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John James | |
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| Born | John Roger Haughton James 1931 London |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Occupation(s) | Architect and historian |
John Roger Haughton James OAM (born 1931) is a British-born Australian architect and historian.
| This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources .(November 2022) |
James was born in London, and landed in Australia on his eighth birthday. His parents was Richard "Jimmy" Haughton James, designer and painter, and Charlotte "Terry" Stevens. He is an Australian architect who turned to the study of Early Gothic architecture and sculpture, and in particular the Chartres Cathedral. At the same time James studied psychotherapy and practised for 30 years while writing and publishing on medieval architecture. James entered the University of Melbourne in 1949 to study Architecture under professor Brian Lewis, and was awarded a degree with honours in 1953. His instructors included leading Modernist Roy Grounds, Robin Boyd, Frederick Romberg and Fritz Janeba. He also completed a three-year sub-major in Art History under Prof. Joseph Burke, under whom he surveyed the Melbourne terrace house and its cast-iron tracery, now held in the Dixon Library, Sydney. He was inspired by Geoffrey Serle to investigate the New Guard, the Sydney fascist movement set up to remove the Lang Labor government in the 1930s. James married Hilary Kelly and they have three children. After working in England, Sweden, Italy and British West Africa, the couple returned to Australia. James received a Master of Building Science under professor Henry J. Cowan at Sydney University in 1966, with a thesis on site control on large buildings, and in 1988 he gained a PhD in medieval architecture from the University of NSW, which was published as The Template-makers of the Paris Basin.
James founded his architectural practice in Sydney (1957-1971) where he was part of the Sydney School in domestic architecture, [1] akin to the California redwood houses early last century. He became the first builder-architect to be certified by the Australian Institute of Architects in 1958. He designed over 200 houses and is best known for the Reader's Digest head office (1962–67) in Sydney with a significant roof garden that won many awards. [2] The building is now a protected National Heritage Monument, and considered part of the Brutalist movement in Australia. James was in partnership with Ross Yuncken from 1959 and as well with Peru Perumal from 1968. James' experience in both construction and design spurred his interest in the role of the master mason in medieval European building. While running his architectural practice he taught the history of medieval architecture and studio design at Sydney Technical College and at the Universities of Sydney and New South Wales (1966-2007). In 2008 James was recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for "Service to architecture as a practitioner, educator and historian, particularly as a leading scholar on French Gothic architectural history". A little earlier he had received the American Institute of Architects Honour for Collaborative Achievement, for his work on French Gothic architecture (2005), and in 2018 the Australian Institute of Architects Enduring Architecture award for the Reader's Digest building. [3]
In 1969 he traveled to France to examine the construction history of Chartres cathedral, to see if the art-historical theories could be reconciled with the evidence in the masonry, and quickly found that the theories current at that time were incorrect. He continued this investigation at Chartres for five years, and developed the investigative technique he termed "Toichology". [4] His first article on this research was published by Dennis Sharp in the Architecture Association Quarterly in 1972, which led to Robert Branner's assessment on what this approach could offer to scholarship. [5] James showed how the cathedral had been built from the evidence in the masonry, and in the process redefined the constructional history of the building and presented a new view of early medieval building practice. He identified the nine master masons and analyzed their geometric methods. The monograph was published in two volumes in English, and three in French translated by local architect Dominique Maunoury. The major discoveries that caused controversy were:-
In his study of Chartres he used his building experience and drafting ability to produce over 300 measured drawings to demonstrate not only the history of the cathedral, but to construct an investigative technique for medieval architecture. His work is akin to that of the French archéologues who focus on archaeological analysis, a group including Arnold Wolff, Richard Hamman-MacLean and Jan van der Meulen. Their work commonly appeared in the monograph form, a "congenial vehicle for exercising the most precise and detailed examination of a great church's fabric". [6] James determined that permanent architects did not exist for most Gothic churches before 1240, but that nearly all ecclesiastical buildings were constructed by bands of contractors who moved from site to site with their workforce. It was a major revision to the accepted opinion that discontinuous contracting was the norm. Though James had received a three-year training in Art History and was a skilled architect/builder for thirteen years, his views came up against the established canons of the profession. Some historians have still not accepted the thesis, though it has been obvious to professional architects. Some termed his views "eccentric", or "unusual", principally Steven Murray and Lon Shelby, was mainly based on theoretical grounds, without any re-examination of the evidence in the structure