Modern the Right Way - Otto Wagner

Kirche am Steinhof, Vienna, Austria by Otto Wagner, 1907.

The chapel of the local insane asylum, the beauty of the church is striking. It manages to retain the essence of classical architecture while not being completely classical. The church is filled with remarkable and exquisite figurative art, thus maintaining an essentially Catholic character. The main altar is just astounding.

If all modern were like this, I'd hardly complain.

What a Good New Classical House Looks Like

A New Classical Townhouse in Chicago (completed 2006)

You don't have to make a house look like a McMansion to have a classical house. Here's an example in Chicago that fits into the neighborhood and is beautiful. Perhaps I wouldn't choose the French Empire Style but the house works and will doubtless be treasured for generations.

Orange Diocese Selects Same Architect from Oakland for New Cathedral

When I read the other day that the Diocese of Orange California had chosen Craig Hartman of Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM) to design the new Christ Our Savior Cathedral in Santa Ana California, I was not at all surprised. Several months ago, Bishop Tod Brown tipped his hand that he had something in mind for the Diocese of Orange when he sent a request to Rome to remain in his office for five years past mandatory retirement age of 75 so that he might guide the long stalled Cathedral project.

What is surprising however is that a Bishop would chose to be swayed by today's latest architectural fads rather than engage and embrace the interest in beauty and tradition in architecture and art growing amongst the laity of the Catholic Church. On the contrary, Bishop Brown has chosen to use the Cathedral as quite strident rejection traditionally-minded people when the diocese stated "Bishop Brown has emphasized the diocese has no interest in copying the past."

So far nothing is known about the design other than this statement and what can be assumed from the portfolio of the architect and his well known (and widely criticized) design for the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland California. It is likely that the design for Orange's Cathedral will be in many ways entirely similar to the sleek modernist glass and steel monstrosity in the Bay Area. Like Oakland we can assume that the Cathedral will be devoid of all traditional indications that it is a church, both in its overall plan or liturgical layout, but also that apart from a few out of place works of ethnic or abstract art placed in random corners, the only thing that will say "this is a church" will be the sign on the highway.

Cathedral of Christ the Light by Craig Hartman of SOM

From the perspective of modernist architects, the elimination of ornament and beauty has been the modernist ideal for almost a century, but it is particularly disturbing that the church, or rather a few misguided members of the older "progressive" generation have embraced this line of reasoning for the purposes of being "culturally sensitive."

Recently I had the opportunity to hear Mr. Hartman speak about the Cathedral of Christ the Light at a conference at Catholic University of America. Hartman spoke in his talk of how when designing the Cathedral in Oakland of the need to build a church that was sensitive to the dozens of different cultures and ethnicities found in the Catholic population of the Bay area. Of course the most appropriate way he found to fill to that need was to create... a glass and steel box. To Hartman, the only way to create a building is of course to strip it of any symbolism or meaning that might refer to any particular culture. The reasoning according to Hartman and other modernists is in order to create a church that is culturally sensitive to all ethnic groups is to create a church that refers to the traditions of none of them.

If such a sophistical line of argument were genuine, (which I believe it is not, it's simply finding a convenient excuse to create what they always would have done), the argument is condescending to the point of being downright offensive, as they essentially are arguing that ethnic minorities are so unsophisticated as to be unable understand any other culture than their own.

Los Angeles' Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is also stripped of cultural symbols.

Experience however has proven the converse to be true, that diverse ethic communities embrace and love aspects of other cultures when they are introduced. For instance where large immigrant populations from Central America have settled in formerly Polish neighborhoods of Chicago, the Polish icons and paintings still hang proudly.

But as the saying goes: "if your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail," the modernist architect argues that stripping a building of all cultural meaning and symbolism is the only way to make it speak to a "universal" audience in the Church. The truth is that beauty is the most universally known thing to all human beings, and a beautiful church is the most culturally sensitive church one can design, so that all people may love it. Beauty and the embrace of traditions, rather than creating division, are capable of creating a deeper, richer and fuller synthesis of cultures than the cold, bare and lifeless designs modernist architects dream up for the Church.

