This thesis is a study of the fifteenth-century convent of S. Chiara in Urbino, designed by the Sienese architect Francesco di Giorgio Martini, and instigated and financed by the ruling Montefeltro family. It investigates the building's foundation, history, patronage and form. It is divided into five chapters. Chapter One deals with the history of the building's foundation and construction. It considers when construction work began and under whose patronage, and analyses major structural changes undertaken at the convent, presenting new evidence that the construction was planned much earlier than previously thought, under the patronage of Guidantonio da Montefeltro. Chapter Two considers the process by which the building was designed, discussing drawings in the hand of the architect Francesco di Giorgio of relevance to S. Chiara It clarifies the previously disputed purpose of a drawing of key importance to S. Chiara and demonstrates that this is clearly a project drawing by the architect. Chapter Three attempts to reconstruct the original Martinian design for the convent as begun. It suggests that this design may have been far more ambitious than previously thought. Chapter Four examines Clarissan convent design and considers S. Chiara as an example of its type. It demonstrates that despite the fragmented nature of the Clarissan Order and the variety of circumstances in which convents were founded, it is still possible to discern common themes in Clarissan architecture. Chapter Five locates the convent in the oeuvre ofthe architect Francesco di Giorgio assessing the building as an example of his work. It demonstrates that as a convent S. Chiara is remarkable, with features such as a two story garden loggia and a spiral ramp that were novel to both convent design per se and Italian Renaissance architecture as a whole.

This thesis explores a range of architectural issues that are raised by the oeuvre of the artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978). In particular, it examines the ways in which his oeuvre might expand our understanding of the central tenets of architectural modernism, and valorise some issues that modernism downplays or denies. The thesis developed as a response to an awkwardness observed around the reception by both architects and the art world of Matta-Clark's work. It proposes that recent changes in this reception have involved the erasure rather than the acknowledgement of the causes of such awkwardness. In contrast to this general tendency, the thesis suggests that these causes are significant, and that for architecture in particular they provide a resource that can raise a number of important questions for the contemporary situation.

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These published texts deal with the historical analysis of the making and remaking of modernism in British architecture. The book, Mediating Modernism: Architectural Cultures in Britain takes a chronological series of case-studies which reflect different phases of this history from modernism's introduction, its application and its modification, to its ongoing reappraisal. It is not, however, intended as a positivist history that outlines historical progress, and neither does it aim for completeness: each of the seven chapters after the introductory section aims to develop a discrete narrative of architectural thought within a specific discourse, and thus can be read as a separate study. The focus in each case is on the expression of architectural ideologies through publications and other cultural outputs that are deemed to have been crucial to the shifts in architectural thought and practice of their time. Having said that, the discourses chosen for study are arguably the most historically significant and the most influential, even though much architectural work and very many other architectural publications make no appearance in its pages. The three other published texts submitted here subtend directly from the concerns of Mediating Modernism and were published earlier. Travels in Modem Architecture 1925-1930: Howard Robertson and FR Yerbury extends the account of the early British publication and influence of European modern architecture to be found in the latter part of Chapter 1 of Mediating Modernism. Birmingham: Building the Modem city forms a case study of the application *of modernist ideas of rebuilding and, while a separate and specific study, expands on the concerns outlined in Chapter 3 on the Abercrombie plan for London. Eric de Mare and the Functional Tradition makes a more extensive case for De Mare's contribution to the post-war discourse of material and place which is the subject of Chapter 4.

Historiography has tended to neglect architecture in painting, or to envisage it as a lesser counterpart to built architecture and as a means to create pictorial space. This study seeks to redress the lack of research on architectural settings, arguing for the agency of fictive structures and proposing rhetorical theory and place, rather than space, as heuristic tools for their interpretation. It offers four main contributions to scholarship on Italian medieval and Renaissance painting. Firstly, it illustrates how fictive architecture creates place, constructs the narrative, and engages with the viewer. Secondly, it clarifies the relationship between place and architecture in painting by identifying and qualifying two main approaches to the representation of place: portrait of place and hybrid place. Thirdly, it explores the communicative capacity of fictive buildings, demonstrating the rhetorical power of the structures in Altichiero’s Oratory in Padua and Fra Angelico’s Chapel in the Vatican, and illustrating the potential of a rhetorical approach for the interpretation of architecture in painting. Fourthly, it contributes to bridging the historiographical gap between fourteenth and fifteenth-century art. The thesis opens with an analysis of how place was understood in fourteenth and fifteenth-century Italy, revealing the complexity and metaphorical valence of the word 'luogo' and underscoring the rhetorical nature of fictive architectural places. This study posits that rhetoric pervaded late medieval and Renaissance Italian culture, arguing that Trecento Padua and Quattrocento Rome were particularly receptive environments to rhetorical culture and deploying seven rhetorical terms as interpretative instruments. These seven rhetorical terms, selected from primary sources, clarify how artists created fictive architectural places, and help to scrutinise the possible meanings and messages that painted architectural place conveys. By emphasising the central role of architecture in painting, its crucial relationship with place-making, and its powers of persuasion, the thesis demonstrates the relevance of the architectural imagination of artists for a better understanding of painting, built structures and the articulation and perception of architectural identity in this period.

