The Case of Classical v. Modern Comes to Federal Court

Washington Post ^ | September 15, 2007 | Roger K. Lewis

[Lorianne]

What architectural design issues most concern you?

Perhaps carbon emissions, universal accessibility or the challenge of preserving at-risk historic properties? Maybe you think less about buildings and architectural design, and more about the shape of your community and the broader public realm.

However, you probably rarely worry about which architectural style is appropriate for which kind of building, about whether columns should be Doric, Ionic or Corinthian. Many architects, however, feel passionately about competing design philosophies, and one competition in particular persists: classicism versus modernism.

Much of Washington's architecture, typified by use of classical motifs derived from Greek and Roman antecedents, is emblematic of this ongoing debate. For most of the past 200 years in the nation's capital, classicism has dominated at the expense of modernism, more so than in any other major U.S. city.

Architects advocating classicism today enunciate a rationale that originated with the Roman architect-engineer Vitruvius, who during the first century B.C. wrote what is considered civilization's first design treatise. Rediscovered during the Renaissance, the Vitruvian stylistic rationale has been reinterpreted every century since.

The arguments for classicism are clear: a well-studied, venerable kit of repeatable parts -- pediments, entablatures, cornices, columns, arches, vaults -- for making buildings; a quasi-mathematical system of rules for proportioning and assembling those parts to yield structurally durable, unified compositions; and compositional imagery instantly familiar to the Western world, which is presumably most at ease with traditional architecture.

Architectural classicism, its advocates insist, is deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche and therefore should be the style of choice, especially for culturally or politically significant buildings.

[neb52]

I like the huge airy open expanse of classical design. There something about it that feels natural, like it should be there and always has.

[SunkenCiv]

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[Blind Eye Jones]

They should built Court Houses in the style of the DNA helix so that one can symbolically look to our physical makeup with the hope that man can find and correct the genes responsible for some of our social problems. One thing the article fails to note is that white is always the colour of classical architecture; perhaps, for those with an eye to the different colours of race, it means that it is not a white man’s world anymore.

[Grimmy]

In such things as art, lit and architecture, I read “modern” as trendy and trendy as trash. I don’t follow the yarts much at all in any of their forms, but what I do notice of the “modern” is either ugly and pretentious or fragile, ugly and pretentious.

[coconutt2000]

One thing the article fails to note is that white is always the colour of classical architecture;

I think the reason for that is that by the time our civilization rediscovered "classic" architecture, all the paint had been scoured off through weathering...

[aruanan]

Architectural classicism, its advocates insist, is deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche and therefore should be the style of choice, especially for culturally or politically significant buildings.

Or you can come up with Borgian crap like the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago:

[aruanan]

Yes, and a lot of statues were painted, also.

[Daffynition]

The last I knew, Thomas Gordon Smith was selected as chief architect by the GSA and he is a classicist. Some of the older classic designs:

Newer architecture for courthouses:

Some, as reported in the WSJ, were critical of the appointment: Others are worried federal architecture will lose its cutting-edge focus. Henry Smith-Miller, of Smith-Miller + Hawkinson, a New York firm, which designed a border station under construction in Champlain, N.Y., said he finds Mr. Smith's appointment "deeply troubling." He called Mr. Smith's traditional views "anti-progressive." It "picks up the imperial nature of Roman architecture, which was in service to the empire rather than service to democracy," says Mr. Smith-Miller.

[Daffynition]

Boston's entry, which I think is quite stunning.

[neb52]

That seems to have a little mix in that one, its not to bad.