Sadly, should Bishop Brown stay on for the next five years, this is precisely what the parishioners of the Diocese of Orange will get. This however is in my mind the last gasp of the generation of Church leaders enamored with the modern. Indeed I believe that Bishop Brown knows this and that he is taking on this project in his twilight years because he knows it is the last chance to impose his particular idea of the Church and what it's art should be.

Proposal for Oakland Cathedral by Domiane Forte (courtesy of the designer)

However, the people of the Diocese of Orange still have a chance, before it's too late, to express a desire for a beautiful Cathedral worthy of the traditions of the Church. While in Oakland the people spoke up too late, as the grass-roots campaign to have Dom Forte's design for Oakland replace Hartman's came very late into the process, people still have a chance to speak out in Orange. Perhaps a number of traditional designs be proposed and the people of Orange decide whether any of them or Hartman's design are better? Of course Bishop Brown and Hartman won't let that happen, as we all know what the result would be. As always, true beauty wins.

Haiti's Presidential Palace

Devastation of the quake at the Presidential Palace of Haiti
(photo by LisaandroSuero via Twitpic)

Due to the tremendous loss of life and suffering there, I've waited a little while to post these thoughts about the impact of this month's earthquake on the architecture of Haiti. There is a terrible habit of some professions to use tragedy as a convenient way to get publicity, even architects, so I waited to post these thoughts some time afterward.

One of the first things that I noticed in the photos of the devastation wreaked upon the island nation of Haiti was the destruction of the Presidential Palace in Port au Prince. This majestic beaux-arts building, according to wikipedia, was built by French trained Haitian architect George H Baussan, in a French imperial style.

My question is what will the fate of this building be in the reconstruction? Certainly I don't want to diminish the loss of tens of thousands of lives by quibbling over a building, but I do think it is an important thought. As some reports have said, the building's destruction has become symbolic of the destruction of the country as a whole, but will the reconstruction of this building in all of its majesty be the symbol of the reconstruction?

I hope, as many readers probably would guess, is that the building either be reconstructed as it was, at least in appearance. Or better yet, that a new classical building replace it. My worst fears however are that the building would be replaced by a modernist monstrosity, ala Thom Mayne's Alaska Capitol scheme.

Will Haiti get a Thom Mayne Deathstar Capital?

What are your thoughts? Would it be appropriate to design a new classical design? How about a competition to do so?

When a Survey Shows Britons Prefer Classicism, Architects Attack!

A short time ago, Robert Adam Architects commissioned a study along with The Traditional Architecture Group in the UK asking ordinary people which sort of building they preferred when they were shown this image.

The YouGov survey asked 1042 respondents to select a preferred building from a choice of four, in answer to the question; ”Please imagine a new building is planned to be built near where you live. Four different designs are proposed. Please look at the designs below. Which one would you most like to be built near you?” The illustrations show new buildings of a similar height, size and orientation to the street.

Much to the surprise of the architectural establishment (but neither to Adam, nor myself) the public preferred the traditional schemes by a three to one ratio. Predictably though the architectural press and heads of the prestigious architecture organizations in Great Britain used the survey as a launchpad for their invective against traditional architecture and ultimately on the public at large.

Having all the characteristics of a drunkard confronted with his addiction, the press and architects first deny the charge then move to attack their antagonists. Johnathan Glancey of the Guardian's response to the poll is fairly indicative when he questions the poll's accuracy.

Even if 77% of those who took part in the TAG survey preferred the superficial look of the two “traditional” office blocks, I wonder what they would have said if they had visited all four buildings?

Glancey would like to make us think that the public is somehow hoodwinked by just showing the facades of these buildings, and that the modernist buildings insides are really a lot better than the exteriors show. "You see, the public is just being fooled by only showing the exteriors, really they would love the place if they just got to know it. " Of course this just introduces an assumption that interiors of the traditional buildings are mediocre at best. Which is exactly Glancey's sentiment when he derisively dismisses the classical design:

"You can dress up an everyday office block in any facade you like, yet nothing will ever hide its matter-of-fact nature. Not only do floor heights give the game away — where are the piani nobili in the two “traditional” designs? — but you also know instinctively that behind those weakly expressed entrances lie ordinary speculatively built offices."

