Supervisor: Prof James Campbell
Research overview:
Luka’s research looks at the design and construction of classical church interiors in seventeenth-century London. Starting in the early years of the century with a revival of investment in the fabric of parish churches, the process of repairing, re-building, and, on occasion, new-building churches in and around the City of London continued uninterrupted until the late 1680s, when the last of Sir Christopher Wren’s post-Fire churches broke ground. This project draws on parish records, extant building fabric, and contemporary architectural and religious literature, to consider the changing role and meaning of classical forms in spaces of public worship. It examines the use of such non-traditional elements as the columnar orders and classical vaulting within a sphere of architectural activity more than ordinarily bound by custom, and evidently resistant to interference from the emerging figure of the professional architect. The classical church designs of Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren are re-evaluated alongside buildings whose construction was overseen by parochial building committees, antiquarian patrons, and builder-contractors. The result is a greatly expanded field of inquiry, highlighting both the range of classical reference common to early modern builders regardless of professional background, and the extent to which Jones and Wren departed from established building practice.
Biography:
Luka began his PhD in October 2021, as part of the newly founded Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture at Downing College, Cambridge. He received his MArch from Yale, where he held the Edward P. Bass Fellowship in Architecture (2019-21), and his BA from Cambridge (2014-17). In addition to writing on early modern churches, Luka maintains an active interest in twentieth-century ecclesiastical architecture, especially the designs of Sir Edwin Lutyens, Sir Ninian Comper, and Joze Plecnik.