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‘The Professor’s Dream’: Cockerell’s Hypnerotomachia Architectura?

‘The Professor’s Dream’: Cockerell’s Hypnerotomachia Architectura? In 1849, after teaching architectural history at the Royal Academy in London for just under a decade, the architect Charles Robert Cockerell (1788-1863) exhibited ‘The Professor’s Dream’, a graphic synopsis of the history of architecture (Fig. 1). Produced in an era dominated by historicism, the drawing operates between the two poles of historical relativism, negotiating the line between accumulation and rationalization. Some nineteenth-century architects, indiscriminately collecting, understood each style to have emerged from the particular conditions of their times, considering them distinct and yet equally valid. Other architects, critically ordering, privileged one style over another, variously justifying themselves on religious, technical, moral or structural imperatives. Cockerell’s ‘Dream’ is ambiguously positioned as a place of showing and a means of knowing, speaking both of an homage to the past and a vision of progress, apparently flattening a thousand years of history but inherently offering the depth of historical experience. David Watkin, Peter Kohane and, more recently, in the context of an exhibition at the Royal Academy, Nick Savage, have interrogated the drawing, the first two paralleling it with Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), the latter framing it within a tradition of systematic charting of history, and suggesting a possible link to geological charts. While all these interpretations certainly stand, it is essential to recast them within a larger discussion of Cockerell’s understanding of history. Substantiating the different readings of the drawing — against Cockerell’s earlier drawings and surveys, within his architectural theory as expounded in his Royal Academy lectures, and in the larger perspective of the interests he cultivated since the 1820s — this essay brings to the fore the tension between ordering and experiencing, revealing how the architect was interested in the latent interstices between history and time. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Architectural History Cambridge University Press

‘The Professor’s Dream’: Cockerell’s Hypnerotomachia Architectura?

Architectural History , Volume 52: 29 – Apr 11, 2016
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Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2009
ISSN
2059-5670
eISSN
0066-622X
DOI
10.1017/S0066622X00004160
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In 1849, after teaching architectural history at the Royal Academy in London for just under a decade, the architect Charles Robert Cockerell (1788-1863) exhibited ‘The Professor’s Dream’, a graphic synopsis of the history of architecture (Fig. 1). Produced in an era dominated by historicism, the drawing operates between the two poles of historical relativism, negotiating the line between accumulation and rationalization. Some nineteenth-century architects, indiscriminately collecting, understood each style to have emerged from the particular conditions of their times, considering them distinct and yet equally valid. Other architects, critically ordering, privileged one style over another, variously justifying themselves on religious, technical, moral or structural imperatives. Cockerell’s ‘Dream’ is ambiguously positioned as a place of showing and a means of knowing, speaking both of an homage to the past and a vision of progress, apparently flattening a thousand years of history but inherently offering the depth of historical experience. David Watkin, Peter Kohane and, more recently, in the context of an exhibition at the Royal Academy, Nick Savage, have interrogated the drawing, the first two paralleling it with Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499), the latter framing it within a tradition of systematic charting of history, and suggesting a possible link to geological charts. While all these interpretations certainly stand, it is essential to recast them within a larger discussion of Cockerell’s understanding of history. Substantiating the different readings of the drawing — against Cockerell’s earlier drawings and surveys, within his architectural theory as expounded in his Royal Academy lectures, and in the larger perspective of the interests he cultivated since the 1820s — this essay brings to the fore the tension between ordering and experiencing, revealing how the architect was interested in the latent interstices between history and time.

Journal

Architectural History – Cambridge University Press

Published: Apr 11, 2016

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