eishiya reviewed Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell
A solid reprint
3 stars
While period photographs would probably be a better for drawing the classicist architecture that survived into the Victorian era, if you're looking to build up your own sense for this style so that you can design fictional buildings in it, this collection of architectural drawings is a great resource. Aside from documenting many late 17th-early 18th century buildings, Vitruvius Britannicus served as a guide for many later architects, after all.
There are elevations, some plans, and even a few sections and site plans. The buildings themselves are a good mix, with churches, country houses, town houses, hospitals, gates, and others. Houses outnumber everything else.
This Dover edition is probably as close to a proper reprint as you're going to get. All the drawings are here, and so is the text, presented in its original typography, long s and all. As a convenience, the volume number and plate number are shown …
While period photographs would probably be a better for drawing the classicist architecture that survived into the Victorian era, if you're looking to build up your own sense for this style so that you can design fictional buildings in it, this collection of architectural drawings is a great resource. Aside from documenting many late 17th-early 18th century buildings, Vitruvius Britannicus served as a guide for many later architects, after all.
There are elevations, some plans, and even a few sections and site plans. The buildings themselves are a good mix, with churches, country houses, town houses, hospitals, gates, and others. Houses outnumber everything else.
This Dover edition is probably as close to a proper reprint as you're going to get. All the drawings are here, and so is the text, presented in its original typography, long s and all. As a convenience, the volume number and plate number are shown in the corners of the pages, so you don't have to hunt for the numbers on the actual plates.
This is a large book at 9" x 12", and most of the plates are very clear. A few are at a reduced scale: some two-plate buildings are shown sideways on one page with no loss of clarity; some multi-plate buildings are printed running across two pages, so their central portion is sadly lost in the gutter. The captions for the reduced plates can be challenging to read, but they are legible.
The main reason I don't rate this higher is that in most cases, one really doesn't need to study this material so thoroughly as to need a book such as this. In addition, it provides little theory or context, so you'll still probably need something like Banister Fletcher's "A History of Architecture" or at least some Wikipedia articles to help guide you. All the content from Vitruvius Britannicus is available online though, so you can make a fully informed decision before you plop down the money for this reprint.