ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines modern architectural description as it had come to the fore in the mid 1900s, traces similar working methods, but very different intellectual conditions, in John Evelyn's seventeenth-century diary. It presents the three participants in the process of description: the writer and the reader – or the writer-viewer and the reader-viewer. While critics gained new importance in the fifties they also changed architecture in a twofold way: while they influenced the design process and architects' taste, they also determined how a building was looked at once it was built. The analysis of how Nikolaus Pevsner and Evelyn construct their architectural descriptions reveals shifts occurring in the attitude towards verbal representations, but it points also to commonalities in regards to the mechanics of modern description that emerged at the time Evelyn wrote up his travel experiences. Pevsner's unique style of writing underlines the impression of immediacy; there is a sense of condensation, sometimes simplification.