Margarine he says, assuming that the classical building is nowhere near the quality of the renaissance palazzo and therefore not as good as his modernist office block. Traditional architecture, according to Glancey, is incompatible with modern uses and is completely unable to adapt to the exigencies of "our modern times."

The two with “traditional” facades, however, are the least traditional of the quartet because the heyday of neo-classicism offered little precedent for the design of 21st century office blocks.

Such forgetfulness is par for the course for the adherents of modernism such as Glancey, conveniently forgetting that the pioneering architects of office blocks in Chicago were committed classicists such as Daniel Burnham, John Holabird and Cass Gilbert, again, living in denial. I suppose it's not too surprising to see such statements when the president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Ruth Reed, dismissing this same survey slammed classical architecture because the buildings shown are “frequently very expensive and often use unsustainable materials.”

To which Robert Adam replies with characteristic wit:

“I don't know what planet Ruth Reed is on if she thinks that the glass, steel and concrete favoured by modernist architects are more sustainable or cheaper than the natural materials like brick, stone and stucco used by traditionalists"

As I believe I've shown again and again before, the ridiculous canard of modernism being the sine qua non of sustainability holds as much water as the roofs of these same modern buildings.

But probably most offensive of all is the downright disdain they have for the opinion of the public at large. Glancey is again typical in his Glass-tower elitism when he condescendingly calls those who prefer the traditional designs stupid.

Once upon a time, seven out of 10 people claimed they couldn’t tell the difference between a heavily marketed margarine and dairy butter. How dumb were those people who couldn’t pick up on a difference that must have been as great as the gulf between modern movement and neo-classical architecture?

So if you prefer traditional architecture, you just like margarine because you are too dumb to know the difference. Glancey seems to say: "If you were as intelligent and educated as I am, you'd know the difference." But Glancey either has as Robert Adam claims such "lamentable ignorance of classical architecture" or he is simply not telling the whole truth. I'd prefer not to call someone stupid, as he would, so I think he just lies. Such are the ways of this drunken establishment, drunk from the excess of its power over the built environment for so long that it can only deny the plain truth in front of their eyes, attack traditional architecture and denigrate the very public they claim to be enriching.

I'd be happy to see the architectural press launches such attacks if I were Robert Adam and the classicists in Britain. They are only indicative that classical movement is beginning to resonate with the people, and the modernist establishment is losing its privileged status the sole arbiters of architectural orthodoxy.

I hope that someday the state of affairs on this side the pond will change and the architects and promoters of modernism will be forced to have a debate with tradition on its merits. Sadly however, without champions such as Robert Adam over here, the modernists still remain snug in their glass-tower elitism.

Could developing large parking lots help suburban churches fund improvements? Grenfell Architecture has designed this plan to help a parish create a more beautiful church using solid New Urbanist principles and traditional Virginia architecture.

The church occupies typically sprawling suburban lot, surrounded by seas of asphalt and low-rise buildings. However while I was working at Grenfell Architecture we tried to look at this project in a radical way. We came up with a plan to fix the disorganized sprawl of parking lots and low-rise buildings to create a new neighborhood and to truly make this church the center of a community.

The primary focus was to design a new church that better reflected the liturgical reforms of the past few years within the Catholic church. Since many parishes have only limited resources, we explored how a phased development could help turn this parish from asphalt-dominated auto-centric sprawl into to a walkable mixed-use neighborhood.

Both parishioners and priests alike have given this plan almost universally positive reviews. The pastor of this church has seen the plans and is amenable to the idea, but it does not represent any actual plans to construct this project.


1. This is the current site condition. The area is disorganized and chaotic, dominated by parking there is little in terms of good outdoor space, and the buildings do not create any ensemble in any way.

2. The first step is to create a system of streets. This begins to organize the area into a block structure. The streets are designed for on-street parking, amazingly providing an equal number of parking spots diffused about the site.


Note too that the connections are created to allow for this neighborhood to become a center to adjoining neighborhoods.


