Imagining the Orient before Orientalism: Georgian Travellers and the emergence of taste in 18th century British Architecture

This research project focuses on the architectural transfers from the (imagined) East to the West beyond the mere application of so-called Turqueries or Chinoiseries. Taking eighteenth century travel accounts and the perspective of the orientalist traveller as our starting point, we study how taste finds its way in architectural theory and practice before the establishment of orientalism as a new building paradigm in the nineteenth century. As the Grand Tour increasingly became a part of a bourgeois lifestyle at the start of the eighteenth century, a new layer of traveller-professionals was able to share their experiences with those at home, braking up the classical canon which had dominated the architectural production of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The confrontation with new forms and aesthetics forced the travellers to broaden their architectural language; their descriptions and drawings generated an appreciation for non classical design principles and changed the lens through which architecture was appreciated and qualified. The project at hand aims to study these transfers based on travel accounts, disclosing their influence on the emergence of a new architectural taste as early as the eighteenth century in Britain.

Keywords:Orientalism, Georgian Travellers, emergence of taste, 18th century, British Architecture, Orient

Disciplines:Structural engineering, Other civil and building engineering