Christopher Wren
Wren was a professor of astronomy before he became an architect. After the Great Fire of London in 1666 he designed St Paul’s Cathedral and 51 new City churches, whose spires long defined the skyline.
Christopher Wren was born in 1632 at East Knoyle in Wiltshire, the son of a clergyman. He studied at Westminster School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he belonged to a circle of natural philosophers who later founded the Royal Society. He became professor of astronomy at Gresham College in London in 1657 and at Oxford in 1661, and worked in mathematics, optics and anatomy. He came to architecture as an applied science. His first buildings were the chapel of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, where he solved the problem of a wide span with a timber roof truss. In 1665 he travelled to Paris, where he saw French architecture and met Bernini.
The Great Fire of London in 1666 changed his life. Wren put forward a plan for a new city with straight streets and squares, which was never carried out, but in 1669 he became Surveyor of the King’s Works and was given responsibility for the rebuilding. He designed 51 new City churches, among them St Stephen Walbrook and St Mary-le-Bow, with varied plans and spires that together shaped the skyline. His principal work is St Paul’s Cathedral, built in 1675–1710, with a dome consisting of an inner and an outer shell and a hidden brick cone that supports the lantern. He also designed the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, parts of Hampton Court and Greenwich Hospital.
Wren was knighted in 1673, lived until 1723 and was buried in St Paul’s. He created an English Baroque that was more restrained than the Italian, and his assistant Nicholas Hawksmoor and successors such as James Gibbs carried the style forward. His City churches with spires of several stages became models for churches in the British colonies, not least in North America. The dome of St Paul’s was later reinterpreted in, among other buildings, the Capitol in Washington. Wren is also an example of how natural science and architecture were intertwined during the Scientific Revolution. His Swedish contemporary, Tessin the Younger, worked on similar problems at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, but built in more direct dialogue with Rome and Paris than with London.