Context, Image and Function: a Preliminary Enquiry into the Architecture of Scientific Societies

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Abstract
From the late eighteenth century onwards, urban life underwent increasingly rapid change as towns outgrew their limits, industries polluted their skies and rivers, and a host of new types of building appeared to cater for new needs and activities. Not only did towns look different, but, as Thomas Markus has said, ‘they also ‘felt’ different in the organization of the spaces they contained.’ Buildings which housed scientific activities—the learned societies, literary and philosophical societies, professional institutes, mechanics institutes, and by the end of the century the new civic universities—were one manifestation of this different ‘feeling’. These were quite new types of building, and we should therefore expect them to give us valuable information about the development of science, about ‘images’ of science and the meaning of those images, as well as the actual practice of science.