Click here to go to a recording of our 2016 lecture: Ruskin: Language and Architecture.

2016 - Ruskin: Language and Architecture

The Mikimoto Memorial Ruskin Lecture of 2016 was held on 17 November in Lancaster University's Management School (Lecture Theatre 1).

Speaker: Professor William Whyte (University of Oxford)

Title: 'Ruskin: Language and Architecture'

St Mark’s in Venice, John Ruskin once wrote, should be thought of "less as a temple wherein to pray, than as itself a Book of Common Prayer". But what does it mean to say that a building is like a book? What does this say about buildings? What does it say about books? In this lecture, Professor William Whyte explores why it was that Ruskin and his contemporaries so often saw architecture as a kind of language, and what this insight meant for the ways that Victorians built and wrote.

2016 - Ruskin: Language and Architecture