We are delighted to announce that Dr Manolo Guerci, Reader in the Kent School of Architecture has been recognised at the Historians of British Art Book Awards 2023, with his book London’s Golden Mile: The Great Houses of the Strand receiving the award for a single-authored book with a subject before 1600.
In London’s ‘Golden Mile’, Dr Guerci analyses the design, patronage, and ownership of eleven of the early modern townhouses built along The Strand in London. These brilliant, aristocratic residences did not belong to the street-facing London of today. Nine of them faced the River Thames, a fact to remind readers of the store that was set in forging relationships between architecture and water.
Dr Guerci is appropriately sensitive to such relationships, and he brings these houses effectively to life through detailed description and illustration, making expert use of surviving records, many of which have never been published before. The result is a pioneering work that embodies a highly readable mix of architectural and social history.
Dr Guerci is an architectural historian trained both as an architect and historian in Rome, London, Paris, and Cambridge. His interests and expertise range from domestic architecture in Early-Modern Europe to Modernism, Japan, and Post War; from conservation principles and theories to construction processes and building techniques.