Architecture

Architecture, like common law, is based on precedents rather than theories. Great buildings are always, to some extent mysteries, and they must be experienced first-hand if their greatness is to be understood. That is why architects have always travelled in order to examine, measure, sketch, and photograph, in an attempt to plumb the mystery. So it would come as a surprise to most people to discover that almost all schools of architecture teach something called architectural theory. Or, at least, their curricula include courses that bear that name. Since the 1990s, these courses have by and large replaced the comprehensive study of history,

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Ever notice how when people want to be derogatory in referring to a building that uses a traditional style they will use the word “neo,” as in neo-Gothic or neo-Georgian, as if it were not quite the real thing. Instead of  simply saying Gothic Revival, or Georgian Revival. For the history of architecture, starting with the Renaissance, is a history of revivals. Gothic, for example, has been revived continuously, starting even during the Renaissance, and has come back to life regularly as clockwork in virtually every period, right up until the present day. When I mentioned this to Edwin Schlossberg,

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Saint Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church is located in Springdale, Arkansas. Its architect, Marlon Blackwell, told me the story. The congregation had bought a piece of land for their new church that included a three-truck metal garage. Having a very limited budget, the congregation asked him to convert the garage into a church. The unlikely result is an extremely  modest building that successfully confronts a neighboring interstate highway, accommodates the liturgical requirements of the Orthodox rite, and manages to create a strong architectural presence in the process. The exterior has shades of Tadao Ando’s Church of Light and Robert Venturi’s Fire Station Number Four,

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The controversy over the future Eisenhower Memorial has involved many actors: congressmen and congressional subcommittees, the Eisenhower family, the National Civic Arts Society, the National Capital Planning Commission, and assorted political pundits. A small but influential body central to the process has received less public attention. The U. S. Commission of Fine Arts was the brainchild of Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham, who with Charles F. McKim, Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. was the author of the so-called McMillan Plan, which restored the monumental core of Washington, D.C. to L’Enfant’s vision.  Burnham saw the need for an official body to oversee the implementation of the artistic aspects of the plan,

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In 1997, my friend Martin Pawley wrote a column for The Architect’s Journal titled “The Strange Death of Architectural Criticism.” The leading architectural critic of his generation, Martin died in 2008, but I wonder what he would have to say about the latest demise of his craft? The New York Times has a “chief architecture critic” who hardly ever writes about architecture. Paul Goldberger, our leading critic, has not appeared in the New Yorker since September 2011. I always check to see what Sarah Williams Goldhagen, the interesting critic of The New Republic,

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