Interior design – Space Planning, Functionality, Aesthetics | Britannica
William Kent British architect
William Kent (born c. 1685, Bridlington, Yorkshire, Eng.—died April 12, 1748, London) was an English architect, interior designer, landscape gardener, and painter. He was a principal master of the Palladian architectural style in England and a pioneer in the creation of the “informal” English garden.
Kent was said to have been apprenticed to a coach painter at Hull. Local patrons, impressed by his talent, sent him to study painting in Rome from 1709 to 1719. There he studied under Benedetto Luti.
In Rome he also met the Earl of Burlington, the foremost architectural patron of the 18th century in England and the principal promoter of Andrea Palladio’s classical building style (Palladianism). He took Kent back to London in 1719 to decorate Burlington House in Piccadilly, where Kent then lived for the rest of his life. The association with Burlington had a determining effect on Kent’s rather severe architectural style, which was characterized by well-proportioned masses arranged in simple relationships. Although later Neoclassical architects, such as Robert Adam, were to criticize Kent’s works as “immeasurably ponderous,” his influence on them was considerable. Kent was also familiar with the style of Inigo Jones, whose Designs (published 1727) Kent edited.
By the 1730s Kent had become a fashionable architect. Among his principal buildings is Holkham Hall, Norfolk (begun 1734). Here, as in other works, Kent designed interiors and even furniture, becoming one of the earliest English architects to plan a house in one unified design scheme. Kent’s best known works came out of his appointment, through Burlington’s influence, as a master carpenter in the Office of Works (1725). The Royal Mews (1732), the treasury buildings, Whitehall (1734–36), and the Horse Guards Building in Whitehall (1750–58; completed after Kent’s death) are all part of Burlington’s grand intention of rectifying the sorry state of England’s architecture by adhering more closely to classical precedent.
The rather theatrical interiors of some of these structures, as of the masterful No. 44 Berkeley Square (1742–44), and Kent’s taste for fanciful Gothic style in furniture designs suggest that he wore his Palladianism lightly and that, in the absence of Burlington’s overpowering influence, Kent might as easily have become a master of the Baroque.
It was in his gardens—conceived of as natural landscapes to contrast with the classical severity of his buildings—that Kent may have achieved his freest expression. He created gardens at Rousham Hall, Oxfordshire (1738–41), and Stowe House, Buckinghamshire (c. 1730), where winding paths and open vistas lead to small classical temples in informal wooded glades. In describing the revolt from formality in garden design, Horace Walpole wrote that Kent saw that “all Nature was a garden.” The informal and irregular landscaping at these sites and others, such as Pope’s Villa, Twickenham, Middlesex (for Alexander Pope; c. 1730), and Richmond Gardens, Surrey, were a marked departure from the manicured, symmetrical precision of French gardens such as those at Versailles. The English style soon crossed the Channel and had a substantial impact in France during the second half of the 18th century.
landscape architecture
Kinkaku Temple, Kyōto, Japan
Landscape architecture, the development and decorative planting of gardens, yards, grounds, parks, and other planned green outdoor spaces. Landscape gardening is used to enhance nature and to create a natural setting for buildings, towns, and cities. It is one of the decorative arts and is allied to architecture, city planning, and horticulture.
A brief treatment of landscape architecture follows. For full treatment, see garden and landscape design.
Landscape architects begin with the natural terrain and enhance, re-create, or alter existing landforms. “Garden” generally connotes a smaller, more intensively cultivated area, frequently created around a domestic building or other small structure. “Landscape” denotes a larger area such as a park, urban area, campus, or roadside.
Trees, bushes, shrubs, hedges, flowers, grasses, water (lakes, streams, ponds, and cascades), and rocks are used to alter or create a pleasing natural setting. Such artificial devices as decks, terraces, plazas, pavement, fences, gazebos, and fountains are also used. The importance of man-made components relative to natural components varies according to the designer, the purpose of the particular site, and the prevailing culture and fashion.
Garden and landscape designs can vary conceptually between classical/symmetrical and natural/romantic, formality and informality, utility and pleasure, and private and public. An enclosed patio garden with tubs, baskets of plants, and paving contrasts with the large “natural” garden popular in 18th-century England, where man-made elements were less visible.
A garden or landscape’s aesthetic aspects include form, plants, colour, scent, size, climate, and function. Gardens need continual maintenance in order to keep weeds and other unwanted natural phenomena from asserting themselves. Gardens change with the seasons and climate and with their plants’ cycle of growth and decay.
