A Treatise on Civil Architecture

Sir William Chambers (1722–96) was a Swedish-British architect with an unusual track record. He designed imaginative castle buildings and luxurious interiors as well as simple and rational utilitarian architecture. After growing up in Sweden, he worked mostly in England, where he became a favorite of King George III. But throughout his life he emphasized his Swedish background and also designed buildings in Sweden. A Treatise on Civil Architecture is a handbook in architecture, where Chambers wanted to explain the basics of the art of building in a pedagogical way. Even today it serves as an excellent guide to the secrets of classical architecture with concise texts and beautiful plates with both details and overviews of different building types and their functions.

About the Authors:

Frank Salmon is Associate Professor of the History of Art at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Since 2021 he has been Director of the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture at Cambridge. He is an architectural historian specialising in British and European architecture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among his many publications are the book Building on Ruins: The Rediscovery of Rome and English Architecture.

Clive Aslet is an award-winning architectural historian and journalist. During a long association with Country Life, he was editor for 13 years. As author of The Edwardian Country House, The American Country House, Landmarks of Britain and Villages of Britain, he is an authority on the countryside, British history and architecture, and life at the turn of the twentieth century on both sides of the Atlantic. A lifelong advocate of Classicism, he helped establish the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture at Cambridge in 2021.