Le Corbusier was a prolific writer and an accomplished painter as well as an architect in the history of architecture who produced an imposing and influential body of work. During the decade of the 1920s he executed a series of designs for private villas that crystalized the International Style. When, in 1903, Lutyens declared “In [...]

b. Norwich, 1778;
d. Cambridge, 1839.
English architect and classical scholar who pioneered the Greek Revival in Britain. The eldest son of an architect, Wilkins took a joint degree in classics and mathematics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (1796-1800). He was elected to the Society of Antiquaries and travelled round Sicily, Greece and Asia Minor as [...]

b. Oxford, 1831;
d. Worth, Sussex, 1915.
As close friend of William Morris, friend and mentor to W. R. LETHABY, the chief technical adviser and instructor to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and the designer of a relatively few but hugely influential major houses Webb became the principal instrument through which the Arts & [...]

b. Karlsruhe, 1766;
d. Karlsruhe, 1826.
Friedrich Weinbrenner was the dominant figure within the German school of Neo-Classicism at the beginning of the c19. After studying mathematics and architecture at the Academy in Vienna, Weinbrenner travelled to Berlin and Italy, returning in 1797 to take up the position of building inspector in Karlsruhe, where his influence became [...]

b. Kirkcaldy, Fife, 1728;
d. London, 1792.
Robert Adam is unquestionably Scotland’s most famous architect and one of the most celebrated of British architects. He formed a fertile repertory of new ideas on a visit to Italy (1754-8), and at his return to London he was determined to become the leader of classical revival in England in [...]

b. Kuortane, Finland, 1898;
d. Helsinki, 1976.

Alvar Aalto, the singular figure who established modern architecture in Finland. He studied at Helsinki Polytechnic, graduating in 1921 with all possible honours. His early work showed the familiar signs of a developing Neo-Classicism, but he ruptured the architectural scene in 1929 with his Internationalist inspired entry for Paimio Sanatorium [...]

While the impracticalities of life in a glass box rendered the Farnsworth House an unlikely model for the mainstream housing market, the concept fascinated many architects. In 1949 Philip Johnson (b. 1906) began work on his own residence in New Canaan, Connecticut. In some ways, the Farnsworth and Johnson houses studies in contrast. Painted white [...]

In 1946, Mies van der Rohe designed a weekend retreat for Dr. Edith Farnsworth in Plano, Illinois, near Chicago. A number of architects including Richard Neutra and Buckminster Fuller had grappled with the practical problems of using metal-framed structural systems for domestic design but no one idealized the concept to the degree Mies did in [...]

b. St Petersburg (Leningrad), 1761;
d. St Petersburg, 1811.
Leading Russian Architect, the classicist of the early 19 century. Son of a minor admiralty official, Zakharov entered the preparatory school of the Academy of Arts in 1767, ultimately graduating from its Architecture School in 1782 with the gold medal. The prize took him to Paris for four [...]