Assembling Urban Space: an Exploration of Medieval Town PlanningTwo arguments have characterised the study of later medieval town foundations. The first concerns the definition of the term town and the second concerns the extent to which towns were ‘planned’ or ‘organic’. Increasingly intricate analyses of urban form have shifted the focus towards understanding how urban space developed over time and, to a certain degree, the social implications of changes to the urban landscape. Here a new approach is furthered, which argues that rather than seeing towns as planned or as organic, that they are emergent - places become urban as social relations are played out at multiple scales. Towns are more than buildings and streets, they are social assemblages which are reiterated and transformed as the people, materials and things interact within and around them. Utilising the concept of ‘lines of becoming’, this paper traces trajectories of urbanism, to view towns as dynamic processes rather than static plans to address two questions - how did places become urban, and what was the role of space in this process?
The City and Cosmos by Keith D. LilleyIn City and Cosmos, Keith D. Lilley argues that the medieval mind considered the city truly a microcosm: much more than a collection of houses, a city also represented a scaled-down version of the very order and organization of the cosmos. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources, including original accounts, visual art, science, literature, and architectural history, City and Cosmos offers an innovative interpretation of how medieval Christians infused their urban surroundings with meaning. Lilley combines both visual and textual evidence to demonstrate how the city carried Christian cosmological meaning and symbolism, sharing common spatial forms and functional ordering. City and Cosmos will not only appeal to a diverse range of scholars studying medieval history, archaeology, philosophy, and theology; but it will also find a broad audience in architecture, urban planning, and art history. With more of the world's population inhabiting cities than ever before, this original perspective on urban order and culture will prove increasingly valuable to anyone wishing to better understand the role of the city in society.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781861897541
Publication Date: 2009-09-01
Design of Cities by Edmund N. Bacon"The major contemporary work on urban design . . . Splendidly presented, filled with thoughtful and brilliant intuitive insights." --The New Republic In a brilliant synthesis of words and pictures, Edmund N. Bacon relates historical examples to modern principles of urban planning. He vividly demonstrates how the work of great architects and planners of the past can influence subsequent development and be continued by later generations. By illuminating the historical background of urban design, Bacon also shows us the fundamental forces and considerations that determine the form of a great city. Perhaps the most significant of these are simultaneous movement systems--the paths of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, public and private transportation--that serve as the dominant organizing force, and Bacon looks at movement systems in cities such as London, Rome, and New York. He also stresses the importance of designing open space as well as architectural mass and discusses the impact of space, color, and perspective on the city-dweller. That the centers of cities should and can be pleasant places in which to live, work, and relax is illustrated by such examples as Rotterdam and Stockholm.
Making a Living in the Middle Ages by Christopher DyerDramatic social and economic change during the middle ages altered the lives of the people of Britain in far-reaching ways, from the structure of their families to the ways they made their livings. In this masterly book, preeminent medieval historian Christopher Dyer presents a fresh view of the British economy from the ninth to the sixteenth century and a vivid new account of medieval life. He begins his volume with the formation of towns and villages in the ninth and tenth centuries and ends with the inflation, population rise, and colonial expansion of the sixteenth century. This is a book about ideas and attitudes as well as the material world, and Dyer shows how people regarded the economy and responded to economic change. He examines the growth of towns, the clearing of lands, the Great Famine, the Black Death, and the upheavals of the fifteenth century through the eyes of those who experienced them. He also explores the dilemmas and decisions of those who were making a living in a changing world from peasants, artisans, and wage earners to barons and monks. Drawing on archaeological and landscape evidence along with more conventional archives and records, the author offers here an engaging survey of British medieval economic history unrivaled in breadth and clarity."
The Distribution and Dating of Wealden HousesA gazetteer of Wealden houses has been compiled from information provided by Vernacular Architecture Group members. The locations of the houses are mapped and correlated with settlement character, and the distinction between rural and urban Wealden houses reiterated. The forty Wealden houses dated by dendrochronology are also mapped and discussed.
The Interpretation of Urban Buildings: Power, Memory and Appropriation in Norwich Merchants’ Houses, c. 1400– 1660Abstract: There has been a recent resurgence of interest in archaeological approaches to medieval and postmedieval urban vernacular buildings, which has highlighted the distinctive forms and functions of town houses, and forces us to question established narratives of architectural change which are dependent on rural buildings. However, there are also considerable methodological challenges for
the archaeological study of urban structures. This article discusses these issues through a group of well-preserved houses in Norwich, dating from c.1400 to 1660, which belonged to wealthy merchants who served in high civic office. I interpret the complex structural development of domestic buildings as evidence for ongoing acts of ‘appropriation’, in which the urban elite adopted architectural forms from aristocratic, religious and civic buildings, and re-used older medieval structures, as a form of cultural capital to negotiate and maintain both communal and individual social identities and political authority.
Medieval Houses in English Towns: Form and LocationThis paper reviews the material evidence for surviving medieval town houses across England. It questions W. A. Pantin’s seminal categorisation as a means of understanding medieval town houses in any but a purely formal sense. The paper explores a number of key issues such as overall house types and sizes, the location of buildings and the
status of the occupiers. It considers the relationship between the size and prosperity of towns and the character of urban house plans, and touches upon the question of regional character. The bulk of the evidence concerns timber framed buildings of the thirteenth to late fifteenth centuries, and no attempt is made to consider aristocratic residences that, although built within towns, are hardly true ‘urban’ buildings. The focus of the argument is on the distribution of
different house types and the kinds of people who inhabited them, not the use of the spaces they contain — the latter is a complex topic, which requires a more integrated analysis of the material and documentary evidence: it is hoped that this will be the subject of separate paper.
The Provision of Services in Medieval Houses in KentThe arrangement of service rooms in medieval houses in south-east England is often taken for granted, namely that
two rooms beyond the cross-passage at the lower end of the hall were a standard feature and are usually termed buttery and pantry. Some houses may have had detached kitchens, in others cooking may have taken place within the building. This article looks at surviving houses in both rural and urban Kent and compares them with fifteenth- and
sixteenth-century documentary evidence. The results suggest that we should not be too complacent in our interpretations, and that the way service functions were provided may have been more varied than we normally assume.