3DVisA Resources

3DVisA Index of 3D Projects: Architectural and Urban Studies

Nicholas Hawksmoor's Oxford, UK

Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736) was the architect of monumental, elegant baroque buildings, exempliefied by the Easton Neston country house in Northamptonshire. He worked for Sir Christopher Wren on St Paul's Cathedral in London, and for Sir John Vanbrugh on the Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace. The fame of these two architects has overshadowed Hawksmoor's own designs. Hawksmoor's London churches received popular and to some extent, sensational treatment in modern literature by T.S. Eliot, Iain Sinclair and Peter Ackroyd. There was a need for a new in-depth study of his architecture. A grant from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRC) has enabled the architectural historian, Vaughan Hart to re-examine Hawksmoor's work. His research resulted in a monograph published in 2002 which was complemented by computer visualisation.

The computer model was developed by the Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture (CASA) at Bath, and involved Hawksmoor's built and unbuilt schemes for Oxford, which included Queen’s College, Radcliffe Camera and All Souls College.

[More information will be provided in due course.]

Project dates: Completed 2002.

Resource status: ?

Contributors: Professor Vaughan Hart, Professor Alan Day and Joe Robson, Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture (CASA), Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Bath, UK.

Sources and further details:

CASA website: Completed projects.

Hart, V. (2002), Nicholas Hawksmoor: Rebuilding Ancient Wonders, London and New Haven: Yale University Press.

Record compiled by Anna Bentkowska-Kafel. Last updated: 11 September 2006.

3DVisA gratefully acknowledges the help of Professor Vaughan Hart with preparation of this record.

© CASA and 3DVisA, 2006.