3. Parking now not being at a premium, the large parking lot facing the street is replaced by a section of shop-front commercial with apartments above. The corner would be anchored by a neighborhood size grocery store, and other small shops such as florists, coffee shops, or service businesses could occupy the rest. The apartments above see their first residents in anywhere from 10 to 20 apartments. These apartments would be ideal for elderly or younger couples who might not be able to afford larger homes.


4. The first set of 20 townhouses are built upon empty parking lots. The townhouses feature alleys behind with one or two car garages. These are geared towards families with children who might attend the local school.


5. The parish school which would be now after sales or lease of properties, be able to afford to build a new three story school. The school would have the same area of classes, but having a taller profile provides a more compact footprint.


Note: up to this point the only demolition that has occured is of parking lots. Already the campus has been improved tremendously.

6. Now having built a new school, the old school could be the first demolition, allowing for the construction of 28 new townhouses and another small section of commercial storefronts and apartments. The townhouses each feature the same rear facing garages and small yards behind.


7. Now the school could complete the reconstruction of the school by completing a rear wing with gymnasium that would create a pleasant interior courtyard. The courtyard also allows for light to reach all classrooms of the school.


8. Having completed all of the residential components, the parish could now use the funding that has been generated from the residential sales and commercial rents, to help build a new church. The new church here might incorporate a small historic chapel as part of the complex of the church, sacristy and rectory for the parish. The existing rectory would be removed, but the pastor could reside in an apartment or one of the townhomes while the new rectory is being built.


9. Now that the parish has a new church and chapel, the old church is demolished to complete the plan. A new set of storefront buildings would be finished in such a way as to create an orderly town square. The town square would be activated by having stores, coffee shops and both school and church functions on its green.


Between this commercial block a parking lot would be created to serve the commercial as well as the apartments built above. Using the topography, a parking structure could also be built behind, doubling the parking.


However, one would hope that since this neighborhood center would be home to almost 75 families, that the need for parking would be reduced significantly. The appeal of being able to be close to school, church and shopping, as well as possibly work, along with a local bus line running to Metro along the main road would encourage less auto use by residents.

The key though is the church as the center of the community. This principle is easily applied to followers of any faith, allowing for their own faith to be shared by their neighbors, and to provide visible witness to neighbors as well. Making the church not just a place where people go on Sundays but a visible and active part of their lives, giving residents something shared that brings them together as a real community.
All Images Copyright Grenfell Architecture PLLC.

Update: This post has been reposted on Greater Greater Washington, please go to this link to see the discussion there.

Novelty vs. Beauty

Following is the text of my article published on Catholic News Agency's website.

I'm also being interviewed on EWTN radio's Son Rise Morning show tomorrow (Sept 3) in the 8am hour about this article.

Here follows:

When I tell Catholics I meet that I’m an architect, invariably they ask me, “Why doesn’t the church I attend look like a church? Why don’t they build nice churches like the old ones we love?” Sometimes I come up with a complicated answer or theory, but most of the time I answer, “architects.”

In the United States, we have a fairly good tradition of building beautiful churches in which one can feel a true sense of reverence. One would be hard pressed to find a church built before World War II that wasn’t beautiful and beloved by its parishioners. It would be an even more difficult task to find such a church built after the World War that comes close to the beauty found in an average 1920s church and a Herculean task to find one built since the 1960s.

How is it that even within the Catholic Church, where we affirm and believe in the importance of tradition, that a deep and profound architectural heritage came to be abandoned? Again the answer is that architects, like so many other artists, have become obsessed with the idea of novelty. Most artists have been trained to believe by their mentors in 20th century art culture that only novel or “revolutionary” creations are worthy of being called art.

Today, I would venture to guess that most architects labor under this idea in one form or another. Some are truly dedicated revolutionaries, trying to undo centuries of tradition and casting aspersions towards traditional architects as backwards monarchists, luddites, or purveyors of kitsch. Most, however, are simply trying to be creative in the best way they can, some even maintaining an innate affection for the traditional, but still holding it at an arm’s length.

