Classicism and Empire Style
In the second half of the 18th century, particularly after the coup of Gustav III a new direction was taken employing classical precedents. In 1773 the Building School of the Academy of Arts was founded, shortly afterwards the Office for Supervision of the Building Industry was instituted. Both raised the quality of architecture, but at the expense of local building traditions. Testimony to the new classical ideals in architecture can be found in the Palace Theatre in Gripsholm, the Botany building in Uppsala or the high school in Härnösand.
After the Napoleonic Wars and the loss of Finland, national building activity was concentrated within the military sector. The Karlsborg Fortress and the Göta Canal, employing 60,000 men in a 23-year period, were the largest Swedish building projects of all time. The leading architect of the first half of the 19th century was also a soldier, Colonel Fredrik Blom, he designed a series of barracks and also the classically styled Skeppholm Church in Stockholm and, as the house architect to the royal family, he built the Rosendal Palace.
Read more about this topic: Architecture Of Sweden
Famous quotes containing the words empire and/or style:
“Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)