|
To harmonize with
the surrounding scenery, to enter into the spirit of the
landscape, is the highest beauty of a domestic building. This is
too often overlooked; and we find the dignity and repose of
Nature broken by the presence of white, bare, bleak abodes, set
ostentatiously in unplanted fields. Flat roofs and horizontal
lines are opposed to the ascending lines of rocks and mountains
around them; lofty turrets and steep gables rise up to
contradict the natural expression of level plains. A house may
be considered beautiful in the situation which suits it; its
precise copy, in an unfit place, will always be a miserable
deformity.
The Register
of Rural Affairs, 1865
The simplest rule
for determining what style of building is best adapted to a
particular kind of scenery, is to determine first the character
of both the architecture and the landscape in question. Our own
maxim is, that the bolder and more irregular the scenery, the
bolder and more irregular the style of architecture it demands.
Hence, building with highly varied outlines, with towers and the
like, are most fittingly placed amid bold hills, and in a broken
and mountainous country.
For a flat or level country,
almost any simple style of building is in good keeping, Hence
the propriety of the modifications of the cottage and villa
forms which generally prevail there, and which are always
pleasing when they express the simple life of the country
gentleman, farmer, or proprietor of the soil—and equally
unpleasing when they exhibit the finery of town houses, or
ambitious architectural ornaments not properly answering to the
habits or wants of their inhabitants.
A.J.Downing, Hints to Young
Architects, 1847
The site selected
for the dwelling, and the character of the scenery and objects
immediately surrounding it, should have a controlling influence
upon the style in which the house is to be constructed. A
fitness and harmony in all these is indispensable.
Lewis F. Allen, Rural
Architecture, 1852
|
