Edwin Lutyens Country House

Edwin Lutyens was one of Britain's greatest architects, known for the imaginative adaptations of traditional design in his numerous country houses, as well as the instrumental role he played in designing and building much of New Delhi. Presenting a stunning collection of his architectural designs spanning the many phases of his acclaimed career, this beautifully produced study includes examples of the celebrated architect's early Arts-and-Crafts houses, Surrey-vernacular style, and carefully composed classical houses. Leading architectural authority Gavin Stamp presents his selection of Lutyens' houses in chronological order â??with the exception of the Viceroy's House â?? by the date of their design. Featuring jaw-dropping photography from the unique archives of Country Life magazine, this beautiful book covers of all phases of Lutyens' career and boasts a number of rare images. The vast majority of photographs within the book are contemporaneous to the buildings' design â?? showing the houses as their architect intended they should look: mellow and yet monumental, fitting into the soft English landscape and enhanced by their luxuriant gardens. Covering everything from Crooksbury and Sullingstead to Gledstone Hall and Middleton park, Edwin Lutyens' Country Houses is the leading text on this architect of rare genius and humanity.

"Sir Edwin Lutyens is widely regarded as one of Britain's greatest architects. In a career of more than 50 years, spanning both the Victorian and Modern eras, Lutyens was prolific. His work ranged from great country houses, city commercial office buildings, his famous First World War memorials across Europe and Britain, and his magnum opus designs for New Delhi, built during the 1920s and 1930s. Lutyens' most celebrated works remain his magnificent country houses that so frequently adorned the pages of Country Life magazine, and in particular his houses of the period from the 1890s and 1900s. Sir Edwin Lutyens: The Arts & Crafts Houses brings together for the first time in new, wide-format all-colour photography, the definitive collection of over 40 of Lutyens' great houses, in which Lutyens ingeniously blended the style of the Arts and Crafts movement with his own inventive interpretation of the Classical language of architecture. The book features over 500 stunning current photographs, together with floor plans of the houses, and a fresh reinterpretation of Lutyens' enduring architectural genius."--

Presenting a stunning collection of the architectural designs of Edward Lutyens throughout the many phases of his acclaimed career, this beautifully presented study includes examples of his Surrey-vernacular style, early arts-and-crafts houses, and his carefully composed classical houses.

A reissue in hardback under the National Trust imprint of a classic, superbly illustrated book tracing Sir Edwin Lutyens's formidable achievements of both grand public buildings and his many beautiful country houses. Through his architecture of New Delhi, Lutyens had the unofficial status of Britain's 'architect laureate', but it is in his wonderful country houses that his creative genius can most fully be appreciated. Elizabeth Wilhide traces the development of the Lutyens style and illustrates his remarkable blend of function and artistry, from the imposing granite of Castle Drogo and Lindisfarne to the restful appeal of Munstead Wood, which he designed for his long-term collaborator and friend, Gertrude Jekyll. Wilhide also devotes a large section of the book to Lutyens's wonderful interiors. With a foreword by Sir Edwin's granddaughter Candia Lutyens and specially commissioned photographs showing interiors and gardens, as well as original designs for furniture, this elegant monograph provides a fresh insight into a rich and enduring heritage of design.

Edwin Lutyens (1869–1944), perhaps the greatest British architect of the twentieth century, was introduced by garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, his celebrated collaborator, to Edward Hudson, the founder of the great British magazine Country Life, in 1889. Hudson thereafter did all he could to promote the work of a man he admired without reservation, commissioning Lutyens to design the magazine’s of?ces in Covent Garden in 1904, as well as three country houses. Country Life published articles about virtually all his buildings shortly after their completion, recording them as the architect intended, creating an unparalleled visual archive which is the source for this selection of outstanding photographs of Lutyens’s domestic architecture. Gavin Stamp’s authoritative introduction places Lutyens ?rmly among the giants of architecture: ‘an architect of rare genius and humanity.’ His selection of twenty-two houses, representative of all the phases of Lutyens’s career, illustrates the architect’s dual achievements as a renewer of both vernacular tradition and of the Classical language of architecture. Debate continues about Lutyens’s place in modern architecture, but his legacy of some of the most inventive and romantic examples of British domestic architecture is unquestionable. There are superb examples of his Surrey vernacular style (with its gables, timber, and sweeping planes of tiled roof), such as Fulbrook House—one of his earliest masterpieces; Deanery Garden, designed with the garden in mind for Hudson; early Arts and Crafts houses, such as Goddards and Little Thakeham; his carefully composed Classical houses, such as Heathcote, and his grandest country house of all, Middleton Park, built between the two World Wars. Here, too, are examples of his brilliant enlargements and alterations to existing buildings, such as Lindisfarne Castle, and his creation of the epitome of castle style: Castle Drogo. This pictorial survey culminates in Lutyens’s most famous creation: Viceroy’s House in New Delhi, one of the greatest buildings in the world. Founded in 1897, Country Life from the outset published remarkable photographs, and the huge in?uence the magazine exerted was nowhere more apparent than in its unprecedented championship of Edwin Lutyens, whose buildings it promoted for almost ?fty years. For this book, two hundred photographs have been beautifully reproduced from the Country Life archive and, combined with Gavin Stamp’s illuminating essay, provide a unique survey of one of Britain’s foremost architects.