Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852), English architect and furniture designer, who championed the 19th-century Gothic Revival in England. His first and most influential work was his quasi-ecclesiastical interior and exterior decoration and furniture for the new Houses of Parliament (begun 1836) in London, designed by the British architect Sir Charles Barry. This work, along with his 1836 treatise Contrasts on the Gothic style, earned him many commissions, and he executed a large number of churches, town and country houses, and municipal and collegiate buildings. Pugin's devotion to the Gothic manner was based more on his reactionary, somewhat fanatical, religious convictions than on any inherent understanding of Gothic architecture itself; his executed designs tended to be stiff and two-dimensional. His influence on Victorian English architecture and interior design was derived mainly from his books and published drawings.