Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuriesHitchcock, Henry-Russell
History
Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell
Architecture, Modern -- 19th century; Architecture, Modern -- 20th century
Gilly would have been overshadowed by his son Friedrich (1771-1800) had
the latter lived, or so one must judge, not from his modest Mölter house
in the Tiergartenstrasse in Berlin of 1799, but from certain major
projects. One, of 1797, is for a monument to Frederick the Great which
was widely and deeply influential for many years to come; another, of
1800, is for a Prussian National Theatre, improving upon Ledoux’s at
Besançon as regards the interior and very original in its external
massing. The monument raised a Greek Doric temple on a tremendous
substructure of the most abstract geometrical character, surrounded it
with obelisks, and set the whole in a vast open space, unconfined but—as
it were—defined by subsidiary structures of very fresh and varied design
(Plate 9A). The handsome gateway to the square seems to provide evidence
of Gilly’s familiarity with such a highly personal work of Soane as his
entrance arch at Tyringham (Plate 6A); however, the general tone of
somewhat funereal grandeur recalls rather the monumental projects of
Ledoux, Boullée, and the younger men of France who designed so much and
built so little in this decade. Other contemporary Berlin architects,
such as Heinrich Gentz (1766-1801), who built the old Mint in 1798-1800,
and Friedrich Becherer (1746-1823), who built the Exchange in 1801,
while up-to-date stylistically, were much less accomplished than
Friedrich Gilly. His artistic heir was his fellow pupil Schinkel, whose
architectural career really began in 1816 (see Chapter 2).
[Illustration:
Figure 1. Friedrich Weinbrenner: Karlsruhe, Marktplatz, 1804-24, plan
]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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