Contrasts by A W N Pugin with an introduction by H R Hitchcock

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Previous owner has signed inside page. Dust jacket has wear to edges and spine. Marks on back cover. Interior and binding are still very good.

Foundational polemical text of the 19th-century Gothic Revival movement in architecture. Pugin argues that a society's moral health dictates the quality of its architecture, using visual satire to contrast the supposed beauty of the medieval Catholic era with the degradation of industrial, 19th-century Britain. The text established the principle of architectural truth, promoting the idea that a building's design must honestly reflect its purpose and internal structure.

This edition is a facsimile reproduction of Pugin's seminal work, including an introduction by the eminent American architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock. Includes architectural plates of famous landscape and civic and social structures, ecclesiastical and religious comparisons of monuments, etc.

The archaeological study of the Gothic of the Middle Ages by English scholars over the preceding 20 years provided the background for Pugin's familiarity with and enthusiasm for the noble edifices of the medieval, Catholic past which he believed his contemporaries should emulate.