B.

At a time when architects are once again looking to the past for inspiration it is especially appropriate to re-examine a selection of the most influential publications which transmitted architectural ideas between the beginning of the eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century.

Commencing with the new taste for building in the style of the sixteenth century Italian architect, Andrea Palladio, which emerged in England in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the exhibition follows the changing phases of British architecture through the publications which both inspired and responded to changes in taste. The rise of Neo-Classicism and the emerging knowledge of Gothic architecture and its eventual triumph in the mid-nineteenth century are traced through contemporary publications. Many of the books to be exhibited are lavishly illustrated with engravings, etchings or lithographs, while one dating from the latter part of the nineteenth century, contains photographic prints.

Among the most significant works included in the exhibition are Colen Cambell's Vitruvius Britannius (1714), Palladio's Four Books on Architecture in an edition of 1721, Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens (1762), J. S. Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy (1822) and A. W. N. Pugin's A Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament (1844).

The majority of the books are on loan from the University of Canterbury Library, although a small number have been borrowed from other libraries and private collections. Most of the books exhibited were at one time owned and used by architects working in New Zealand and thus provide a valuable record of the kind of sources New Zealand architects have available to them during the nineteenth century and early decades of this century when an accurate knowledge of the historical styles was an essential part of every architect's training.

The exhibition is being curated by Dr Ian Lochhead, Senior Lecturer in Art History at the University of Canterbury.

('From Palladianism to the Gothic Revival: Two Centuries of British Architectural Books', Bulletin, No.52, July/August 1987, p.4)