Colen Campbell

Colen Campbell (15 June 1676 – 13 September 1729) was a pioneering Scottish architect and architectural writer who played an important part in the development of the Georgian style.

In the empirical vein, it was not a treatise but basically a catalogue of design, containing engravings of English buildings by Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren, as well as Campbell himself and other prominent architects of the era.

In the introduction that he appended and in the brief descriptions, Campbell belaboured the "excesses" of Baroque style and declared British independence from foreigners while he dedicated the volume to Hanoverian George I.

The third volume (1725) has several grand layouts of gardens and parks, with straight allées, for courts and patterned parterres and radiating rides through wooded plantations, in a Baroque manner that was rapidly becoming old-fashioned.

For example, Plate 16 of Vitruvius Britannicus, a rendering of Somerset House in London, was an inspiration for American architect Peter Harrison when he designed the Brick Market in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1761.

Palladian revival: Stourhead House , south facade, designed by Campbell and completed in 1720; a print from Vitruvius Britannicus
Wanstead House, as built, illustrated in Nathaniel Spencer , The Complete English traveller, London 1771
Marble Hill House, Twickenham
Blue plaque on 76 Brook Street, London W1
Title page , Vitruvius Britannicus; or, The British architect, containing the plans, elevations, and sections of the regular buildings, both publick and private in Great Britain, with variety of new designs , written by Campbell