But in terms of high profile architecture, the revolutionary architects have been the ones that have caused the most egregious damage to the beauty of the Church, creating bunkers that one barely recognizes as a church, let alone a Catholic one. The Jubilee Church in Rome by Richard Meier, Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles by Rafael Moneo and the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland by Craig Hartman of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, to name just a few, are examples of the tremendous ugliness foisted upon the Church by these revolutionary modernists. Coincidentally, or perhaps quite logically, all of these architects are atheist or at least agnostic spiritualists. However, most churches we see daily in our communities are built by skilled, but uninspired, architects. A great many of them are committed and practicing Catholics, who nonetheless labor under the philosophical sway of the revolutionaries.

Now, most architects don’t want to rock the boat and become bomb throwing revolutionaries; they are content to go with the flow, while not realizing the philosophy they casually subscribe to contradicts the basic philosophy of their very own Church. Most believe, as do a great many Catholics, that progress is a good thing and so too even in the Church. A great many indeed believe, given the changes of the Mass and the art of the church that the Church during Vatican II embraced the idea of novelty writ large.

But this philosophy of novelty is contradictory to the teachings of the Church because it rests upon a fundamental belief of the modern movement: the absence of objective truth. A philosopher friend of mine explained to me that the one unifying strain of thought in modern philosophy is the belief that truth itself is not something to be discovered by man, but rather something that man creates. The classical philosopher, on the other hand, believes that truth is eternal, that we are by our nature made to seek and know the truth. To the modernist, however, there simply is not such a thing as objective, knowable, eternal truth. This belief in the absence of real truth is what is at the very root of this insatiable thirst for novelty.

The ancients believed that art was one of many ways that one could come to understand the truth, as was succinctly explained by Aristotle who wrote that “art imitates nature.” Now the Philosopher did not mean that art is just the drawing of what we call natural, such as bunnies or mountains or trees, but that art imitates the true nature of things, such as when we refer to our human nature. Art, therefore, is concerned with the truth about the nature of things: it imitates nature in order to teach us to know and love the truth. Aristotle states that human beings delight in knowing, and what in art is not concerned with delight?

What then is left for the artist to imitate if truth does not exist? If there is nothing of nature that is truly knowable then there is nothing to be learned from beauty, and art has little value over the enjoyment taken in its consumption. When there is no truth, only the new and different and shocking are the things in art that can be enjoyed.

But this enjoyment lasts only for a short time, because since there is nothing to be learned from these works of art, they lack the depth and weight to be a truly satisfying meal for the soul. If one looks at what passes for art today, it has become very thin gruel indeed. The insatiable desire of novelty has led to such abandonment of traditional forms and ideas of art that a pile of cigarette butts or the preserved corpse of a shark is considered the height of art. That such art is highly prized because it is “of its time” only shows how much art has devolved from valuing beauty, order and truth to merely a fashion or fad.

Previous generations of artists always relied upon the wisdom of their forbearers, building upon their techniques and their brilliance to find ever new ways to make beauty. Progress for architects in the past always was a fuller understanding of their craft, looking at precedent to create more beautiful buildings than the generations before. But today progress has little to do with precedent, discovering a fuller understanding of the truth and principles and working towards the end of wisdom. But again because modernists posit that those principles cannot be known, real progress towards wisdom is impossible, leaving behind only an insatiable lust for that new. Instead, the modern artist sees progress itself as the end, and calls novelty true architecture and dismisses all architecture based on tradition as worthless kitsch.

The philosophy of the classical mind stands in stark contrast with the modernist, believing that truth is real and it is a knowable thing. The classical architect embraces this idea and believes that truth is made manifest through beauty, for it is in beauty that we can come to know God. St. Thomas Aquinas says this in part when he says we know God through the order of the universe.

In architecture we only need to look to the examples of the past before the middle of the 20th century to see this beauty. By studying the great architecture of the past, especially the work of the Church, we can come to better understand the principles of beauty: order, proportion and magnitude. The more we study it the better we come to understand our own world and God’s ordering of it. Indeed, this is the true purpose of all art, to shed light on the reality of being through the beautiful, to make radiant the truth. Now to best understand these truths, such as the truths of the faith, we must look to the lessons of the past and emulate them. Not simply copy or parrot the works of past masters, but by practice learn the true principles of the art.

