Realism in Nineteenth-Century British Architecture

Functionalism in nineteenth-century Britain took a specific form: realism. This was an approach to design which emphasized the real, physical, nature of building materials and the practical function of a designed object from its smallest details to its overall form. Born from an early nineteenth-century interest in the practical aspects of horticulture and architecture pioneered by John Claudius Loudon, and in the newly scientific approach to architectural history of John Britton, realism took off from 1836 with the ascent of the architect and designer A. W. N. Pugin. Pugin's texts, especially The True Principles of 1841, presented a theory of a rational, comprehensive architecture derived from an intimate knowledge of medieval buildings. This strongly appealed to architects who were facing new professional challenges and were frustrated by low building standards. Architects directly inspired by Pugin, including George Gilbert Scott, George Edmund Street, and William Butterfield, established the revived Gothic style and created an unprecedented international reputation for British architecture. A younger generation, from the 1880s onward, revived Puginian ideas especially in their rich designs for houses and interiors, but realism was eventually defeated by its own obsessiveness and detachment from the motives that had inspired it.