The Architecture of William Burn: Style and Identity in Scotland's Imperial Age

Projektbeschreibung

Anknüpfung an Burns Identität als schottischer Architekt

William Burn (1789-1870) war einer der bedeutendsten schottischen Architekten des frühen bis mittleren 19. Jahrhunderts. Seine wichtigste Leistung war die Ausarbeitung einer pro-schottischen architektonischen Identität, die gleichzeitig als positiv gegenüber dem Establishment und als britisch wahrgenommen wurde. In Anbetracht des Wiederauflebens nationalistischer Politik in den letzten Jahren ist das Werk Burns von besonderer Aktualität. In diesem Zusammenhang wird das EU-finanzierte Projekt BURN-BEYOND die Debatten über architektonischen Stil und nationale Identität in Großbritannien und darüber hinaus untersuchen und (anhand von Burns Werk) zeigen, dass die Schotten das spätere Bestreben des 19. Jahrhunderts, politische oder kulturelle Unterschiede durch nationale oder pseudonationale architektonische Wiederbelebung zu etablieren, vorweggenommen haben. Das Projekt wird sich auf die Konstruktion nationaler, imperialer, politischer und geschlechtlicher Identitäten in Burns Werk konzentrieren.

Ziel

BURN-BEYOND is a study of the Scottish architect William Burn (1789-1870), the progenitor of ‘Scots Baronial’ architecture, one of the earliest and most distinctive examples of a self-consciously ‘national’ revivalist style. Burn’s career spanned the period when the world was being transformed by British imperial and economic power and by the aftermath of the French Revolution, when architecture became an enduring vehicle for defining national, political and social identities. His achievement was to formulate a pro-Scottish architectural identity that was simultaneously accepted as pro-establishment and British. His work is of special contemporary relevance given the recent resurgence of nationalist politics in the face of contemporary trends towards economic and cultural globalisation. This study will articulate debates over architectural style and national identity in Britain and beyond, and show that, through Burn’s work, the Scots foreshadowed the later 19th-century quest to establish political or cultural difference through national or pseudo-national architectural revivalism. Using innovative approaches to stylistic, spatial and historical analysis, this project will explore the construction of national, imperial, political and gender identities in Burn’s work. It will seek to: establish the motivations for and implications of Burn’s unrivalled stylistic diversity; demonstrate how Burn contributed to the formulation of a Scottish architectural identity; and understand how his famously ingenious domestic planning shaped gender, familial and social relationships. It will therefore generate new insights into the interactions between stylistic choice and social, cultural and political identities in Europe in the Romantic era, and enrich studies of politics, literature, gender relations, the visual arts and nationalism. It will be of particular value to historians studying the emergence of stylistic nationalism elsewhere.