#books #architecture | Herbert Rowse

Herbert Rowse / Iain Jackson, Simon Pepper and Peter Richmond.
Swindon : Historic England, 2019.
XIV, 149 p. : il.
Serie: Twentieth Century Architects.
ISBN 9781848025493
/ EN / Libros / Herbert James Rowse / Arquitectura – Siglo XX – Inglaterra / Liverpool
ehuBiblioteka BCG A-72ROWSE HER
https://ehu.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1126770753

Herbert James Rowse (1887–1963) was an extraordinary architect who shaped the city of Liverpool with his array of exquisite buildings, plans, and infrastructure. Practicing in an eclectic manner that was influenced by American Beaux Arts and later using simpler geometries of monumental bare brick, his large body of work reveals a modernity that was concerned with luxurious materials, restrained but contemporary decoration and sculpture, and bold forms often with a sense of theatre and performance. His work has endured passing trends and fashions, retaining a seductive appeal and resonance with visitors and occupants alike, despite its often monumental massing and extraordinary scale.

This book aims to discern not only the architectural merits and advances of his work, but also their wider significance. Through Rowse’s work we gain a glimpse into some of the broader agendas of the time and place, not least through the corporate and banking commissions that accompanied the large docks and shipping firms in Liverpool, where Rowse produced some of his most distinctive work. In addition to these commercial ventures Rowse contributed to the post-war housing debates through his proposals that looked to rows of cottages set around village greens, rather than high-rise living.

#books #landscaping | The English landscape garden : a survey

The English landscape garden : a survey / Michael Symes.
Swindon : Historic England, 2019.
viii, 96 p. : il.
ISBN 9781848023772
/ EN / Libros / Jardines – Arquitectura / Jardines – Gran Bretaña
ehuBiblioteka BCG A-712.3 ENG
https://ehu.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1122551384

The 18th-century phenomenon of the English Landscape Garden was so widespread that even today, when so much has been built over or otherwise changed, one is never far from an example throughout England. Although seemingly natural, the English Landscape Garden was generally the result of considerable contrivance, effort and design skill, the result of `the art that conceals art'. It might involve digging lakes, raising or levelling hills, and planting trees, sometimes in vast numbers. Nature was arranged and shown to best advantage. The English landscape garden took many forms, and the variety of manifestations was and remains remarkable. A great number survive, if sometimes in modified form, and can be visited and appreciated.

The book is structured so as to give the background to, and motivation for, creating the landscape garden; to summarise the chronology of its development; to chart the most significant writers and theorists; and to consider the range of the many forms it took. The story of the landscape garden is complex, multi-layered and constantly changing in emphasis for such an apparently simple and straightforward construct. This book will help to uncover some of the richness that lies behind a meaningful part of the environment. The book can be regarded as a companion to the volume already published by Historic England, ‘The English Landscape Garden in Europe’.