A Modern Gothic

From 1837-1901, there is a gradual move to an era that architects are able to practice in many different styles. Style becomes politicized. Certain styles come to embody certain ideologies. Historicism is looking at history for the sake of it. You are religiously holding onto history, rather than engage with it to progress, you look at history as the ideal style. Revivalism, meaning you are going back to an older style. There was an accidental fire in the house of parliament. There have been a series of revival of styles. It is the house of parliament, so there is the question of what sort of building will be built, or what sort of style will it be in. One of the few surviving bits of the building is the great hall. The great hall is only surviving section of the building and it is gothic, so that gives a good case that the rest of the building was supposed to be built in gothic. On top of this, you had a government that was doing away with discriminatory policies (such as catholic hate). Some of this involved nostalgia of gothic and involved reconciliation for this style, it was pushed because of its political associations. Robert Smirke was assigned for the reconstruction of this project. 
There was a competition. In the brief, it was told that it needed to be gothic. Therefore, there were a bunch of people who submitted their designs and many architects were surprised that the need was gothic, and there are not a lot of people that practice in gothic. Charles Barry designs the Palace of Westminster. Barry will collaborate with Augustus Pugin who designed the wallpaper and carpet and smaller details of the building. Charles Barry is the mastermind of the building but Pugin is spoken as the actual gothicist. However, this building can really never be gothic and that is because the method and the manner of construction. The way this is built is that it adheres to how it was designed and drawn, then constructed. It uses modern material. The production methods are modern. The spatial aspects of the building are quite symmetrical. In that sense it is much more contemporary. That is what gothic revival implies, that means that the style is more about the contemporary moment of an idealized past. 
Augustus Welby Northmore Pugi designed a bunch of gothic revival churches. More than the architecture, he published a lot of interesting written pieces. In his book he contrasts the present day, that is dominated by neo classicism, with what he sees as the ideal past, that is the medieval past. He talks about things we have already talked about. He highlights around the medieval area and how things were centered around churches, he likes that because it distributes responsibilities. The congregation of the churches knit community and this is his model of society. For him gothic is an architectural style that aids social model. That is why he is praising the gothic style. He openly criticizes the Panopticon. He says the model of architecture that centralizes authority is not what he likes. The contrast of these things is how he manifests space. He is basically making a case of gothic/medieval architecture that is constructed gradually and ground up, that was built and designed by different individuals and these towns were built gradually, like the city of London, and as a result of mercantile links, monarchs were able to take over and carve through the town.