Thomas Hardy is one of England's greatest novelists and poets, whose part-real, part-imaginary realm of Wessex has taken on a life of its own. But his first career in architecture has been seen as perverse or contradictory. The assumption has been: he changed career because he wasn't much of an architect.
This book is the first to study Hardy from an architectural perspective, and it offers startling insights into a man who never stopped thinking, writing and working as an architect. It reveals a biting commentator on the architectural debates of his day; the most influential conservation writer there has ever been; and his experiments in architectural representation - which would still be radical a century later. Linking writing, maps, images, polemic and buildings, Wessex appears as a remarkable, entirely architectural project that shapes the way we see, imagine and build England to this day.
Kester Rattenbury is Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster and as an architectural writer contributes to numerous national and international magazines and newspapers. In 2003, she set up EXP research group at Westminster, with acclaimed projects including the Archigram Archival Project and Supercrit series. Her publications include This Is Not Architecture (2002) Architects Today (2006, with Robert Bevan and Kieran Long), and the Supercrit Books series (2007-, with Samantha Hardingham).
Title: The Wessex Project: Thomas Hardy, Architect
Author: Kester Rattenbury
ISBN: 9781848222502
Binding:
Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd
Publication Date: 2018-01-18
Number of Pages: 256
Weight: 0.5402 kg
This is a marvellous book, recommended to anyone interested in architecture or conservation, and it will make readers eager to take another, more informed, look at Hardy's novels. - Peter Parker, A Magazine for RIBA Friends of Architecture
This is a thought-provoking and elegantly written book of value to all students of architecture, conservation and nineteenth - and early twentieth-century visual culture. - Jeremy Musson,
The Victorian A must read for anyone with an interest in Hardy.
- Tony Fincham,
The Thomas Hardy Journal Handsomely designed and generously illustrated, it also has the merit of being a visual pleasure to read, a bonus not always to be found in these days of increasingly meagre book-production values. - Keith Wilson,
English Literature in Transition: 1880-1920