Abstract
Although, the growing impact of bureaucratic procedures on architectural planning may strike us as typical modern, its origins go back to the Late Middle Ages. To control the ever-increasing cost of building, the French and English courts introduced a centralised governance in the late fourteenth century. Other princes, among whom the Dukes of Burgundy, soon followed suit; the dukes introduced a centralised administration to effectively organise and control the many construction sites in their domains in the Low Countries. I will argue in this paper that this was not only a financial reform, however; it also represented an important step towards a more rationalised architectural planning. The rediscovery of a vast part of the early sixteenth-century building administration of the Duchy of Brabant allows to understand how meticulously well planned and monitored construction for the court was in the Low Countries.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Building knowledge, Construction Histories (Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress on Construction History (6ICCH) |
Editors | Ine Wouters |
Place of Publication | London |
Publisher | CRC Press |
Pages | 81-87 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 978-0-429-50620-8 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-1-138-58414-3 |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |