Nicholas Hawksmoor: London Churches: Seven Churches for London

This exquisite book is a little work of art.It includes black and white photos of Hawksmoor's churches (from unusual points of view, details, perspectives), and they are very rich in detail, textures and tonalities.The book also brings high quality reproductions of old drawings by Hawksmoor and new commissioned drawings of his buildings (yellow lines on a black background).There is a short introductory essay, but the book is about images (drawings and photographies), not text.The general design of the book is inspired and delicate.

Stunning & evocative photography and plans of Hawksmoor's churches - which I found transported me to being back in those places.

This is a beautiful book of considerable quality. The introduction isn't substantial and full of convoluted clauses where simple explanations would suffice, but the photographs are remarkable. I'm very happy with it.

The layout and architectural comments in this book make this to be the best publication on Hawksmoor, to date.

Being a London based architect I did a tour of the Hawksmoor churches with my DSLR a couple of years ago so I know the buildings reasonably well. I also have the publications by Kerry Downes and Vaughan Hart on this great British Master and I'm sorry to report that in my humble opinion, this book would struggle to be worse.The handsome cloth cover promises a level of authenticity and rigour which the pages just don't deliver. The opening text I found rather glib, mentioning populist references like the Ackroyd novels and obvious one's like the 70's PoMo interest, completely missing the fact that architects such as Lasdun and Stirling (very probably, along with Foster the greatest modern architects Britain has ever produced) rated Hawksmoor extremely highly 'before' PoMo.Then there are the Black & White photos the 'precision' of which the author is at pains to emphasise, but which in actual fact suck all the life out of the architecture. Black and White photo's completely fail to register the extreme, yet wonderfully sullied, whiteness of the churches in comparison to their immediate context, and thus fail to illustrate their palpable 'preciousness' amongst a sea of dross. Black and white photos also fail to illustrate the multifarious ways in which these white stone buildings have been attacked by the weather, pollution and so on, over the years. It is not just a case of 'Black' and 'White'; there are browns, greens and other colours also, and we can't see any of them, surprising from a man who once authored a book called 'On Weathering'. The photos also seem too bright. Inside Hawksmoor's churches one senses very strongly the 'weight' of these heavy stone buildings; light penetrates into the interior with wonderful difficulty and there is no sense of this in the book at all.The strategy of using Black and White can work well, as in the case of Argan's 'Michelangelo Architect' (was this book trying to 'ape' that one?). But Michelangelo's works are situated in harsh Italian sunlight amongst a sea of stone buildings, while London is a place of silvery grey skies, grey pavements and buildings, rain and blunted colour.Then there are the drawings, inexplicably Orange line on Black (or dark Brown) paper? And reduced/simplified in the extreme so that the capitals of Hawksmoor's churches are rendered as empty trapezoids. Is this laziness or lack of appreciation of one of the chief aesthetic merits of classical architecture, namely that contrast between fine filigree and bulk/expanse; something Hawksmoor (to his very great credit) was particularly sensitive to. Whichever it is, it is inexcusable in my humble opinion. I myself have drawn capitals on classical buildings quite a few times during the course of architectural practice, simply because it's 'the right thing to do', knowing that they will never be seen by anyone but planning officers, but to 'not' do this for publication! Inexcusable I feel.Then there is the ruthless editing. For example, St George in the East was bombed during WW2 and has a '60's interior which has been completely omitted from the book. I find this dishonest and patronising.I was suspicious when I read that the book was based on material displayed at the Venice Biennale (an event which seems to get more ridiculous every year) but I didn't expect it to be this bad.