The Evolution of the Victorian Art School

This article seeks to document the architectural history of the Victorian art school type, beginning with the search for a home for the Government School of Design following its expulsion from Somerset House, to the construction of purpose-built studios behind the new museum complex of ‘Albertopolis’ in South Kensington, and finally to its proliferation through the major industrial cities of Britain where the most significant examples of the type would be realised. Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow Schools of Art reveal an unprecedented concern for the design of an ideal internal environment in the context of the polluted industrial Victorian city. These buildings were symbols of the possibility for the diffusion of art culture in a rapidly transforming society. The art school embraced the architectural potential to be found in the synthesis of the functional requirement for the provision of plentiful light and air, with the desire for an appropriate formal expression for a new kind of public building (supported by local rates), properly fit for its place in the civic heart of the city.