Architecture in detail

This volume covers one of the most influential buildings of the 19th century. Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace was the first public building to omit references to the past. The glass-and-iron structure, assembled for London's international exhibition, was a masterpiece of prefabrication.

Hill House is the domestic masterpiece of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's oeuvre, combining Arts and Crafts honesty with Art Nouveau decoration and the ruggedness of a seventeenth-century Scottish laird's house. At the request of his client, the publisher Walter Blackie, Mackintosh designed not only the house and all its fixtures and fittings, but also the outbuildings, the garden gates, the walls, the terraces and pergolas, which were all part of a unified aesthetic conception. The interiors and furniture are amongst the finest produced by Mackintosh, and testify to his firm command of function.