Nikolaus Pevsner was one of the most important and influential art historians of the twentieth century. He opened up new areas of enquiry in the history of art, revolutionising architectural studies in England and playing a key role in establishing the discipline of design history. Through his lectures and broadcasts, as well as the remarkable volumes in The Buildings of England series which made him a household name, he did much to encourage greater interest in, and understanding of, art and architecture among a wide public. This wide-ranging collection of essays, based on papers delivered at the conference held at Birkbeck in celebration of the centenary of Pevsner's birth, offers the first sustained critical assessment of Pevsner's achievements. With contributions by leading international scholars, the volume brings together a wealth of new material on Pevsner and his intellectual background, both in Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s and in England, particularly in the 1940s and 1950s.

Nikolaus Pevsner was one of the most important and influential art historians of the twentieth century. He opened up new areas of enquiry in the history of art, revolutionising architectural studies in England and playing a key role in establishing the discipline of design history. Through his lectures and broadcasts, as well as the remarkable volumes in The Buildings of England series which made him a household name, he did much to encourage greater interest in, and understanding of, art and architecture among a wide public. This wide-ranging collection of essays, based on papers delivered at the conference held at Birkbeck in celebration of the centenary of Pevsner's birth, offers the first sustained critical assessment of Pevsner's achievements. With contributions by leading international scholars, the volume brings together a wealth of new material on Pevsner and his intellectual background, both in Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s and in England, particularly in the 1940s and 1950s.

Born Nikolai Pewsner into a Russian-Jewish family in Leipzig in 1902, Nikolaus Pevsner was a dedicated scholar who pursued a promising career as an academic in Dresden and Göttingen. When, in 1933 Jews were no longer permitted to teach in German universities, he lost his job and looked for employment in England. Here, over a long and amazingly industrious career, he made himself an authority on the exploration and enjoyment of English art and architecture, so much so that his magisterial county-by-county series of 46 books on The Buildings of England (first published 1951 - 74) is usually referred to simply as 'Pevsner'. As a critic, academic and champion of Modernism, Pevsner became a central figure in the architectural consensus that accompanied post-war reconstruction; as a 'general practitioner' of architectural history, he covered an astonishing range, from Gothic cathedrals and Georgian coffee houses to the Festival of Britain and Brutalist tower blocks. Susie Harries explores the truth about Nikolaus Pevsner's reported sympathies with elements of Nazi ideology, his internment in England as an enemy alien and his sometimes painful assimilation into his country of exile. His Heftchen - secret diaries he kept from the age of 14 for another sixty years - reveal hidden aspirations and anxieties, as do his numerous letters (he wrote to his wife, Lola, every day that they were apart).Harries is the first biographer to have read Pevsner's private papers and, through them, to have seen into the workings of his mind.Her definitive biography is not only rich in context and far-ranging, but is also brought to life by quotations from Pevsner himself. He was born a Jew but converted to Lutheranism; trained in the rigour of German scholarship, he became an Everyman in his copious commissions, publications, broadcasts and lectures on art, architecture, design, education, town planning, social housing, conservation, Mannerism, the Bauhaus, the Victorians, Zeitgeist, Englishness and how a nation's character may, or must, be reflected in its art. His life - as an outsider yet an insider at the heart of English art history - illuminates both the predicament and the prowess of the continental émigrés who did so much to shape British culture after 1945.

A previously unpublished work by Nikolaus Pevsner, much of which was published as journal articles in the Architectural Review in the 1940s and 1950s during Pevsner's term as editor.

Shaping the Surface explores the history of modern British architecture through the lens of surface, materiality and decoration. Picking up on a trait that art historian Nikolaus Pevsner first identified as a 'national mania for beautiful surface quality', this book makes a new contribution to architectural history and visual culture in its detailed examination of the surfaces of British architecture from the middle of the 19th century up to the turn of the 21st century. Tracing this continuing sensibility to surface all the way through to the modern era, it explores how and why surface and materiality have featured so heavily in recent architectural tradition, examining the history of British architecture through a selection of key cultural moments and movements from Romanticism and the Arts and Crafts, to Brutalism, High-Tech, Post-Modernism, Neo-Vernacular, and the New Materiality. Embedded within the narrative is the question of whether such national characters can exist in architecture at all – and indeed the extent to which it is possible to identify a British architectural consciousness in an architectural tradition characterised by its continuous importation of theories, ideas, materials and people from around the globe. Shaping the Surface provides a deep critique and meditation on the importance of surface and materiality for architects, designers, and historians everywhere - in Britain and beyond - while it also serves as a thematic introduction to modern British architectural history, with in-depth readings of the works of many key British architects, artists, and critics from Ruskin and William Morris to Alison and Peter Smithson, Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Rogers and Caruso St John.

Nikolaus Pevsner was one of the most important and influential art historians of the twentieth century. He opened up new areas of enquiry in the history of art, revolutionising architectural studies in England and playing a key role in establishing the discipline of design history. Through his lectures and broadcasts, as well as the remarkable volumes in The Buildings of England series which made him a household name, he did much to encourage greater interest in, and understanding of, art and architecture among a wide public. This wide-ranging collection of essays, based on papers delivered at the conference held at Birkbeck in celebration of the centenary of Pevsner's birth, offers the first sustained critical assessment of Pevsner's achievements. With contributions by leading international scholars, the volume brings together a wealth of new material on Pevsner and his intellectual background, both in Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s and in England, particularly in the 1940s and 1950s.

Starting with the question concerning the discursive formation of architectural history, the chapters compiled in this book attempt to re-read the historiography of early modern architecture from the point of view of the theoretical work produced since the post-war era. Central to the objectives of the argument are the ways in which, firstly, architectural history differs from the traditions of art history, and, secondly, that the historical narrative works its autonomy through theoretical representation, the discursive flow of which is interrupted by the historian’s urge to support arguments with references to buildings, texts, drawings, and historical events. The historians discussed in this volume are those regularly addressed by most critics revisiting modern architectural history. Individual chapters are dedicated to N. Pevsner, H. R. Hitchcock, and S. Giedion, an economy of selection that is formative for a critical understanding of the canon established by these historians. Themes such as periodization, autonomy, and time are discussed, and the coda of the final chapter expands on the scope of “critical historiography” popularised by Kenneth Frampton and Manfredo Tafuri.