Architecture and Society in an Age of Reform

该网络旨在汇集来自不同学科（包括建筑史、历史、文学和音乐）的国际学者，他们对启蒙、改革和激进主义文化感兴趣，讨论在1800年左右的几十年里，建筑的实践、理论和经验对现代性和城市经验的争论做出了复杂的贡献。它将通过托马斯·里克曼（1776-1841）的生活镜头来做到这一点，这为讨论涉及的许多问题提供了一个跳板。他具有国际影响力的作品《An Attempt to discrimination the Styles of Architecture》（1817年，利物浦）是第一本建筑“畅销书”，通过这本书，受过教育的公众被教导如何识别和讨论建筑风格。通过对建筑的研究和写作，里克曼将自己的身份从沮丧的破产流亡者转变为成功的专业建筑师。里克曼与改革派密切相关，他的建筑研究是通过从自然科学中学习的分类方法来进行的，他是新建筑方法的先驱，但作为一名成功的实践者，他为广泛的客户工作，从富有的实业家到英国圣公会教区，市政公司和剑桥大学。他的职业生涯——以及相关的建筑和档案——为这个项目提供了一条连接线，这是一个解决更广泛的研究问题的起点，并通过巡回展览、网站和相关的研讨会以及专门介绍他的生活和工作的徒步旅行来吸引公众。今天关于新旧建筑对社会福祉的贡献的许多辩论在18世纪和19世纪早期的话语中都有对应的内容，并置两者将为现代规划和遗产政策的讨论提供历史维度。通过在利物浦和伦敦举行的网络研讨会，以及在利物浦、布里斯托尔和伯明翰实地考察建筑的研究研讨会，该网络将讨论，除了作为最负盛名的公共展示场所的现有角色之外，建筑如何成为社会实验场所，体现了医学、刑事和教育理论的决定性转变，通过新建筑形式的影响进行测试。这些辩论交织在虚拟的建筑和书籍中，但公共领域也有一个空间维度：新的图书馆、新闻室和演讲厅，这些辩论在其中进行，通过公共和私人投资（实际的和预期的）对城镇进行改造，通过这些投资，人们想象和体验了现代性。这包括改变赞助、资金和建筑的模式，促进建筑师的专业化和总承包的出现。该网络旨在通过印刷文化的变化以及战争、资本化、工业化和城市化造成的当代经济和社会变化，构建与公共领域转型相关的建筑公共话语。通过印刷和旅行，这种论述具有全球范围，该网络将发展国际联系，以便能够采取全球比较的办法。我们的目标是为正在进行的合作和未来的国际比较研究建立能力。

This Network aims to bring together an international group of scholars from different disciplines (including architectural history, history, literature and music) with an interest in the cultures of Enlightenment, reform and radicalism to discuss the complex of ways in which the practice, theory and experience of architecture contributed to debates about modernity and urban experience in the decades around 1800. It will do so through lens of the life of Thomas Rickman (1776-1841), which provides a springboard for discussing many of the issues involved. His internationally influential work, 'An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of Architecture' (Liverpool, 1817) was the first architectural 'best seller', through which the educated public were taught how to identify and discuss architectural styles. Through studying and writing about architecture, Rickman transformed his identity from depressed bankrupt exile to successful professional architect. Rickman was closely associated with reformist circles, his architectural research was informed by methods of classification learned from the natural sciences and he was a pioneer of new methods of construction, but as a successful practitioner he worked for a wide range of clients, from wealthy industrialists, to Anglican parishes, municipal corporations and Cambridge colleges. His career - and the associated buildings and archive - provides a connecting thread across this project, a springing point for addressing broader research questions and engaging the general public through a touring exhibition, website and associated workshops and walking tours devoted to his life and work. Many of today's debates about the contribution of buildings, both new and old, to societal wellbeing have their counterparts in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century discourse and juxtaposing the two will contribute a historical dimension to discussion of modern planning and heritage policies. Through networking symposia in Liverpool and London, and research workshops with site visits to buildings in Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham, the Network will address how, in addition to its existing role as the most prestigious public site of display, architecture became a site of social experiment, embodying decisive shifts in medical, penal and educational theory, to be tested through the impact of new building forms. These debates intertwined buildings and books in a virtual sphere but the public sphere also had a spatial dimension: the new libraries, news rooms and lecture theatres in which such debates were encountered and performed and the transformation of towns through public and private investment (actual and anticipated) through which modernity was imagined and experienced. These involved changing patterns of patronage, funding and building, contributing to the professionalisation of the architect and the emergence of general contracting. The Network aims to frame public discourse about architecture in relation to the transformation of the public sphere, both through changes in print culture and contemporary economic and social changes wrought by war, capitalisation, industrialisation and urbanisation. Through print and travel, this discourse had a global dimension and the Network will develop international connections in order to enable a globally comparative approach. Our objective is to build capacity for ongoing collaboration and future international comparative research.