Summerson, John
Summerson, John
Bio Sketch
Sir John Summerson (1904–1992) was a British architectural historian and curator (longtime curator of Sir John Soane's Museum). He was a leading historian of Georgian and English architecture and, from the 1930s on, a persistent advocate of the "architecture of bureaucracy" — the salaried, official, departmental architect — as the force that "rendered architecture effective" in modern life, against the hero-genius myth of the lone designer.
Key Works
- Bread & Butter and Architecture (1942) — the essay that gave Agarez & Mota's issue its title, on the post-war future of the salaried architect.
- The Classical Language of Architecture (1963) — six BBC talks expounding classical architecture as a language with grammar (the orders), rhetoric (the Baroque), and a hidden continuation in the Modern Movement.
- Georgian London (1945) — seminal study of London's urban history.
- Numerous writings on the social and professional role of the architect in mid-century Britain.
Key Concepts
Concepts associated with this author that have pages in this wiki:
Relevance to Geoffrey's Research
Summerson is foundational to Geoffrey's vernacular & everyday architecture area: his championing of the "minor," salaried architect and the "bread-and-butter" of practice anticipates the recovery of the everyday of the profession that Agarez & Mota pursue, and connects to Geoffrey's interest in authorship, the hero-genius myth, and architecture's collective/bureaucratic production under capitalism.
Source Support
Source notes in this wiki drawn from this author's work:
- Bread & Butter and Architecture
- The Classical Language of Architecture — the other, canonical face of Summerson: architecture as a shared grammatical tradition disciplining and inciting invention.
- The 'Bread & Butter' of Architecture (introductory essay citing Summerson)
Note on the two Summersons: the 1942 essay champions the anonymous salaried architect; the 1963 talks celebrate the classical canon and its poetic geniuses (Lutyens "loved, obeyed and defied the orders all at the same time"). Both share a suspicion of pure individual invention — whether disciplined by the office or by the orders.