Historically, gardens have been designed more for private than for public pleasure. The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans each evolved their own characteristic garden designs. Hadrian’s Villa, near Tivoli, Italy, contains a vast pleasure garden that had great influence on subsequent designs. The Italian Renaissance developed formal gardens in which the outdoor landscape was considered an extension of a building. The 16th-century Villa d’Este at Tivoli is a remarkable example.
In the 17th century André le Nôtre, influenced by the Italian Renaissance, created for Louis XIV of France gardens at Versailles in which symmetry, vistas, and grandiose fountains predominated. Such a design was much copied and perhaps matched human dominance over natural landscape. These classical gardens are beautiful but immaculate, formal, hard, elaborate, and logical, with straight lines, circles, trees, and hedges tamed into geometric shapes and with compartmentalized beds for flowers. They are extensions of contemporary architecture.
In 18th-century England the Earl of Burlington and the landscape gardeners William Kent, Lancelot “Capability” Brown, and Humphrey Repton brought about a change whereby a “natural” philosophy of garden design began to recommend the irregular and informal. Late in the century artificial ruins and grottoes were cultivated as picturesque accessories. Famous examples include the gardens at Rousham, Stowe, and Stourhead. In the 19th century in the United States the leading figure in garden and landscape design was Frederick Law Olmsted.
In the East a completely separate tradition of landscape gardening evolved, starting in China and spreading via Korea to Japan. The Oriental attitude to the garden was closely linked to religious traditions. The garden was designed to induce a certain state of mind and enhance a distinctive perception. Nature predominated over man-made symmetry. Rocks were especially important and in Japanese gardens were religious symbols. The scale tended to be smaller than in Western gardens, with emphasis on tiny details. Water, trees, and bridges were vital elements. The Japanese tea garden was supposed to induce a suitable mood in the person approaching a teahouse to participate in the tea ceremony. Oriental landscape gardening, particularly Japanese, has exerted considerable influence on modern Western designs.
Stowe estate, Buckinghamshire, England, United Kingdom
The Palladian Bridge, Stowe Landscape Gardens, Buckingham, Buckinghamshire, Eng.(more)
Stowe, former estate of the Temple family, the dukes of Buckingham (the title became extinct in 1889), in Buckinghamshire, England. The mansion was begun in 1697 and was remodeled in 1775. It is now the site of Stowe School. Among the architects, designers, and decorators who worked on the house were Sir John Vanbrugh, Robert Adam, Grinling Gibbons, and William Kent. The estate’s famous gardens date from the 18th century and include several classical temples designed by James Gibbs. The gardens were originally formal but were gradually transformed into a landscaped park.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
manor house
dwelling
Manor house, during the European Middle Ages, the dwelling of the lord of the manor or his residential bailiff and administrative centre of the feudal estate. The medieval manor was generally fortified in proportion to the degree of peaceful settlement of the country or region in which it was located. The manor house was the centre of secular village life, and its great hall was the scene of the manorial court and the place of assembly of the tenantry. The particular character of the manor house is most clearly represented in England and France, but under different names similar dwellings of feudal overlords existed in all countries wherein the manorial system developed.
In England in the 11th century the manor house was an informal group of related timber or stone buildings consisting of the hall, chapel, kitchen, and farm buildings contained within a defensive wall and ditch. In the 12th century the hall, which throughout the medieval period was the major element of domestic architecture, was placed defensively at first-floor level and contained within a moated enclosure. Later it was planned at ground level, as in Oakham Castle, Rutland, within a more strongly defended enclosure. By the 14th century the manor-house plan was clearly defined, with private living apartments and service rooms at opposite ends of the great hall and with battlements, gatehouse, and moat—as at Ightham Mote, Kent. Ockwells Manor in Berkshire is a typical timber-framed manor house built in the 15th century without defensive elements.
In France, until the end of the Hundred Years’ War in 1453, considerations of defense dominated manorial building. Such early manor houses as the 14th-century Camarsac Manor in Gironde consisted primarily of a rectangular fortified tower in a walled and moated enclosure. In Normandy the Ango Manor, near Dieppe, reveals some advance in domestic planning in the 15th century, the house standing at one end of a courtyard, flanked by farm buildings and defended by a gatehouse.
With increased prosperity and the desire for more commodious dwellings, the 16th-century manor house evolved into the Renaissance country house. In England more elaborate buildings were constructed, reflecting a new era of formality. The houses were frequently of regular quadrangular plan, with the hall diminished in size and importance. Later the hall was reduced to the status of an entrance, as at Ramsbury Manor, Wiltshire (c. 1680). The defended tower-house tradition persisted in France throughout the 16th century, generally retaining corner turrets and other defensive archaisms, as in the Tourelles Manor, near Troyes. In later years the title of manor house in England lost particular significance, having been adopted by large country mansions that had no manorial foundation.
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