itself. Through the discussions that followed, James recognized the greater complexity of the medieval building scene. Yet, as all his later work shows, he remains firmly convinced that builders, like carvers, were peripatetic, and that at least before the mid-thirteenth century design control was not held by a single permanent master. James' demotion of the architect as prime designer may have inadvertently been driven by the popular "death of the artist" notion among art historians of the 1970s and 1980s. To gain a deeper appreciation of the medieval experience, he took his family on the pilgrimage route from Chartres to Compostella (walking over 400 kilometers) in 1973. [7] From 1977 James presented his findings at lectures at over 70 universities and colleges in the US, France, England and Australia, including Oxford, Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley. From these lectures he wrote a more popular history of Chartres. He hoped to repeat this approach on the cathedral of Durham, [8] Southwell Minster, and a group of key buildings in France associated with Chartres, in particular Saint-Denis-en-France [9] and Notre-Dame-du-Fort in Etampes. [10] Appointed to various teaching and research posts at a dozen universities.
In the 1980s James sought out other work by the masons he identified at Chartres. This led him to undertake a three-year Survey of Early Gothic churches in northern France, and discovered that before the 1220s they were restricted to the Lutetian limestone region around Paris.[ citation needed ] At the time, less than one quarter of the churches with Early Gothic work had been studied, or even listed. After visiting more than 3,500 churches he inventoried over 1500 in the Paris area from the 1050-1250 period. The Survey was published in 1984.
The fundamental difficulty in medieval studies is imprecise chronology. With only a few buildings having firmly documented dates, and then for only parts, medieval studies have lacked the basis for detailed historic analysis, unlike the contemporary Italian Renaissance. James' first approach was to use the profiles and design of elements, and construction strategies to identify the master masons, and to use that as a basis for a chronology, but he finally realized this approach would not be effective. The analysis of building methods and strategies was published as The Template-makers of the Paris Basin in 1989. [11] It explains the investigative possibilities of Toichology and affirmed his conclusion from the Chartres study that churches, even the major ones, were built in many small campaigns, each directed by different masters. James has photographed and catalogued over 40,000 of the carved capitals from this period. James realized that changing style, or fashion, in carving could be the key to dating, and hence to the possibility of a more detailed history of early Gothic architecture and sculpture. This showed there were specific moments of stylistic change brought about by the Crusades and in the 1170s a dramatic redefinition of the carved capitals. These formed distinct boundaries in medieval culture that may be used to frame a chronology. The first flying buttresses were thought to date from the 1180s, but using these techniques James argued that this invention should be moved back thirty years.and similarly with the pointed arch and the earliest rib vaults. James has avoided permanent academic appointments to concentrate on this research as an independent scholar, enabled by various grants that have come mainly from the Australian Research Council. in spite of papers offered at conferences in the US, UK and France, the lack of students has tended to isolate his work from the mainstream trends of Art History. The most recent is the first five volumes of an intended nine-volume Thesaurus of French Early Gothic architecture. These five, containing photographs of nearly all the carved capitals in the region before 1250, were published between 2002 and 2008, with the shortened title of The Ark of God. The other four volumes were intended to focus on chronology, inventions, rib vaults, the portals and a reconsideration of the history of the Gothic style, but were abandoned due to the dramatic decline in academic library acquisitions. [12] The construction analysis and the indexed capitals have been placed online, with over 30,000 images. The books themselves were self-published by West Grinstead Pty Ltd, a company he set up to print and distribute academic books. James used a connoisseurship approach akin to [Giovanni Morelli]'s to identify over 200 of the individual carvers before 1180, and 20 draft papers were made available online as the Master Carvers Series (2010-2014). Forty of his essays have been collected into one volume In Search of the Unknown in Medieval Architecture. From the capitals study, and especially that on the 263 carvings in the Laon cathedral gallery (ca.1163) James' analysis has redefined the carvers roles and professional relationships, some travel patterns and what appears to be Rites of Passage from Journeyman to Master. [13]
From 1983 James and his wife Hilary studied psychology, both professionally and personally, under a number of teachers, in particular Bhakti Carrisbrooke and [Hal Stone]. They concentrated on Sandplay and created new dynamic techniques that are more Jungian than Freudian. James condensed this into a short book, Notes to Transformation. In 1996 the James's founded The Crucible Centre on a 260-acre property in the Blue Mountains for teaching therapy techniques to students. Three years later James created the first tertiary-accredited Post-Graduate Diploma course in Transpersonal Psychotherapy, from which he wrote The Great Field. After two bushfires the centre was closed in 2016 and, with Hilary, James moved to Brogo on the Australian South Coast.
