Charles Barry and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin | Houses of Parliament London, England, designed 18

Charles Barry and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin | Houses of Parliament London, England, designed 1835As19th-century scholars gathered the documentary materials ofEuropean history in encyclopedic enterprises, each nation came tovalue its past as evidence of the validity of its ambitions andclaims to greatness. Intellectuals appreciated the art of the remotepast as a product of cultural and national genius. A reawakening ofinterest in Gothic architecture also surfaced at this time, even inFrance under Napoleon. The Houses of Parliament have an exterior veneer and towers that recall English Late Gothic style.In London, when theold Houses of Parliament burned in 1834, the Parliamentary Commissiondecreed that designs for the new building be either Gothic orElizabethan. Charles Barry (1795–1860), with the assistance ofAugustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852), submittedthe winning design in 1835. By this time, architectural style hadbecome a matter of selection from the historical past. Barry hadtraveled widely in Europe, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Palestine,studying the architecture of each place. He preferred the classicalRenaissance styles, but he had designed some earlier Neo-Gothicbuildings, and Pugin successfully influenced him in the direction ofEnglish Late Gothic. Pugin was one of a group of English artists andcritics who saw moral purity and spiritual authenticity in thereligious architecture of the Middle Ages and revered the carefulmedieval artisans who built the great cathedrals.Thedesign of the Houses of Parliament, however, is not genuinelyGothic, despite its picturesque tower groupings (the Clock Tower,housing Big Ben, at one end, and the Victoria Tower at the other).The building has a formal axial plan and a kind of Palladianregularity beneath its Neo-Gothic detail. Pugin himself said of it,“All Grecian, Sir. Tudor [English Late Gothic] details on aclassical body.” (x) -- source link

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