The Birth of Modern London: The Development and Design of the City 1660-1720 (Studies in Design and Material Culture) [Hardcover]

Elizabeth McKellar (Author)

Book Description

Series: Studies in Design and Material Culture | Publication Date: October 1999

The period 1660-1720 saw the foundation of modern London. The city was transformed post-Fire from a tight warren of medieval timber-framed buildings into a vastly expanded, regularized landscape of brick houses laid out in squares and spacious streets. This work examines the building boom and the speculative developers who created that landscape. It offers fresh information on their working practices, the role of craftsmen and the design thinking which led to the creation of a new prototype for English housing. The book concentrates on the mass-produced houses of "the middling sort" which saw the adoption of classicism on a large scale in England for the first time. McKellar shows, however, that the "new city" maintained a surprising degree of community with existing patterns of urban use and traditional architecture. The book presents the late 17th and the early 18th century as a distinct phase in London's architectural development and offers a reinterpretation of the adoption of Renaissance styles and ideas at the level of the everyday, challenging conventional interpretations of their use and reception in England.

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About the Author

Elizabeth McKellar is Lecturer in Art History at the Centre for Extra-Mural Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Manchester Univ Pr (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0719040752
• ISBN-13: 978-0719040757
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,794,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)