Oxford Museum of Natural History: A Temple to Nature as Revealed by Human Endeavour

Oxford Museum of Natural History, a Gothic beauty.

I'd like to share the ideas I've had for my research on religion, evolution, Gothic architecture and the Oxford Museum of Natural History.

Oh, the light pours in, illuminating the wondrous world of Natural History.  Religious?

I have yet to look into Deane and Woodward (the building's architects) but to this point, I have examined the work of John Ruskin, who was a large influence in the building's design.  Here's a look at the building's history if you want more information:  http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/learning/pdfs/arch.pdf.  Ruskin wrote a beautiful essay on Gothic architecture within the second volume of his Stones of Venice, titled "Nature of Gothic."

In this essay, Ruskin highlighted several characteristics of Gothic architecture that are, firstly, visible within the Natural History Museum, and secondly, seemingly inspired by the study of natural history and transformist ideas (the precursor to Darwin's theory of natural selection).   I will mention three of them, highlighting their places within the building and their connection to latent ideas of Victorian transformism.

The first characteristic of the Gothic style, "Savageness"

Ruskin seems fascinated with Gothic style's history because he believes it rose out of the constraints of the Northern Europeans' environment.  First, he describes the north as so:

"the earth [heaves] into mighty masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad waste of gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering into irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm, and chilled by ice drift, and tormented by by furious pulses of contending tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight"

He says these characteristics manifest in the style of Gothic, as follows:

"[the Northern European craftsman] with rough strength and hurried stroke, he smites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn from among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air of the pile of iron buttress and rugged wall, instinct with a work of an imagination as wild and wayward as the northern sea; creations of ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life; fierce as the winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds that shade them"

I find this very interesting because of two reasons.  Ruskin seems to view the Gothic style (or architecture in general) as adapted and influenced by its environment, just like evolving animals would.  He seems to think that the building style reacts to the cold by becoming more rough-hewn, and that the clouds that often come and go inspire the creativity to fill the building with various ornaments.  Or, perhaps he thinks that the harshness of the northern  environment, filled with ice 'like iron,' would inspire spindly, harsh, pointy buttresses and arches.  (Look at how pointy the arches are in the Museum!)

"Changefulness"


Ruskin believes that variation within architecture reflects the natural environment and is good for human health.  He also thinks that it allows the building to be adaptable to its design requirements.  He states:

"All the pleasure which the people of the nineteenth century take in art, is in pictures, sculpture, minor objects of virtu or mediaeval architecture, which we enjoy under the term picturesque:  no pleasure is taken anywhere in modern buildings, and we find all men of true feeling delighting to escape out of modern cities into natural scenery"

The Oxford Natural History museum certainly wouldn't have been the same without Gothic's ability to accommodate various forms of ornamentation.  The building itself is part of the museum.   Various ornamental capitals, column bases, and window mouldings display a plethora of natural species and features. (see below)

Pillars for the second floor loggia showcase various types of local stone, and the labels for these types of stone are even carved into the bases of the column -- emphasizing that the building is its own museum!  (see below)

The cast iron arches are painted with foliage, light seeps in through the glass canopy, and arches stretch outward from each column like branches of a tree.  You can tell that the building evokes this feeling within its modern visitors, as they have emulated it in the top floor of the building (see below).

Perhaps, even, Gothic style, for the Victorians, encapsulated the mechanism of life, which God designed to accomodate infinite variation and transformation.  Ruskin uses the pointed arch as his choice example of Gothic structural 'changefulness':

"The pointed arch was not merely a bold variation from the round, but it admitted of millions of variations in itself;  for the proportions of a pointed arch are changeable to infinity, while a circular arch is always the same"

Notice that the museum makes use of Ruskin's conception of changefulness -- look at how the arches are stretched and compressed to span different widths and stretch to different heights depending on their intended function and location.  Much like animals, the Gothic style could adapt to a building's programmatic needs.

"Naturalism"


Ruskin:  "The third constituent element of the Gothic mind was stated to be Naturalism; that is to say, the love of natural objects for their own sake, and the effort to represent them frankly, unconstrained by artistical laws."

Ruskin's words seem to reflect the new Victorian inclination towards the search for the truth through impartial, secular science.  This characteristic reflects the purpose of a natural history museum: to openly display specimens for examination by visitors. This characteristic, 'Naturalism,' brings me back to my point that the Gothic style allowed the Oxford Museum of Natural History to become a museum in its own right.  Even if all the displays were taken out of the building, in many respects, the building would still perform as a museum, with its various ornaments, faithfully carved and rendered by the hand of an attentive craftsman.  (The ornament in the museum took so much labor and time that all the ornament for the outside wasn't even completed because the budget ran short! ... see below)

If you look closely at the window to the right of this one, you'll notice it doesn't have any ornament like the one on the left -- whoops!

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Gothic was the perfect style for the Victorian Era because of its freedom from rigid architectural dogma.  The Gothic style, in its birth during the 10th - 13th centuries, had been a reaction to the rigid Romanesque style (hailing from Classical Greek and Roman architecture), which required symmetry and uniformity between architectural elements.  In Ruskin's words:

 "For in one point of view Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble."

Furthermore, Gothic style, since it had typically been used for churches when it was conceived, has always carried pious undertones with it.  The mingling of these religious undertones with a natural museum is interesting and quite intriguing -- it leads a visitor to think that the building might be a cathedral to nature!  By the end of my research on the museum, I would love to pin down some evidence that the architect thought of this building in this way.