Understanding and emulating the beauty to be found in traditional architecture is key to the creation of true Catholic art. Through the principles of proportion and order, an architect can create sacred architecture that is entirely grounded in the principles of beauty that is found in tradition and that sheds new light on truth, and especially the truths of the faith. This is the amazing property of a beautiful church, it is at once ancient and new, just as beautiful today as it always has been, still speaking with clarity of the truth through beauty it possesses.

This is why the Second Vatican Council declared “the church has not adopted any particular style of art as her own,” because throughout the centuries of Catholic architecture, the lessons and principles of sacred architecture cannot be irrelevant in our or any other time, but are infinite, because they are from God. Indeed, our architecture should reflect the faith that God is the infinite and eternal principle of all things. Just as our theology teaches us, the truths of God are not exhausted or made irrelevant in any time, but have become better understood; our fuller understanding of the truth has made our past discoveries even more radiant.

So too the styles of architecture change, not by massive revolutions or by wholesale rejection of the past (such as how Walter Gropius famously threw all of Harvard’s architectural history books on the trash heap when he became Dean of the architecture school in the 1930s) but by slow degrees corresponding to the revelation of the truth through philosophy and art and the work of centuries of artists.

This is the future of a true Catholic architecture, one that embraces our human capacity to know and to experience the truth, both through our intellect and through the beauty of art. That we can create such beauty and that we ought to create this is evident from the teachings of the Church. We, however, must in many ways undo the damage done to the classical world by the march of modernism, both as a philosophy and in the practice of art and architecture. Philosophy and architecture need each other when it comes to this, for philosophy to define and defend the idea that there is truth and beauty, and for architecture to create beautiful works of art, informed by truth.

There have been signs of progress towards this ideal, where new developments in architecture are striving towards a fuller understanding of truth through the beautiful, such as at my own alma mater, Thomas Aquinas College. Here where the Great Books are studied not for their historic value, but as books that are critical to understanding ourselves, the world around us and God himself, a grand new chapel has been built to the glory of God. The Chapel of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity is not simply a replica of a Church, but a lesson in brick and stone of how ancient principles of beauty come to life in new and creative ways.

Inspired by both the high renaissance churches of Palladio in Italy and the local vernacular Mission churches of California, the chapel shows perfectly how this growth of wisdom happens. By blending together these different styles without an inordinate desire for novelty, a truly original piece of art is created. Here the architect Duncan Stroik rejected the notion that one must pursue the novel and embraced the beautiful forms that will endure for generations. This is the choice that all architects must make to create a true Catholic architecture.

When it comes to a choice between novelty for novelty’s sake and the beautiful, in our Catholic churches the beautiful and the true must always be chosen. We can create something new, a new way to see the beautiful, but not create a new beauty according to our own image. In this way we can create what is both ancient and new. Truth is as infinite as God is, to seek after it in our architecture is to create something worthy of God and our Church.

This resource is provided in collaboration with The Foundation for Sacred Arts.

Column on Sacred Architecture

I'm on the road talking to potential clients about some new chapel and monastery projects that I hope to finish in the coming months and post here. In the meantime, this past week Catholic News Agency has published my column on the state of Catholic architecture in a column titled Novelty vs. Beauty.

Classical Architect Memorialized with Sterile Modernism

Architectural Record reports this week that the firm David Woodhouse Architects has won a competition to design the memorial to Chicago architect Daniel Burnham. Surprising to no one, the sponsor of the competition, AIA Chicago (American Institute of Architects), has chosen to memorialize one of the strongest proponents of classical architecture in the United states with yet another banal and derivative modernist memorial. It hardly surprises me because the AIA, champion of the modernist architectural establishment, constantly seeks to promote modernism as the only possible form of architecture acceptable in our "modern" times. Using the a memorial to one of the greatest proponents of classical architecture, barely seems cynical, but given the sophistry of most architects it is hardly astounding that they would make such a bold claim.

The AIA find this fitting memorial to Daniel Burnham.

