Why Palladio is the world's favourite 16th-century architect

From national parliaments to the countryside piles of dodgy tycoons, the stately architectural language of colonnaded porticoes and swag-laden pediments, ubiquitous around the world, can be traced back to one man: the 16th-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio.

His unparalleled influence on the built environment over the past 400 years has been put under the spotlight in a compelling exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects, which charts his immutable presence across cultures and continents.

The proliferation of Palladianism can be traced back to two books, which both celebrate their 300th anniversary this year: Giacomo Leoni’s English translation of Palladio’s I quattro libri dell’architettura (The Four Books of Architecture, first published in 1570), and Colen Campbell’s 1715 survey of English architecture, Vitruvius Britannicus.

“They paved the way for a flood of pattern books,” says curator Charles Hind, “a deluge that diluted Palladio’s ideas somewhat, but that made it universal. His ideas of proportion and symmetry trickled down into the fundamental DNA of the building trade.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

The seminal villas Palladio built around his native Vicenza in the 1500s (synthesised from his own reading of Roman temples) may not have been seen by many architects of the day first-hand, but they were the basis of a style that would dominate for centuries – all due to these books.

Among the many drawings and models on show, one particularly revealing document is the subscriber list from the second edition of the Four Books, hastily printed in 1721 due to hot demand. While the first edition attracted such architectural worthies as Wren, Vanbrugh, Hawksmoor and Gibbs, as well as distinguished earls and lords, the buyers for the second edition shows how far Palladio fever had spread down the ranks. It includes masons, carpenters, joiners, plasterers and bricklayers, all eager to pick up on the latest trend and get the Palladian know-how.

They were helped by pocket-sized books with titles like Batty Langley’s Builder’s Jewel, “Explaining Short and Easy Rules, Made familiar to the meanest Capacity for Drawing and Working” – the dummies’ guide to Palladianism. The style, with its allusions of classical gravitas, spread like wildfire. Centuries before internet memes transported architectural trends around the globe, a plate published in 1740 was simultaneously being used as the template for a staircase in a country house in Devon, and by George Washington to extend his house in Mount Vernon.

Meanwhile, Colen Campbell’s design for Wanstead House in Essex, published in Vitrivius Britannicus, found itself duplicated in two very different political statements: Stormont parliament, expressing Northern Irish democracy after partition, and a competition design for the Palace of the Soviets in Leningrad, both drawn up in the 1930s. The desire to raise Palladio’s designs, seance-like, from the dead hasn’t gone away: a drawing for Villa Valmarana from the 1540s was the direct source for a house in Indiana built in the 1990s.

Some designers got so carried away with his style they forgot about practical realities of having to live with their buildings. Lord Burlington’s house for General Wade, built in 1723, was one such overbearing confection: its excessive symmetry and formality made it uninhabitable. Lord Chesterfield joked that Wade should move across the street: “As the General could not live in it to his ease, he had better take a house over against it and look at it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

While the Palladian language drew from temples, and was initially deployed for grand one-off houses or major public buildings, the style was not confined to these alone. In London, it took off as the standard dressing for terraced houses, following Inigo Jones’s work around the square of Covent Garden in the 1630s. A drawing by 18th-century architect-developer Michael Searles shows an entire street of 20 terraced houses in south London conceived as a Palladian palace front, the central six houses and the three at either end given particular emphasis, as if they were the flanking wings of a grand manor. A style born in the genteel crescents of Bath soon became available to all.

Some of the most entertaining exhibits here come from more recent forays into Palladian pastiche – from Raymond Erith and Quinlan Terry’s gargantuan house in Hertfordshire, built in 1972 for Sir Thomas Pilkington (complete with extra high ceilings for his seven-foot chandeliers), to the curious Victoria Shopping Centre in Harrogate by Cullearn & Phillips, built in the Palladian style in 1992 at popular request, after public consultation rejected a modern design.

It was a tricky site and the architects saw a parallel with Palladio’s work in Vicenza, concealing the awkward medieval Basilica behind modern, classical loggias. It was a popular success, but provoked the usual snooty reaction among architects and critics. The American travel writer Bill Bryson described it as “heartbreakingly awful, the worst kind of pastiche architecture – a sort of Bath Crescent meets Crystal Palace with a roof by B&Q”. Its parapet is crowned with a row of shopper-statues, perched along the top like Greek gods – although, as Bryson aptly remarked, it looks more as if “two dozen citizens of various ages are about to commit mass suicide”.

• Palladian Design: The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected is at RIBA until 9 January 2016. Join Oliver Wainwright in a panel discussion at RIBA, 27 October at 6pm – Good Taste/Bad Taste: an evening exploring architectural taste, manners, trendsetters and pacemakers