Over the last four decades, the built environment in Saudi has lost its traditional identity, as a result of the economic boom. The characteristics of construction heritage in Saudi cities have been affected and exposed to a lot of harm. Tabuk is one of the cities that face a crisis with regards to its traditional identity in the built environment, due to the lack of maintenance by the owners and leaseholders, in addition to changes made to the buildings, in order to meet personal needs. As a result of the extremely poor services provided in the old town and with no particular planning policies for the development of the old city, most of the significant old buildings have been damaged. The development is likely to negatively affect these places due to the change in the residents' economic conditions and their rapid and collective move to developed areas surrounding the city. Most of the inhabitants of Tabuk associate the traditional buildings with a negative appearance and believe that traditional buildings are not suitable for modern life. Therefore, many old buildings have been removed and new buildings have been constructed in the old city, although these new buildings do not represent the local identity. Additionally, the traditional way of life in the old city is usually accompanied by poor social conditions . This makes it necessary to study the transformation of traditional identity in the old city of Tabuk, in order to find ways of preserving our heritage in the built environment. This research presents an investigative study to understand why the traditional identity of the built environment has been lost and why we need to preserve it. This study has adopted a mixed method approach because it is necessary to understand the reasons behind this crisis, in addition to the relationship between people and their physical environment. The interaction between people and physical form required the researcher to study the traditional built environment in Tabuk, both prior to and after the changes. Moreover, not only did the physical environment require to be investigated, but also the perceptions of the local people towards the alterations, as well as the impact of these changes on their sense of place in the old city of Tabuk.

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Modern architectural theory was a product of the encounter between the classical tradition, formed on Greek and Roman ideas in the Italian Renaissance, and the subjective aesthetics of eighteenth century Britain. Resulting ideas and buildings of the early nineteenth century were the precursors of the architecture and theories of the 1920's and 30's. The development of classical architectural theory is studied in the writings of the philosophers and architects who contributed its leading ideas. The relative importance of the two basic themes, 'reason' and 'experience', was established by Plato and Aristotle. The consequences of their ideas and priorities for architecture can be seen in the treatises of Vitruvius and Alberti. 'Reason' as the way to absolute beauty became the cornerstone of Renaissance theory, while 'experience', subjective and therefore relative, was rejected as leading only to inconsistent and erroneous opinion. In the seventeenth century the critical heritage of the Greeks bore new fruit in the rationalism of Descartes and his successors, and particularly the British 'empirical' philosophers of the eighteenth century. Criticism of classical theory by Perrault, Cordemoy and Laugier in France led to a more rigorous 'rational' theory, still essentially classical in its emphasis on the absolute qualities of building forms. In Britain rational analysis of subjective 'experience' led to a comprehensive aesthetic theory based on the association of ideas and most expounded by Archibald Alison in 1790. Further consequences of the rationalism of this period were the revolutionary economic and political changes which shook France and Britain and had far-reaching consequences for architecture. Most advanced in Britain, these changes together with the new aesthetic theories had their most direct architectural effects on the design of smaller houses. The many books of cottage and villa designs published around 1800 record both the architecture of the period and the ideas on which it was based. Particular attention is given to the writings of J.C. Loudon as the most comprehensive exposition of advanced pre-Victorian theory. The development of architectural ideas in Victorian and modern times shows both continuity with earlier streams of thought, and significant changes in particular as the failure of traditional theory to cope with social change became critical. The writings of Pugin, Ruskin, Fergusson, and Morris reveal the scope of Victorian theory and its contribution to modern thought. The transition from Victorian to modern architecture is shown in a comparison of Lethaby and Muthesius that also exposes a significant divergence in the tendency of their ideas. Their ideas led directly to the architecture of the early modern period. A final comparison of early modern and pre-Victorian ideas and buildings exposes the limitations of modern architectural theory.

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Whilst the chivalric aspect of public schools has received some academic attention, most notably from Mark Girouard in The Return to Camelot (1981) where he explored Clifton College, few authors have examined provincial public school architecture using an approach that goes beyond mere description. Girouard's work was the departure for my own thesis. There has been no adequate or full study of the influence of chivalry, its history and myths, on the architecture of public schools and the effect that the resulting Gothic ambience had on students. Previous studies concentrated exclusively on boys' schools; my thesis is the first study to contrast the effect of the chivalric myths between Cheltenham College (1841) and Cheltenham Ladies' College (1854), undeniably crucial exemplars of Victorian public schools. These schools were established in a formative period for modern Britain, a period of urbanism, educational revolution and religious revival - all of which have left an imprint on their architecture. The close physical proximity and foundation dates of the schools, their shared governors, architects and patrons, make them an appropriate, rewarding and self-contained case study. The provincial location of these schools has allowed their architecture to be overshadowed by their more illustrious cousins. I contend that both schools inhabit buildings of outstanding architectural importance deserving of attention.