Starting with a talk he gave on environmental pollution in Seattle in 1980, James has tried to help people understand the science of Global Warming. Besides many lectures, he formed the Crisis Coalition in 2006, and the Eco Platform in 2015, each with their own websites. He edits a weekly email Newsletter and has often been called to talk on public radio in Australia, the UK and the US. James recognized the impact that climatic change had on the architecture of the twelfth century. [14]
His philosophy on life is to "Live life to the fullest, yet remain unattached to the outcome."
Books and selected articles by John James: [15]
Villard de Honnecourt was a 13th-century artist from Picardy in northern France. He is known to history only through a surviving portfolio or "sketchbook" containing about 250 drawings and designs of a wide variety of subjects.
Gothic architecture is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. It originated in the Île-de-France and Picardy regions of northern France. The style at the time was sometimes known as opus Francigenum ; the term Gothic was first applied contemptuously during the later Renaissance, by those ambitious to revive the architecture of classical antiquity.
Chartres Cathedral, also known as the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres, is a Catholic cathedral in Chartres, France, about 80 km southwest of Paris, and is the seat of the Bishop of Chartres. Mostly constructed between 1194 and 1220, it stands on the site of at least five cathedrals that have occupied the site since the Diocese of Chartres was formed as an episcopal see in the 4th century. It is one of the best-known and most influential examples of High Gothic and Classic Gothic architecture, It stands on Romanesque basements, while its north spire is more recent (1507–1513) and is built in the more ornate Flamboyant style.
Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half of the 19th century, mostly in England. Increasingly serious and learned admirers sought to revive medieval Gothic architecture, intending to complement or even supersede the neoclassical styles prevalent at the time. Gothic Revival draws upon features of medieval examples, including decorative patterns, finials, lancet windows, and hood moulds. By the middle of the 19th century, Gothic Revival had become the pre-eminent architectural style in the Western world, only to begin to fall out of fashion in the 1880s and early 1890s.
The flying buttress is a specific form of buttress composed of an arch that extends from the upper portion of a wall to a pier of great mass, in order to convey to the ground the lateral forces that push a wall outwards, which are forces that arise from vaulted ceilings of stone and from wind-loading on roofs.
Rose window is often used as a generic term applied to a circular window, but is especially used for those found in Gothic cathedrals and churches. The windows are divided into segments by stone mullions and tracery. The term rose window was not used before the 17th century and comes from the English flower name rose.
Tracery is an architectural device by which windows are divided into sections of various proportions by stone bars or ribs of moulding. Most commonly, it refers to the stonework elements that support the glass in a window. The purpose of the device is practical as well as decorative, because the increasingly large windows of Gothic buildings needed maximum support against the wind. The term probably derives from the tracing floors on which the complex patterns of windows were laid out in late Gothic architecture. Tracery can be found on the exterior of buildings as well as the interior.
Flamboyant is a lavishly-decorated style of Gothic architecture that appeared in France and Spain in the 15th century, and lasted until the mid-sixteenth century and the beginning of the Renaissance. Elaborate stone tracery covered both the exterior and the interior. Windows were decorated with a characteristic s-shaped curve. Masonry wall space was reduced further as windows grew even larger. Major examples included the northern spire of Chartres Cathedral, Trinity Abbey, Vendôme, and Burgos Cathedral and Segovia Cathedral in Spain. It was gradually replaced by Renaissance architecture in the 16th century.