The focus of the competition should have given one pause, as the competition stated that the memorial's objective was:

To build a lasting and notable memorial that will inspire and educate the public, and honor the memory and importance of Daniel Burnham and his Plan of Chicago

The competition did not think it prudent to focus on his contributions to classical architecture as a whole, the Chicago Exposition of 1893, and the numerous grand classical places he created, from the Museum of ScienceChicago, to the National Mall and Union Station in Washington DC. and Industry in Instead, the jury exhibited an ignorance of these contributions and chose a memorial that supports only a vision of Burnham as proto-modernist.

The city of Chicago reflected on a blank wall.

DWA’s winning design central feature is a barren granite wall, ala Maya Lin’s Vietnam memorial, a move that was hailed by the press as daring in the 1980’s but remains as sterile now as it was then, but has since become such a ridiculously overused cliché. In the walls facing the lake and the Field Museum is traced the Plan of Chicago in “ribbons of burnished stainless steel” with sledgehammer subtlety. A life-size statue of Burnham stands next to the walls, unadorned and without pedestal, standing like a shabby professor before the blackboard.

The highly polished wall reflects the skyscrapers of the Michigan Avenue street wall and the skyscrapers of downtown Chicago proclaiming that this was the work of Burnham. This of course is false.

The architect’s own website describes that this wall “directs attention outwards towards the city – showcasing Burham’s vision by connecting us to its vibrant, unfolding reality.” The problem is the vista of downtown Chicago has little or nothing to do with Burnham. Chicago’s downtown, replete with what is now Grant Park, skyscrapers and the gridiron, was long in place before his 1909 plan.

Burnham's vision of "Paris on the Lake" is far from realized.

Burhnam’s plan, little of which has been executed, instead focused on creating grand public places like he created at the World’s Fair. Tree lined avenues lined with appropriately scaled and detailed buildings linked these places, from Lake Michigan to a civic center with a magnificent city hall fit for an imperial capital as Chicago saw itself (there is now a massive highway interchange at this very spot). The vision that Burnham saw was one of a Paris on the Lakefront, but again, the design ignores this and instead celebrates a vision that was not Burham’s.

Further proof of this motive is in the architects description of the memorial. Woodhouse claims that the

“Memorial's design is rooted in classical precedent (the Athenian Acropolis itself has a diagonal approach up an incline past an off-center cubic volume to a central pedimented portico)”

Such foolishness abounds in modernism, claiming that a ridiculously stripped down, asymmetrical and random plan is classical simply because one can find such things in ancient places. It is a one of the great logical errors to take accidents (things that are not essential) to be essential principles. Certainly a certain asymmetry was to be found in classical architecture, is found where other circumstances warrant. The example given forgets the Old Parthenon, destroyed by the Persians in the first invasion, was on center, but Pericles respecting this sacred place, left this ground clear.

This is classical scheme?

But this is only a continuation of the narrative, that modernism is classical or at least grew as a natural consequence of the classical, claiming Burnham as your own is a good way to. Holding that modernism grew naturally out of classical architecture is a useful argument when confronting the common man who rejects such monstrosities, but is highly cynical considering that the basis of modernism is the rejection of classical tradition. It takes another kind of mendacity to simply ignore the facts for the furtherance of such a dogmatic view of architecture. It is a sad testament that a memorial to a classical architect, its winner and most of the entries serve to reinforce the commonly held theme of the inevitable advancement of modernism, co-opt classical architecture to the service of modernism.

A further insult is that there were a few good classical designs actually appropriate to the content of this memorial. It is a shame that the Richard Driehaus put up the money to sponsor this competition, given his support of the Driehaus prize for classical architecture, but it is an added shame that two classical schemes got the short shrift.

I leave you with images from those schemes, who were among the 20 finalists, either of which would have enhanced and beautified the city. The firm Hammond, Beeby, Rupert and Ainge, submitted the first scheme which evokes both Burham’s civic center in spirit both in design as well as in the rendering. The last submitted by James McCrery Architects who worked with noted sculptor Alexander Stoddart, this design would have graced Chicago with some of the best sculpture in the world since Daniel Chester French’s Standing Lincoln in Lincoln Park.

