{"id":771113,"date":"2025-01-23T09:35:56","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T09:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/?p=771113"},"modified":"2025-01-23T09:56:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T09:56:06","slug":"pattern-books-then-and-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.architectsjournal.co.uk\/news\/pattern-books-then-and-now","title":{"rendered":"What has history taught us about pattern books?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pattern books might seem a relatively modern phenomenon, yet they figure persistently throughout the history of Western architecture. From the earliest days of the Renaissance, printed catalogues and treatises enabled architects to disseminate their designs to a wide audience, from patrons to builders.<\/p>\n

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More on this topic<\/p>

Could an Aussie pattern book experiment help solve the UK\u2019s housing crisis?<\/a><\/h4><\/div><\/div>\n

The development of print marked a decisive shift to a form of architectural representation that was visual, rather than oral. Architects could at last make use of images that faithfully reproduced and communicated the appearance of original archetypes. Illustrated architectural books became coveted items, elaborating on Classical theories, mathematical formulae and other technological advancements.<\/p>\n

They tended to be expensive, however, often devoted to individual architects. Pattern books, by contrast, were more pragmatic and quotidian. As catalogues of building types and designs, they helped to propagate certain architectural styles and motifs. Well-suited to the essentially imitative nature of Renaissance architecture, based on copying models from antiquity, printed pattern books radically changed how architectural knowledge was acquired. No longer did architects have to visit and observe their original sources in person. The new availability of trustworthy, portable and inexpensive printed images of architecture greatly facilitated the task of Renaissance architects, for whom imitation was seen as a creative act.<\/p>\n

Printed architectural drawings were regarded as transmitters of knowledge, a neutral medium through which ideas could be lucidly conveyed. Images of buildings accompanied by text could be integrated into a \u2018bibliospace\u2019: a typographic space that bore no relation to the location of the viewer or their distance from the object of their scrutiny.<\/p>\n

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Design for a Georgian townhouse: section and cellar plan by William Halfpenny, (1750)<\/p>\n\t

Source: RIBA Pictures<\/p><\/div>\n

Yet, while the format of text and images was easy to access and consult, it also contrived to delocalise architecture from its surroundings. For many Renaissance architects, the Pantheon and the Colosseum were not places in Rome; they were places in books.<\/p>\n

Print technology chimed with and became indispensable to the emergent culture and philosophy of humanism. The practical characteristics of the printed format ultimately shaped a new architectural theory based on the familiar orders of Renaissance architecture, the building blocks and signifiers of a new tectonic language reinterpreted from antiquity.<\/p>\n

Repertoires of standardised components could be selected, combined and constructed according to a set of rules to create \u2018architecture\u2019. Crucially, there should be no difference between an image printed in a book, its copy in an architectural design, and the three-dimensional form of the resulting structure. Intended to be directly and meticulously reproduced from the printed page, this was architectural composition as model of pr\u00eat-\u00e0-porter economy and efficiency. What you saw was what you got.<\/p>\n

Early pattern books were aimed at the nobility or landowners, who would act as clients and developers. During the 18th and 19th centuries, as their use and appeal grew, thousands of pattern books were in circulation, employed by architects, builders and craftspeople. Set patterns outlined templates for houses, villas, cottages and other building types, which could be easily followed and recreated.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether folio-sized to impress would-be patrons, or conveniently pocket-press for working builders, pattern books became a fundamental part of the architect\u2019s modus operandi. A typical example was The Modern Builder\u2019s Assistant<\/i>, published in 1757, featuring designs for town houses, country villas and even dovecotes. It promised \u2018A concise epitome of the whole system of architecture in which the various branches of that excellent study are establish\u2019d on the most familiar principles and rendered adequate to every capacity.\u2019<\/p>\n

The high watermark of pattern books coincided with the Georgian era, a period of rampant development in Britain and overseas, impelled by the social and technological thrust of the Industrial Revolution. Yet, while the familiar townscape of Georgian terraces, which has shaped the character of cities from Liverpool to London, is valorised by advocates of \u2018traditional\u2019 architecture for its human scale and homogeneity, in reality, the Georgians were rapacious and often crude speculative builders. The pattern book paradox is that, for all their instructional qualities, they became a convenient means of facilitating speculative development.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As cities expanded, the demand for buildings, especially housing, grew. In Britain and Ireland, the leasehold development system also played a key role, as small land parcels were laid out in repetitive patterns, often by estate surveyors, and then leased to different builders. These \u2018masterplans\u2019 created a kind of template with approved housing types on which builders could base their designs.<\/p>\n

Rapid urbanisation in the Georgian and Victorian eras gave rise to a range of terraced, detached and semi-detached houses with similarities and repetition in their layout and planning. By sticking to a limited array of forms and materials, and relying on tried-and-tested construction techniques effected by cheap labour, large swathes of housing could be constructed quickly and economically. Buildings were conceived as industrial products, refined through repeated serial construction and codified in pattern books, which, like their Renaissance forebears, effectively delocalised architecture from its setting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Regency Georgian terraced town houses, London<\/p>\n\t

Source: Shutterstock<\/p><\/div>\n

Today, the pattern book\u2019s \u2018bibliospace\u2019 is digital and delocalised more than ever, as countless images of architecture churn around the internet, to be consumed, shared and copied. Pattern book principles find further parallel in the digital realm through technologies such as BIM and in open-source design platforms, where building templates can be customised and adapted.<\/p>\n

In the current era, modern pattern books have come to be associated with volume house builders churning out depressingly formulaic designs. However, it\u2019s unlikely that today\u2019s spec-build estates will have the same physical longevity, nor arouse the sentiment that still attends Georgian and Victorian terraces, which have proved astonishingly tenacious and capable of being adapted over time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Most new housing stock is characterised by banal designs, flimsy construction and chiselling proportions. Rabbit-hutch Britain has some of the smallest domestic space standards in Europe, with new homes averaging 76m2<\/sup>, compared with Denmark\u2019s 137m2<\/sup>. Peter Barber, whose work has reframed ideas about housing archetypes, points out that at least 70 per cent of any city is made up of dwellings, so there is an imperative to look at how \u2018ordinary\u2019 housing can be rethought and made better.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this, the concept of pattern books might play some part. Pre-approved design templates and development frameworks could help speed up planning permission for new housing and support planned increases in urban densities. Pattern book templates could establish an overall building form and type, while still allowing for some stylistic variety.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One relatively recent example of what might be possible is Borneo-Sporenburg in Amsterdam, built between 1993 and 2000 to a masterplan by West 8. Within a framework of a set terraced house typology and massing, this achieved high densities (100 dwellings per hectare) unified by scale and materials. Within the streetscape, a kind of modern English Georgian transplanted to a Dutch dockside, subtle themes and variations coalesce within a wider whole. Now over 20 years old, it has evolved to become a congenial and coherent piece of city.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Housing at Borneo-Sporenburg, Amsterdam<\/p>\n\t

Source: Graham Bizley<\/p><\/div>\n

As interest in pattern books gains momentum, it should be remembered that their effectiveness is contingent on what they are programmed to specify. So consideration of factors such as space standards, materials and environmental control will be crucial if they are to lead to improved architectural and social outcomes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Catherine Slessor is a writer and critic and president of The Twentieth Century Society<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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