It may seem trite to declare at the outset that the history of architecture is a significantly different enterprise than the history of its theory. But it is worth pausing to reflect on these differences for a moment, for in so doing one begins to perceive the subtle and often very slippery passages between thought and act. I am of the opinion that these passages, when properly investigated, can contribute as deep an insight into the nature of human artistic endeavor as pure aesthetic contemplation. The book under consideration offers as splendid an example of this position as one could hope for.

The history of architecture concerns itself with the evolution of the building art. Visual analysis of concrete objects is the cornerstone and the keystone of successful architectural history. It is not uncommon for an accomplished architectural historian to make use of research presented by ancillary disciplines and methods, including biography, archival and paleographic study, art history, the history of technology, economic history, urban studies, and beyond. Such tangible evidence as contracts, drawings, correspondence, and the universe of architectural forms demands mastery.

By contrast, the history of architectural theory is more closely aligned with the subject matter, tools, and methods of the history of ideas or literary history than with the history of architecture per se. A whole canon of texts, anchored by the Roman architect Vitruvius, requires extensive sampling before one can pose a challenging question. Instead of reverberating with the activity inside the mason’s hut, theory tends to spin off toward the ethereal realms of mathematics, music, scholarship, poetry, and related forms of literary activity. While some “aeries” are studied because they continue to exude a hypnotic charm, theoretical activity as a whole can be seen to exhibit properties that possess genuine historical significance; not only can theory be used as a lens through which buildings can be scrutinized by contemporary criteria, but it also exerts a palpable, gravitational force upon those architects for whom the design process is open to the priorities and precepts established by authorities active or influential in the profession at a given time. Hence we can trace the peregrination of a form through time because of its importance as an “idea carrier.” By the same token, political or religious turbulence can be masked by visual orthodoxy imposed by tacit acceptance of a given theoretical paradigm. In short, theory endows forms with symbolic value; as a result, the interpretive problems presented by theoretical inquiry are manifold, treacherous, and truly exciting.

David Watkin, a fellow of Peterhouse and reader in the history of architecture at the University of Cambridge, is arguably among the two or three most accomplished and engaging architectural historians practicing today. An prolific writer of articles, monographs, surveys, gazetteers, and even a well-rounded history of architectural history, Watkin is perhaps most famous (or infamous) for his scandalously brilliant demolition of the historicist fallacy in Architecture and Morality. It is a work of such polemical force and intellectual gravity that it can only be compared to Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy. For nearly half a generation, it has not just challenged the orthodoxies by which and through which we “see” modern architecture, but it has also changed the way we choose to think about it. While Watkin is probably the only architectural historian whose London pied-à-terre and whose students’ flats have appeared in the leading interior design magazines, he is certainly the only contemporary historian of architecture whose work has spawned a school, beginning with the “Club 1830” a few years ago. All this and participation on the faculty of the Prince of Wales’s institute of architecture render him a force to be reckoned with in matters of taste and scholarship. A more qualified guide to the prolific and prolix architectural theory of Sir John Soane, England’s premier classicist of the nineteenth century, cannot be imagined. Watkin’s detective work is exhaustive, his narrative is both comprehensive and compelling, and the visual material is simply exquisite. Rarely does one have the opportunity to indulge in such a work combining outstanding intellectual rigor, refined literary exposition, and flawless production values.

But make no mistake about it, this is hardly light reading in any sense of the phrase. Tipping the scales at eight pounds, this is a book that cannot be comfortably read in one’s lap, on a plane, in bed, or without a generous, sturdy, and perhaps reinforced desk. It is very clearly and cleverly arranged, however. Some 488 pages of single-column scholarly material serve to introduce another 177 double-column pages transcribing Soane’s manuscripts for his cycle of twelve Royal Academy lectures. The book’s design and layout, while traditional, are exemplary and ideal models for all related publishing efforts: all verbal information is kept on the same page through the use of footnotes; illustrations are hors texte, requiring a suspension of one’s literary activity in order to treat thoughtfully the images as images, and not as illustrations; and finally, a battery of appendices documents the physical location and condition of the materials, both literary and visual. Watkin also provides excerpted historical information regarding the composition and delivery of the lectures. In this, as well as in the general editorial decisions regarding the lectures themselves, he is following in the steps of the late Wolfgang Herrmann, without doubt the man most responsible for launching the history of architectural theory as an independent, scientific enterprise.

