Victorian architecture is just one of many architectural styles that have influenced our way of living and the way we create our design concepts. Each style reflects attitudes to the crafting of buildings as well as the issues of cultural taste and appropriateness.
The Victorian era spanned from around 1840-1890.
Key notes on the Victorian style (with reference to Harmony Villa situated in a suburb of Cape Town called Gardens):
• On average their buildings stood closer to the street at about 3m.
• The house is symmetrically arranged around a central axis, although many Victorian buildings are not.
• The building is set on a podium, which is developed as a front veranda. This is one of many things that the Victorians did to exaggerate their buildings. By setting the building on a podium they have created a grander look, a look of a more “upper-class” type of home.
• Corrugated iron lean-to roofs are supported by cast iron columns and elaborate cast iron decorative frieze work.
• The elaborate stained glass door is set back by two projecting bay windows, by doing this they have created depth to the building and at the same time they have drawn you to the entrance of the home.
• The plastered façade consists of a decorative panel below each window, again giving the building a grander look.
• The walls/piers between the openings are coursed, creating the illusion of a “grand “scale.
• There are two symmetrically placed gable end roofs which bring expression to the bay windows. Also braking down the scale of the main roof.
• The small gable ends also have air grills and timber fretwork incorporated in them allowing for a more detailed finish
• Two fire places are symmetrically arranged with a third at the rear of the house which is asymmetrical but because of the third fire place not being visible from street level it does not affect the symmetrical design that they were leaning towards.
A class-conscious society:
The Victorian society was highly organised and rational, as evidence by the vast number of inventions and innovations during this period. They were a highly class-conscious society and were considerably concerned with the social protocols and ideas relating to social position.
On the whole the middle and lower income levels, Victorian houses are typified by sensible economic planning. Not always meaning that they were well designed.
Therefore the homes of the lower classes were designed to look grand and fashionable from what can be viewed from the street but typically none of the other elevations were symmetrical or decorative in any way.
Not only did the exterior of their buildings reflect this but so did the interior, space was not wasted and the rooms were large enough to accommodate the activities for which they have been designed. However the rooms were placed symmetrically with a central corridor but not always making the design better.
The rooms were not correctly orientated, by this I mean that because of the poor design and orientation of the rooms not all of them had the necessary amount of natural light entering them.
Also looking at the veranda on the east side (the road elevation) it has no significant importance but to keep the rain of the front porch, but another problem resolved from this is that it actually prevents more natural light from entering the building.
There other Victorian buildings that were designed on a grander scale and with less efficiency taken to note, they were eccentric, more mannerist and of course mainly owned by the upper class society.
Why?:
The reason for some of these buildings being designed the way they are was in the interest of minimising the cost of infrastructure, such as roadways and sewerage. Therefore townships were laid out accordingly.
The builders of the Victorian era often interpreted the plans of their buildings incorrectly and rather copied buildings from pattern books and often without any regards to orientation.
Some of the streets in Cape Town have identical Victorian buildings on either side of the road, once again a cause from poor orientation.
Decoration:
In Victorian homes each space was decorated differently with no evidence of trying to link the different rooms.
Floors were often created from suspended timber, but in more important areas brightly coloured, elaborate tiling was used. The porch and entrance hall of the Harmony Villa flooring are brightly coloured and patterned, although inside the tile layout and pattern has little relationship with the position of the door ways. This was because once again a pattern book was referred to which was very popular in the Victorian era.
Walls in the corridor are decorated below a dado rail with embossed wallpaper. The windows are double hung sash windows with elaborately designed frames on the exterior of the building. The doors were usually panelled doors with intricate mouldings or architraves on them. The most elaborate door being the front door with stained glass features.
A feature that was very common in Victorian architecture was to have the doors swing into the space, by doing this they have created more privacy giving people a moments grace before one has entered the room. Whereas, in modern architecture the door would swing against a wall giving the space a larger working area but also taking away that privacy.
The ceilings of the more important rooms were decorated with pressed metal panels and were painted in rich colours; where as the ceilings of the less important rooms were left plain and undecorated.
Harmony villa, one of many Victorian residential buildings were not always that large, although the design a crafting incorporated in them would not be classed as “low budget”.
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