Today, Ruskin's timeless observations are as relevant as they were in Victorian times, making The Seven Lamps of Architecture required reading for architects, students, and other lovers of architecture, who will find in these pages a thoughtful and inspiring approach to one of man's noblest endeavors. The author expounds these and many other ideas with exceptional passion and knowledge, expressed in a masterly prose style. It must preserve the purity of the materials it uses and it must serve as a source of power and renewal for the society that produces it. Architecture is an exalting discipline that must dignify and ennoble public life. In delineating the relationship of these terms to architecture, Ruskin distinguishes between architecture and mere building.

The 'seven lamps' are Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and Obedience. The book was published to immediate acclaim and has since become an acknowledged classic. Titled The Seven Lamps of Architecture, it was far more than a treatise on the Gothic style instead, it elaborated Ruskin's deepest convictions of the nature and role of architecture and its aesthetics. By the following April, the book was finished. In August of 1848, John Ruskin and his new bride visited northern France, for the gifted young critic wished to write a work that would examine the essence of Gothic architecture. 'I believe architecture must be the beginning of arts, and that the others must follow her in their time and order and I think the prosperity of our schools of painting and sculpture, in which no one will deny the life, though many the health, depends upon that of our architecture.' - John Ruskin.

The seven lamps of architecture summary