Hammond Beeby Rupert Ainge's design evoking the rendering of Burnham's civic center.

The memorial evokes the architectural language of the Beaux Arts.

James McCrery's Scheme focuses on beautiful statuary placed prominent in he park.

Lecture tonight on Sacred Architecture

Tonight at the CIC, architect Art Lohsen of Franck & Lohsen Architects, will be giving a lecture entitled, Transcendent Beauty, the Importance of Catholic Architecture.

The lecture will be tonight, May 13 at 7pm at the Catholic Information Center, 1501 K Street NW, and is hosted by the Foundation for Sacred Arts.

I have attended this series thus far and have been impressed by the quality of the speakers and the topics as well. I encourage anyone interested in Catholic architecture to attend. I have another function I'm committed to, otherwise I would be there tonight.

Prince Charles: A Champion for Classicism

On March 25, His Royal Highness Prince Charles spoke out against a proposal by architect Richard Rogers to build a massive modernist apartment block in a historic district of London. The Chelsea Barracks scheme calls for superblock of glass and steel apartment buildings standing in a rambling anti-urban park setting, ala Corbusier, directly adjacent to the historic and beautiful Royal Navy Hospital built by Christopher Wren.


The Rogers design had a great deal of local opposition, and during an event at the Wren Hospital, Prince Charles weighed in and backed the opposition and also wrote to the chief financial backer of the scheme, the Emir of Qatar, urging him to reconsider the design. Predictably, the modernist establishment went apoplectic. Some accused Charles of "high-handed arrogance" and one architect said that his opinions were a return to the "era of the divine right of Kings."
In one "news" article the Terry design was described as "a classical pastiche," an overused cliche if there has ever been one.


Now I'm not going to comment so much on the designs themselves, I think readers of this blog will be able to predict my sentiments fairly well. (Feel free however to debate in the comments the merits or demerits of either scheme, I'll save my comments on the designs for then.) What I really want to comment on is the vital role that Prince Charles takes in the debates in the UK about architecture.

Prince Charles is no stranger to debates about architecture. Back in 1984, a modernist scheme had been proposed to the Sainsbury Wing for the National Gallery in London, and in an address to the Royal Institute of British Architects, described the proposed addition "like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend." The speech hit the architectural establishment like a sledgehammer, and did more than sink the design, it turned the entire architectural establishment on its head and allowed the door to open just enough to let classicism return to life.

Classicism by the 1980s was left for dead and for all intents and purposes, was dead. The number of architects who practiced architecture with a mind to tradition and beauty probably numbered only a dozen or so in the whole world. From this speech by Charles and further comments and speeches that followed over the years, he raised doubts about modernist architecture and its inevitable march, he raised the question, why not beauty?


Before Prince Charles gave his carbuncle speech, modernist architecture reigned supreme, triumphant and defiant. The few who would question the modernist establishment would have a difficult time even making it through university, and none would be able to rise to a level of authority to be a critic of the hegemony. But in the Prince of Wales, by virtue of his royal birth, classicism had for the first time in half a century a champion who would be listened to. Charles was a real voice for those who before had been dismissed as "nostalgic" and "backwards-looking." Certainly the architectural establishment still sneered at him for his traditional and classical leanings, but to the public at large he could not be ignored.

In the UK today modernism still reigns as the dominant force in architecture, but it has lost its monopoly hold on the culture. Today the work of classical architects such as Quinlan Terry and Robert Adam are routinely seen in the architectural press. Now reviews of classical work are dismissive and downright mean, they are not ignored in the way they are in the architectural press in the United States. To architects working in London, Robert Adam is as recognizable name as Lord Foster, whereas here in the US, classicists still labor in anonymity. I would venture that few architects outside the classical community even know of Allan Greenberg or John Blatteau, let alone recognize any of their work.

Prince Charles' criticism of modernism and patronage of classical architecture has opened architecture up for debate. That debate has been rancorous and uncharitable more often than not, but at least classicism is no longer ignored. I only wish that here in the US, good classical architects be taken as seriously as they are across the pond and not simply dismissed.