Open to all: Architectural Education

It is as difficult to determine what constituted the education of “the” architect in the eighteenth century, as it is to define the architect. The Builder's Dictionary of 1734 describes the architect as “a Master Workman in a Building, he who designs the Model, or draws the Plot, Plan or Draught of the whole Fabrick; whose Business it is to consider the whole Manner and Method of Building; and also to compute the Charge and Expence.” This differs from Colvin's “modern architect”: “a professional man set aside from the building trade by education and specialized training. His architectural expertise is acquired by academic instruction rather than by practical experience, and his approach to design is theoretical rather than empirical. When he designs a building he envisages it as a whole and works it out in detail on paper before transmitting the drawings to the executant builder.” In the eighteenth century, we encounter both the workman architect and the modern architect. What separates them is their education. This chapter attempts to look at the availability of architectural knowledge and how it fueled the professional formation of individuals from different backgrounds who, in retrospect, have come to be identified as architects. It will mention more traditional trajectories and new developments, without claiming to be exhaustive or do justice to the wide range of possibilities on offer throughout Europe. The opportunities and initiatives presented here are loosely tied by the idea of Enlightenment as a pan-European process of rationalization and secularization that emerged in the later seventeenth and continued all through the eighteenth century. Exemplary cases and familiar names from England and France that have been studied extensively by Anglo-Saxon scholars, alternate with less well-known figures in other areas, to illustrate some unique initiatives as well as hint at numerous parallels in the creation, transmission, and appropriation of architectural knowledge, and our often still incomplete grasp of it.