BRICK BY BRICK
One man’s extraordinary mission to explain the origin of the world’s most famous buildings...
It was 26 years in the making, saw the author travel twice around the world, and has resulted in 6,000 words in seven enormous volumes of over 2,000 pages. Indeed, in these times of instant gratification, when so many people turn for information to the internet, the odds seemed heavily stacked against Dr Christopher Tadgell and his Renaissance-man mission to explain the origins and legacy of classical architecture.
But his incredible journeys – tracing the roots of architecture from Mesopotamia and Egypt, through ancient Greece and Rome to the wonders of India, Asia and the Middle East – have resulted in a unique insight into some of the world’s most famous buildings and why they were created.
Tadgell investigates the Renaissance and baroque movements, too, and concludes with outstanding examples of 20thcentury modernism. Each book outlines the artistic, political, religious or philosophical background that informed each style, together with nearly 2,000 colour photographs – nearly all taken by Tadgell during his extraordinary and self-funded travels.
After first seizing the opportunity to explore Europe’s architectural gems, plodding through the snow to see Bavarian churches and blundering through fog to visit French chateaux, he broadened his travels to visit the Taj Mahal, in Agra, India, and the stupas of Sri Lanka. On one occasion he walked up Mount Sinai
‘He went up Mount Sinai and found a man selling the Ten Commandments as souvenirs’
in Egypt to see St Catherine’s Monastery, where at the top he found a man selling the Ten Commandments as souvenirs.
In Cambodia he visited Angkor Wat almost before it was open to tourists and the jungle was full of terrorists.
Sydney-born Tadgell began designing houses when he was eight years old and moved to the UK in his 20s, in 1968. He applied to the Courtauld Institute in London to do a master’s degree in the history of European art but was rejected ‘because I was an Australian with no experience of the subject’. In an example of his later tenacity, he wrote back, arguing that ‘this places Australians in a circular situation because until someone from there goes to the Courtauld there will be no one in Australia who can pass on the knowledge you teach’.
Unexpectedly, the Courtauld reversed its decision and Tadgell received a letter of acceptance from the Institute’s director, Anthony Blunt (later infamous as one of the Cambridge Five spies).
‘I chose his course on 17th-century architecture because I was hooked on baroque architecture,’ Tadgell recalls, adding: ‘He was a very inspiring tutor.’
A major catalyst for his recently completed project was his job as senior lecturer in architectural history at the Canterbury School of Architecture from 1975 to 1998, where students urged him to distil his knowledge into books.
In 1990 he completed his well-received The History Of Architecture In India, and then the publishers suggested he undertake a comprehensive history of architecture.
You might think that after spending almost three decades creating these books, Tadgell would take a break.
You’d be wrong. He’s now set to publish a book on the final developments of building the Louvre and Versailles.
Architecture In Context by Christopher Tadgell (seven volumes) is published by Routledge, priced at €350 for the boxed set and €63 for a single volume