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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.
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.
Price: £39.99
Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd
Imprint: Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd
Publication Date:
18 January 2018
Trim Size: 9.25 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781848222502
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
“Kester Rattenbury […] takes what is usually seen as a footnote of Hardy’s life and puts it at the centre. Again, the privilege is that of looking into a great mind.” – Rowan Moore, The Observer's Best Books of 2018
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).
Part 1: VISION. 1: Not Much of an Architect; 2: A Kind of Education; 3: Ways of Seeing: the Early Novels; 4: Doubt and Experiment: 'Oddities and Failures'; 5: Unsafe Pictures: The Return of the Native; 6: Different Constructions: Built and Imagined Part 2: REALISATION. 7: The Invention of Wessex; 8: The Character of the Streets: The Mayor of Casterbridge; 9: A Little Influence: The Wessex Campaign; 10: Building Up: Max Gate Phase 1; 11: How That Book Rustles: The Woodlanders; 12: Wessex Copyright: Names and Maps; 13: Stepping Out: Authored and Anonymous Part 3: RECONSTRUCTION. 14: Time and Place; 15: Troublesome Land: Tess of the D'Urbervilles; 16: Obstructed Visions: Jude the Obscure; 17: Horizons Open: Poems and Photographs; 18: Building On: Max Gate Extended; 19: An Imaginary Story: The Conservation of Wessex; 20: A Partial Completion: Plays, Poetry, Performances