Architecture: History

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The Ionic capital is arguably the single most challenging component of the classical orders, being complex, sensuously sculptural and architecturally refined: Ionic forms, along with those of the Doric and Corinthian genera, have put their stamp on not just Greek temples but entire epochs, their development and resolution is an issue of fundamental importance. The project has created an archive of high-quality digital representations of key capitals, either by construction from exisiting measured drawings, or by laser-scanning surviving exemplars.

The project combined the histories of architecture and of science to investigate the relationship between architecture and practical mathematics, and the development and changing role of the architect. Sir Christopher Wren emerged as the central historical figure of the project, for his career as astronomer, natural philosopher and architect.

The project has transcribed and published the more than 10,000 letters to and from William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), best known as the inventor of photography but also an MP, a landowner, an inventor, a scientist, a mathematician and a pioneering scholar of Assyrian cuneiform. The major group of letters was published in 2003. AHRB funding then ended and the University of Glasgow was unable to commit further resources to the project. In 2004, the project website was migrated to DeMontfort University, Leicester. A grant from the British Academy created a remote editing facility.