Romanesque art is the art of Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 12th century, or later depending on region. The preceding period is known as the Pre-Romanesque period. The term was invented by 19th-century art historians, especially for Romanesque architecture, which retained many basic features of Roman architectural style – most notably round-headed arches, but also barrel vaults, apses, and acanthus-leaf decoration – but had also developed many very different characteristics. In Southern France, Spain, and Italy there was an architectural continuity with the Late Antique, but the Romanesque style was the first style to spread across the whole of Catholic Europe, from Sicily to Scandinavia. Romanesque art was also greatly influenced by Byzantine art, especially in painting, and by the anti-classical energy of the decoration of the Insular art of the British Isles. From these elements was forged a highly innovative and coherent style.
Edmund Thomas Blacket was an Australian architect, best known for his designs for the University of Sydney, St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney and St. Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn.
English Gothic is an architectural style that flourished from the late 12th until the mid-17th century. The style was most prominently used in the construction of cathedrals and churches. Gothic architecture's defining features are pointed arches, rib vaults, buttresses, and extensive use of stained glass. Combined, these features allowed the creation of buildings of unprecedented height and grandeur, filled with light from large stained glass windows. Important examples include Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral. The Gothic style endured in England much longer than in Continental Europe.
French Gothic architecture is an architectural style which emerged in France in 1140, and was dominant until the mid-16th century. The most notable examples are the great Gothic cathedrals of France, including Notre-Dame Cathedral, Reims Cathedral, Chartres Cathedral, and Amiens Cathedral. Its main characteristics are verticality, or height, and the use of the rib vault and flying buttresses and other architectural innovations to distribute the weight of the stone structures to supports on the outside, allowing unprecedented height and volume. The new techniques also permitted the addition of larger windows, including enormous stained glass windows, which fill the cathedrals with light.
Jeande Chelles was a master mason and sculptor who was one of the architects at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. On the exterior wall of the south transept a stone plaque is signed Johanne Magistro and dated February 1257, documenting the initiation of alterations to the transept and its portal. On his death in 1265, he was succeeded by Master Pierre de Montreuil.
High Gothic was a period of Gothic architecture in the 13th century, from about 1200 to 1280, which saw the construction of a series of refined and richly-decorated cathedrals of exceptional height and size. It appeared most prominently in France, largely thanks to support given by King Louis IX(1226-1270). The goal of High Gothic architects was to bring the maximum possible light from the stained glass windows, and to awe the church goers with lavish decoration. High Gothic is often described as the high point of the Gothic style.
Early Gothic is the term for the first period of Gothic architecture which lasted from about 1120 until about 1200. The early Gothic builders used innovative technologies to resolve the problem of masonry ceilings which were too heavy for the traditional arched barrel vault. The solutions to the problem came in the form of the rib vault, where thin stone ribs passed the weight of the ceiling to rows of columns and outside the walls to another innovation, the flying buttress.
William de Ramsey was an English Gothic master mason and architect who worked on and likely designed the two earliest buildings of the Perpendicular style of Gothic architecture. William Ramsey was likely an inventor of the Perpendicular style which was to dominate Gothic architecture in England for three centuries "and, if so, he was one of the most influential architects England has ever produced".
The construction of Gothic cathedrals was an ambitious, expensive, and technically demanding aspect of life in the Late Middle Ages.
Perpendicular Gothic architecture was the third and final style of English Gothic architecture developed in the Kingdom of England during the Late Middle Ages, typified by large windows, four-centred arches, straight vertical and horizontal lines in the tracery, and regular arch-topped rectangular panelling. Perpendicular was the prevailing style of Late Gothic architecture in England from the 14th century to the 17th century. Perpendicular was unique to the country: no equivalent arose in Continental Europe or elsewhere in the British-Irish Isles. Of all the Gothic architectural styles, Perpendicular was the first to experience a second wave of popularity from the 18th century on in Gothic Revival architecture.
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