Watkin’s introduction is divided into two sections: the first treats Soane’s intellectual preparation, the second presents a lecture-by-lecture synopsis and exegesis that weaves together all of the various strands proffered in the first section. While Watkin sees Soane standing wholly within the compass of Enlightenment thought, he offers up a multitude of provocative connections that serve to extend the trajectory of Renaissance humanism through the architectural theories that embraced various forms of the doctrines of civic virtue, character, and decorum. Soane’s full debt to and engagement with the theories of William Chambers, William Sandby, and his first master, George Dance, is patiently and carefully explored. The opening chapter, “Architectural Discourse from Wotton to Sandby,” must now be considered the best treatment of this material available, fully supplanting the second half of the otherwise reliable account in chapter nineteen of the late Hanno-Walter Kruft’s History of Architectural Theory (Princeton Architectural Press, 1994). Watkin’s second chapter details the institutional background for the development of Soane’s theory at the Royal Academy.

The third, fourth, and fifth chapters constitute the centerpiece of Watkin’s introduction. Here Watkin discusses Soane’s absorption of the major themes of Enlightenment architectural theory: primitivism, character, and sensationalism, and the symbolical language of antiquity. Watkin’s expertise, like Soane’s own scrupulous regard for keeping track of every source he read or translated, shines forth on every page. Watkin gives each theme a masterly introduction and proceeds with a topical approach, picking up the strand as present in one author, say the primitivism of the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, and following it through Rousseau, Marc-Antoine Laugier, and Montesquieu and a dozen others quoted or referred to by Soane. The result of reading these magnificent, crystalline chapters (preferably at one sitting) is an expanded appreciation of the complex interplay between ideas as well as between ideas and creative acts.

The second part of Watkin’s introduction consists of a thorough analysis of the entire lecture cycle. As literature, of course, this kind of reading is pretty stultifying. As a guidebook, however, it is indispensable. For when one finally reaches the lectures themselves, they fairly bristle with all of the material that has been so carefully and painstakingly arranged in the first several hundred pages. As it turns out, one of the most interesting things about the lectures is what they omit. Indeed, Watkin’s comprehensive perspective (having read, digested, and creatively ordered virtually all of Soane’s extant correspondence, notes, memoranda, and marginalia) enables him to see not just what is in the lectures but also what is only alluded to, often provocatively, elsewhere. A case in point is Soane’s handling of the Baron d’Hancarville’s vivid and explicitly sexual origins of religious practice and symbolism. Unlike those who rejected d’Hancarville out of hand, Soane took the theory seriously but remained too timid to broach the themes verbally, content to adorn the façades of many commissions with symbols whose origins and destinations declare his true sympathies.

In themselves, Soane’s lectures offer up a dauntingly strong cocktail. From the opening paragraphs, it is plainly evident that Soane’s literary gifts pale in comparison to his design talents. As one reads through the lectures, infuriating repetitions and courtly verbal curlicues melt away when one runs across a searing insight or a fruitful comparison—reminders that, despite the literary affectations, Soane was a refined thinker and a discriminating visionary, and that entire vistas in an eighteenth-century mind can shed light on how we address today’s concerns. This is especially so in lecture eleven with regard to Soane’s compulsion to justify ornament. Eliminate his feeble periodic structure and one could be speaking with a contemporary about the virtues and vices of elaborate decorative programs for corporate headquarters.

Time and again, Soane’s center points come up in the lectures: his emphasis on achieving an appropriate character for a given building or type, his insistence upon returning to first principles, his contempt for English as opposed to French building, and his antipathy to speculative building. In these issues and others, Soane comes across as the most continentally minded British architect since Inigo Jones, and Soane’s obvious hero was the French architect Jacques-François Blondel. Soane’s overall opposition to the Greek Revival, and by extension its practitioners, led him to criticize in lecture four George Dance’s Royal College of Surgeons as well as Robert Smirke’s Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Criticizing British architects, and living ones at that, was for his colleagues simply beyond the pale, and the resulting furor forced Soane’s suspension from the Academy for three years. Even by today’s standards, the behavioral consequences of Soane’s obsessive self-pity make for shocking reading. In the end, Soane may not be regarded as a significant theorist on his own but rather as an important synthetic thinker who creatively brought together a multitude of issues and sources. His theory possesses neither the internal coherence of a William Morris nor the epochal foresight of a Gottfried Semper. Instead, Soane appears more like the Aquinas of the encyclopédistes.

Admittedly, if one is looking for something of immediate use in trying to figure out the background of today’s theoretical disputes, one should look elsewhere. If, however, one is looking to fill in one’s understanding of eighteenth-century architecture through the ideas of the Enlightenment, there is no more solid presentation in the English language than this. Biased though it may be to the refracting lens of Soane’s vigorous theoretical enterprise, Watkin offers a deeply refreshing look at the mainstays of the classical tradition. The result is a refinement of one’s appreciation of the architecture through an enhanced grasp of the theory. And this is the intersection, of idea and act, that enables us to learn from and build constructively and meaningfully upon our own artistic traditions.