen the characteristic rows of houses in the capital, England is a country of brick. But there is also a long belt of limestone that stretches across the land from Dorset in the south-west up to Yorkshire in the north-east. This provides the varied and attractive stones that characterize the architecture of much of the centre of the country. There are also coloured sandstones in the west and north-west.

Because the wall is the most important part of any house, builders will have to adapt their work to the natural properties of the material. Brick can be cast into small units. Most limestones can be easily cut and carved into blocks, sometimes into the largest units that can be comfortably manoeuvred into place by a mason working alone. And because the dense granites of the far north and west of the country are so difficult to cut and so inconvenient to move around on a building site, the architecture of those regions is correspondingly plain and massive.

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Flemish brickwork

The architecture of the Low Countries is also characterized by fine brickwork. At various times in history craftsmen from Flanders, in today’s Belgium, have worked in Britain and as a result some villages in the south-east of England have gables and other ornamental brickwork of a distinctly Continental appearance.

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Limestone

Many stone buildings in England are built of limestone, which basically consists of calcium carbonate. It was formed between 70 and 345 million years ago, and comes in several forms, from soft chalk to a kind of marble. All limestone is sedimentary and formed into layers or strata; and it contains much fossilized matter.

Most kinds of limestone used in building are well suited for decorative carving.

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Sandstone

Sandstone is also a sedimentary rock. It is composed of hardwearing quartz or other minerals held together by a cementing material such as silica or calcite. The magnificent Anglican cathedral in Liverpool is built of vibrant local red sandstone.

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Granite

Granite is generally an igneous material, which means that it was formed from cooling molten lava. British granite is largely mined in Scotland, Wales, Devon and Cornwall. This type of stone is tough and generally hard to work with, so granite buildings are usually less delicate in their decoration than limestone ones.

Rendered walls

Quarrying and working with stone is always going to be a relatively expensive part of the building process, and yet in many countries the local clay is