The Routledge Handbook on the Reception of Classical Architecture

This is the first comprehensive study of the reception of classical architecture in different regions of the world. Exploring the impact of colonialism, trade, slavery, religious missions, political ideology and intellectual/artistic exchange, the authors demonstrate how classical principles and ideas were disseminated and received across the globe. By addressing a number of contentious or unresolved issues highlighted in some historical surveys of architecture, the chapters presented in this volume question long-held assumptions about the notion of a universally accepted ‘classical tradition’ and its broadly Euro-centric perspective.

Featuring thirty-two chapters written by international scholars from China, Europe, Turkey, North America, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, the book is divided into four sections: 1) Transmission and re-conceptualisation of classical architecture; 2) Classical influence through colonialism, political ideology and religious conversion; 3) Historiographical surveys of geographical regions; and 4) Visual and textual discourses. This fourfold arrangement of chapters provides a coherent structure to accommodate different perspectives of classical reception across the world, and their geographical, ethnographic, ideological, symbolic, social and cultural contexts. Essays cover a wide geography and include studies in Italy, France, England, Scotland, the Nordic countries, Greece, Austria, Portugal, Romania, Germany, Poland, India, Singapore, China, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. Other essays in the volume focus on thematic issues or topics pertaining to classical architecture, such as ornament, spolia, humanism, nature, moderation, decorum, heresy and taste.

An essential reference guide, The Routledge Handbook on the Reception of Classical Architecture makes a major contribution to the study of architectural history in a new global context.

Nicholas Temple is an architect, Professor of Architecture and Director of the Centre for Urban Design, Architecture and Sustainability (CUDAS) at the University of Huddersfield, UK. A graduate of Cambridge University, he previously served as head of the School of Architecture at the University of Lincoln and was an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Temple was a Rome Scholar in Architecture at the British School at Rome, a Paul Mellon Rome Fellow and Bogliasco Fellow and has collaborated on research projects on the history and theory of architecture and urbanism in Europe and China. His most recent research is a British Academy-funded project with Professor Cecilia Panti on Lorenzo Ghiberti's 3rd Commentary. He was shortlisted for the International CICA Bruno Zevi Book Award in 2014 for his book Renovatio Urbis: Architecture, Urbanism and Ceremony in the Rome of Julius II (Routledge, 2011), and is chief editor of the Routledge Research in Architectural History series and co-editor of the Journal of Architecture.

Andrzej Piotrowski, an architect educated in Poland and Professor of Architecture at the University of Minnesota, USA, combines in his scholarship theory and history of architecture. His Jeffrey Cook Award-winning research focuses on the epistemology of design. Covering global issues of architecture, religion, politics and culture, his findings have been presented in many architectural and cross-disciplinary conferences. He is the author of Architecture of Thought (2011) and co-editor with J. Williams Robinson of The Discipline of Architecture (2001). Currently, he serves as an associate editor of the Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review and is working on a book entitled A Heretical History of Architecture.

Juan Manuel Heredia is Associate Professor of Architecture at Portland State University, USA, having completed a PhD and Master of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a Diploma of Philosophy from Universidad Iberoamericana/Mexico City. Heredia studied and practised architecture in Mexico before moving to the USA in 1999 to pursue graduate studies. His research focuses on architectural theory and history, especially of the twentieth century. His work has been published in Arquine and Bitacora (Mexico), On-Site Review (Canada) and Arkitekten (Denmark). In 2009 he co-organised the Second International Architecture and Phenomenology Conference held in Kyoto, Japan. His current writing focuses on twentieth-century architecture in Mexico and Latin America. He is the author of the forthcoming book The First Modern Building in Mexico (2020).