Between traditions : the villa and the country house

Sir Leslie Martin wrote in 1983, “The formal composition used by Lutyens is something totally related to the problems and culture of his time”. to reinforce this point Martin included a plan of Heathcote (1905) next to an illustration of one of Palladio’s final commissions, the Villa Rotonda (1566). Comparing the planning and symmetry strategies of the two architects, Martin was able to demonstrate how Heathcote embodied an eclectic yet fundamental link between two traditions - the irregularity of an Edwardian planning arrangement, and its containment within the symmetry demanded by the “full classical orchestra of a Doric order” (Hussey, 1950 p128). “Once inside the balanced mass of the exterior, the visitor’s movement through the building is controlled by volumes and composition of a totally different kind” 1. While Palladio appears to have been a significant influence on Lutyens, as revealed in the often quoted letter about the “High Game” which he wrote to Herbert Baker in 1903, few studies appear to explore the extent to which his newfound inspiration went beyond the issue of fenestration in affecting other aspects of his work. The following paper analyses Lutyens’s relationship to Palladio with particular reference to three concepts fundamental to the work of
both architects: proportion, plan arrangement and movement.

Towering over all : the Italianate villa in the colonial landscape

The Picturesque aesthetic emerged in the later 18th century, uniting the Sublime and the Beautiful and had its roots in the paintings of Claude Lorrain. In Britain, and in Australia, it came to link art, literature and landscape with architecture. The Picturesque aesthetic informed much of colonial culture which was achieved, in part, through the production and dissemination of architectural pattern books catering for the aspirations of the rising middle classes. This was against a background of political change including democratic reform. The Italianate villa, codified and promoted in such pattern books, was a particularly successful synthesis of style, form and function. The first Italianate villa in England, Cronkhill (1803) by John Nash contains all the ingredients which were essential to the model and had a deeper meaning. Deepdene (from 1807) by Thomas Hope gave the model further impetus. The works of Charles Barry and others in a second generation confirmed the model's acceptability. In Britain, its public status peaked with Osborne House (from 1845), Queen Victoria's Italianate villa on the Isle of Wight, Robert Kerr used a vignette of Osborne House on the title page of his sophisticated and influential pattern book, The Gentleman's House (1864,1871). It was one of many books, including those of J.C, Loudon and AJ. Downing, current in colonial Victoria. The latter authors and horticulturists were themselves villa dwellers with libraries and orchards, two criteria for the true villa lifestyle. Situation and a sense of retreat were the two further criteria for the villa lifestyle. As the new colony of Victoria blossomed between 1851 and 1891, the Italianate villa, its garden setting and its landscape siting captured the tenor of the times. Melbourne, the capital was a rich manufacturing metropolis with a productive hinterland and international markets. The people enjoyed a prosperity and lifestyle which they wished to display. Those who had a position in society were keen to demonstrate and protect it. Those with aspirations attempted to provide the evidence necessary for such acceptance, The model matured and became ubiquitous. Its evolution can be traced through a series of increasingly complicated rural and suburban examples, a process which modernist historians have dismissed as a decadent decline. These villas, in fact, demonstrate an increasingly sophisticated retreat by merchants from ‘the Town’ and by graziers from ‘the Country’. In both town and country, the towers of villas mark territory newly acquired. The same claim was often made in humbler situations. Government House, Melbourne (from 1871), a splendid Italianate villa and arguably finer than Osborne House, was set in a cultivated landscape and towered above all It incorporated the four criteria and, in addition, claimed its domain, focused authority and established the colony's social status. It symbolised ancient notions of democracy and idealism but with a modem appreciation for the informal and domestic. Government House in Melbourne is the epitome of the Italianate villa in the colonial landscape and is the climax of the Picturesque aesthetic in Victoria.