The Seven Lamps of Architecture

Sacrifice - Architecture is an offering to God demonstrating men s love and obedience and surrender of themselves and theirs to His will (Ruskin, 1920, 

Truth Builders must use honest and true materials—erafted by human hands, not machines—respecting them and rejecting false ones. 

Power - The construction of buildings must focus on mass, quantity of shadow, breadth, sense of surface, size, weight, and shadow the efforts of the builders through their imagination should point toward the sublimity and majesty of nature. 

Beauty Architecture should point individuals toward God and reflect the design and decoration found in nature. 

Life - Buildings should bear the mark of human hands, celebrating the irregularity in design to show that the ornamentation is not mechanical and demonstrating the joy of the builders as they construct with freedom. 

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In The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Ruskin explains the meaning of the seven lamps. The illustration below (Figure 4.1) shows the connections that exist among these seven laws (Baljon, 1997, p. 402). 

Figure 4.1 Conceptual Scheme of The Seven Lamps of Architecture...

Baljon, C. J. (1997). Interpreting Ruskin The argument of The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 55(5), 401-414. 

Ruskin, J. (1920). The seven lamps of architecture. London Waverley Book Company. Available from http //openlibrary.org/books/OL13514059M/The seven Jamps of architeeture. 

The book I called The Seven Lamps was to show that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good architecture, without exception, had been produced. The Stones of Venice had, from beginning to end, no other aim than to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all its features, a state of pure national faith, and of domestic virtue and that its Renaissance architectme had arisen out of, and in all its features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and of domestic corruption. (Ruskin, 1866, p. 53)... 

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