SOANE, Sir John - b. 1753 Goring, d. 1837 London - WGA

SOANE, Sir John

(b. 1753 Goring, d. 1837 London)

English architect and collector, notable for his original, highly personal interpretations of the Neoclassical style. He is considered one of the most inventive European architects of his time.

In 1768 Soane entered the office of George Dance the Younger (1741-1825), surveyor to the City of London. In 1772 he went to Henry Holland (1745-1806)as an assistant, and from 1772 he also attended Royal Academy of Arts schools. Granted a traveling scholarship by King George III, he went to Italy in 1778.

As a country house architect, Soane had modest success until he was appointed architect to the Bank of England in 1788. Various government appointments followed, and in 1806 he succeeded Dance as professor of architecture at the Royal Academy. He was knighted in 1831.

The list of his works is extensive. Some of the finest are his rebuilding of the Bank of England (1788-1833; later rebuilt), Dulwich College Picture Gallery (1811-14), London, and his own house in London at 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields (1812-13), which is now Sir John Soane’s Museum.

His style is characterized by a tendency to reduce Classical elements of design to their structural essentials, the substitution of linear for modeled ornamentation, frequent use of shallow domes and top lighting, and ingenious handling of interior space.

Exterior view

Between 1792 and 1824, Soane successively bought three houses in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which he converted into a residence, office and exhibition area for his art collection. The buildings are typical Georgian terrace houses of brick, each with three narrow windows axes facing the street, with great depth towards the rear, and with a backyard. Only the central building was given a projecting fa�ade of dressed stone. The fa�ade is characterized by a combination of classicising and medieval elements, something completely new that time.

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Interior view

Soane developed a highly austere, even somber, archaic-looking architecture with dramatic light effects, that had much to do with the architecture of the French Revolution and is nonetheless very original. Absolute reduction is the most prominent feature of the painting gallery that Soane built for the Dulwich College in London. This innovative construction is the first detached museum building in England and one of the first top-lit exhibition buildings in Europe. The extended succession of five exhibition rooms projects into two short wings to the west.

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Interior view

In his own house in London, Soane brought together all his design features: top-lighting or side-lighting (direct or indirect) illuminating a room in unusual ways; domed rooms; and the reduction of Classical grammar to the simplest, basic rectangular form and flat linear patterns.

The photo shows the breakfast room.

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Interior view

The photo shows the Dome.

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Interior view

Soane’s commissions up to 1791 had been mainly for country houses. In Wimpole Hall in that year, he first put into practice the idea of top-lighting, a domed interior lit from above, which would become a leitmotif of his work.

The photo shows the interior of the Yellow Drawing Room, which is constructed over a square with two lateral apses and a barrel-vaulted long axis. Over the centre space, Soane combined a a pendentive and umbrella dome, which opens into a large glass lantern.

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