When people think of great architects, they imagine someone who spent his youth sketching buildings, studying cathedrals, and dreaming about monuments.
London's parish churches are so underrated! Central London has some great medieval survivors (St Barts the Great) and revivals (St James the Less), but there's dozens at the City End that were designed by Wren and his disciples after the Great Fire. My favourite is St Brides, whose steeple is thought to have inspired the wedding cake. St Paul's Cathedral is best appreciated as the supreme achievement of that era of church building.
Interesting how Classical architects approached architecture as a science. Newtonian physics was only just being developed, so they couldn't calculate the load on each pillar and arch. So they relied on a living tradition that had long produced buildings with pleasing proportions and the useful ability to stay up.
Fascinating article
London's parish churches are so underrated! Central London has some great medieval survivors (St Barts the Great) and revivals (St James the Less), but there's dozens at the City End that were designed by Wren and his disciples after the Great Fire. My favourite is St Brides, whose steeple is thought to have inspired the wedding cake. St Paul's Cathedral is best appreciated as the supreme achievement of that era of church building.
Interesting how Classical architects approached architecture as a science. Newtonian physics was only just being developed, so they couldn't calculate the load on each pillar and arch. So they relied on a living tradition that had long produced buildings with pleasing proportions and the useful ability to stay up.
If there were an epitaph Hall of Fame, Wren's would be in it. Not many people can say they rebuilt a city.
And the baker that started the fire did it because it was 1666 and he was a religious fanatic. Go figure.