Oxford University's Museum of Natural History remains one of the most fascinating buildings of the Victorian era, with its blend of stonework, timber and iron being a reflection of its construction period, on the cusp of the industrial age, and just prior to the drive towards mass-production.
The building was designed to celebrate the advancement in scientific understanding of the natural world, particularly that native to the British Isles, by housing and exhibiting a vast collection of artifacts and curios that most people of the time could barely have imagined existed.
But as well as housing the museum artifacts, the building itself expresses facets of the natural world, not least in its incredibly detailed stonework. Every column at ground floor and first floor is carved and polished from a different sample of stone types from around the Kingdom, and every column capital and plinth, every boss and every arch, is decorated with carvings of different plant and animal species found in Britain.
The form of the building is that of a cathedral, with high gothic arches in the colonnades and roof structure, and yet the iron structure, despite copying the arrangement of timber and stone arches from the past, delivers a skeletal cage over the principle space that embraces and reflects the myriad of fossils and bones on display below. This frame also allows huge swathes of glass to let light flood in to the building, making the interior almost like that of an Italian country courtyard, with the passage of the sun giving the exhibits a new look with each new visit.
The building is a work of true genius, possibly the last of its type, born out of age old traditions, celebrating an incredible national natural history, and looking forward to an unknown future. Looking back over 150 years since it was built, its message is as relevant today as it was then, if not more so.
'Cherish the natural world, and seek to understand it. Without it, humanity will have no place on earth.'
Comments