Circus at Bath
From Archiplanet
 | Circus at Bath |
| Designer | John Wood |
| Location | Bath, England |
| Date | 1754 |
| Building Type | attached houses |
| Climate | temperate |
| Context | urban |
| Architectural Style | Neoclassical |
| Street Address | |
| Notes | houses make a tight circle around traffic circle. |
| At Great Buildings | http://www.GreatBuildings.com/buildings/Circus_at_Bath.html |
Contents |
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Commentary
"...in the 1740s and fifties, responding to Neoclassical currents, John Wood conceived the inspired, if quixotic, idea of recreating some of the monuments of Roman Bath, which were to include an Imperial gymnasium, a forum, and a circus. The first went unrealized, the second was disappointing, but the third was a stunning success. The Bath Circus disposes some thirty-three houses around a circle (which Wood thought might be used 'for the exhibition of sports'), interrupted only by three radiating streets. The scheme combined the French rond-point format with the ingenious idea of using the Colosseum turned outside in, its three successive orders much reduced in scale, without arches but with cinquecentesque doubled columns. At the end of one of the three streets of the Circus, John Wood the Younger in 1767 took his father's sensational step further in the thirty houses of the Royal Crescent."
— Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: from Prehistory to Post-Modernism. p405.
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[edit] References
Francis D. K. Ching. Architecture: Form, Space, and Order. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1979. ISBN 0-442-21535-5. LC 79-18045. NA2760.C46. site plan, p223. A nice graphic introduction to architectural ideas. Updated 1996 edition available at Amazon.com
Howard Davis. Slide from photographer's collection. PCD.2260.1012.1536.019
Leonora Ison. English Architecture Through the Ages, Secular Building. New York: Coward-McCann, 1967. LC 66-24565. NA961.I8 1967. partial elevation drawing, p33.
Stefan Muthesius. The English Terraced House. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. ISBN 0-300-03176-9. LC 82-50442. NA7328.M88. site plan drawing, f124, p158.
Christian Norberg-Shultz. Late Baroque and Rococo Architecture. New York: Electa/Rizzoli, 1980. NA590.N63. ISBN 0-8478-0475-5. LC 82-62750. plan, p31.
Nikolaus Pevsner. An Outline of European History. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1960. exterior photo of circus and trees, plate 490, p581.
Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman. Architecture, from Prehistory to Post-Modernism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1986. ISBN 0-13-044702-1. NA200.T7. discussion, p405. Available at Amazon.com
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