The Architects Who Made London: Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren
Architect and broadcaster Maxwell Hutchinson engages experts in lively conversations about London and its architects, uncovering hidden gems of information and helping to understand the rich tapestry of the city.
Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait of Inigo Jones.
What were the influences and inspirations which created such a rich and diverse city as London? The Royal Academy of Arts Architecture Programme is exploring this question in a series of lectures called The Architects Who Made London with Maxwell Hutchinson. The series of 6 lectures looks at the career, personality and contribution to the capital’s architecture of a selection of leading architects from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, whose buildings contribute to the London we see today.
Inigo Jones: 34 min
Click here to download The Architects Who Made London: Inigo Jones (7.8 MB)
As Charles Hind, (H.J. Heinz Curator of the RIBA Drawings Collection) quite rightly pointed out Inigo Jones may not have been the most obvious choice with whom to begin. In London, there are only four surviving buildings by him, the Banqueting House, Whitehall, the Queen’s Chapel at St James’s Palace, the Queen’s House, Greenwich and the much altered, the exterior of St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden.
But through his presentation and in conversation with Maxwell it emerged that Jones left a legacy on London beyond his buildings. His creative idealism generated the climate and context for the rebuilding of the city after the Great Fire. He introduced London to Palladio and was thus responsible for bringing Renaissance Classicism to the English scene. His inventiveness laid the foundations for the London house we see today and his vision for Lord Bedford’s estate at Covent Garden, (although only St Paul’s follows the original design) introduced the Italian piazza to London and set a precedent for a new type of civic space. Jones classical legacy such as simple arched windows and round portholes can be seen in many Wren churches throughout the City.
Sir Christopher Wren: 32 min
Click here to download The Architects Who Made London: Christopher Wren (7.7 MB)
As Biographer Adrian Tinniswood described, Wren mapped the moon and tracked comets across the sky. He invented intravenous injection and performed pioneering anatomical dissections. Then, when he was already famous throughout Europe as a mathematician, an astronomer, an academic and an experimental scientist, he began to dabble in architecture. And London was changed for ever. Even today, more than 280 years after Wren's death, his buildings define the capital. The keen, intellectual beauty of the City Churches, from St Bride Fleet Street and St Mary-le-Bow to St Stephen Walbrook and St Magnus Martyr, still have the power to delight and astonish. The grandeur of the Royal Hospital Chelsea (obviously built by a gentleman, said Thomas Carlyle) and the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich show Wren as magisterial public architect and arbiter of the nation's taste for nearly half a century. And St Paul's Cathedral still rises high above London, towering defiantly over the vagaries and vandalisms of fashion, the English Baroque at its very best.
