Defining ‘Movement’

A particular quality of the Adam brothers' exercises in architecture, which distinguishes the nature of their creativity from that of their contemporary professional builders, is the literary presentation of the ideas that formed their works. The motivation behind this can be partly explained by the carefully calculated strategy of the Adam brothers to present themselves as intellectuals and as members of an elite social circle and consequently differentiating themselves from professional builders and masons. This is also largely related to the intellectual and literary environment to which the Adam brothers attached themselves. Their institutional education and close contacts with the leading circle of British intellectuals, whose consistent interest in the expression of ideas in the form of writing characterized and advanced the intellectual development in their time, had the inevitable consequence that Robert and James regarded the publication of their personal ideas on architecture an important part of their architectural practice, which in consequence distinctively differentiated the nature of their conduct from that of professional builders.

The focus of this chapter is the substance of their ideas in written form and the primary attempt here is to give an explanation of their empirical inclinations. This will be accomplished through an examination of the impact of the new standard of aesthetic appreciation established under the tradition of the empirical epistemology upon the formation of their architectural theory.