Experiencing Architecture in the Nineteenth Century

Bringing together fourteen original essays, this collection opens up new perspectives on the architectural history of the nineteenth century by examining the buildings of the period through the lens of 'experience'. With a focus on the experience of the ordinary building user - rather than simply on the intentions of the designer - the book shows that new and important insights can be brought to our understanding of Victorian architecture. The chapters present a range of ideas and new research - some examining individual building case studies (from grand hotels and clubhouses in New York to the parliament buildings of Westminster), and others exploring conceptual questions about the nature of architectural experience, whether sensory or otherwise. Yet they share the premise that the idea of the 'experience of architecture' took on a new and particular significance with the rise of industrial modernity, and they examine what contemporary people - both architects and non-architects - understood by this idea. The insights in this volume extend beyond the study of Victorian architecture. Together they suggest how 'experience' might be used as a framework to produce a more convincingly historical account of the artefacts of architectural history.

Edward Gillin is an Associate Research Fellow at the History Faculty, University of Oxford. H. Horatio Joyce is a doctoral student in history at the University of Oxford, and a PhD Scholar of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB).

Acknowledgements List of figures and tables Introduction Part One. Defining experiences 1. Architecture and experience: Regimes of materiality in the nineteenth century - William Whyte Part Two. Producing experience 2. Touching heaven, crafting utopia: David Parr House in Cambridge -Ayla Lepine 3. Architecture of the mind: Imparting Californian identity through architectural experience on the early Stanford University campus - David Frazer Lewis 4. The architecture of art education: Provincial art schools in Britain, 1850-1914 - Geoffrey Tyack 5. Rooms and galleries: spaces of art in the nineteenth century - Valerie Mendelson Part 3. Designing experience 6. New York's Harvard House and the origins of an alumi culture in America - H. Horatio Joyce 7. Architectural acoustics: Thomas Roger Smith and the science of hearing buildings in nineteenth century Britain - Graeme Gooday 8. Powers of politics, scientific measurement and perception: Evaluating the performance of the Houses of Commons' first environmental system, 1852-4 - Henrik Schoenfeldt Part 4. Audiences and experience 9. Publicity and exclusivity: The experience of the public rooms of the London 'grand hotel' at the end of the nineteenth century - Emma Anderson 10. The fullest fountain of advancing civilization: Experiencing Anthony Trollope's House of Commons, 1852-82 - Edward Gillin 11. Building student bodies: College gymnasia and women's health in nineteenth century America - Caitlin DeClercq Part 5. Epilogue 12. Material, movement and memory: Some thoughts on architecture and experience in the age of mechanisation - Alex Bremner