Research On Thoughts And Artistic Features Of Architecture Design Of Victorian Britain

Victorian era was a time of revolution in Britain, and it was also an important period for evolution from modern architecture to contemporary architecture. The establishment of democratic politics, the fast growth of economy, and the rapid accumulation of social wealth laid a good foundation for the development of architecture design. It was possible to innovate the forms, structures and types of architecture due to the emergence of new materials and technology. On the basis of historical documents, with the method of comparison, iconology, etc., this paper put in order the developmental process of architecture design at Victorian time, and analyzed its causes and background. This period witnessed the most plentiful and diversified styles of architecture in British history although there was no particular style invented. During this period, the styles of historicism and anti-historicism co-existed, and retro styles and variant styles also co-existed. At the same time, eclecticism ran through all the period. Retro styles, with strong eclectic feature, complexed with the variant styles which were on the way of evolution to modern architecture. Both of them enhanced each other's beauty and constituted the splendid Victorian buildings all together.In Victorian period, the British created splendid architectures through finding a step-by-step way to reconcile the conflict between traditions and modern, but people respected traditions so much that they always inclined to found the right basis of innovation from traditions, and thus made British architecture design insensitive to accepting new things. All of these resulted from the "gentleman" standards of behavior, values of mimicking the upper class and conservative character of the British. Therefore, although some architecture existed with certain modern flavor, Victorian era failed to lead British architecture design advanced to the door of modern. design.