Long Island, the Nation's First Suburb, Gets A Makeover

Winners of "Build a Better Burb" Ideas Competition for Retrofitting Long Island Downtowns Announced





Winners of the Build a Better Burb Competition with (middle back row) Marianne Garvin, CDC LI, Nancy Rauch Douzinas, Rauch Foundation, Ann Golob, Long Island Index, Bruce Stillman, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, June Williamson, City College of New York

This competition has brought together many innovative ideas that represent those new paths. Long Island has tremendous potential. Following through on any one of these winning ideas could have an incredible impact for the region.

Garden City, NY (PRWEB) October 7, 2010

The dream that drove the development of Long Island is no longer viable. The Long Island Index developed the "Build a Better Burb" Ideas Competition for Retrofitting Long Island's Downtowns to attract bold new ideas to address some of the most important problems facing the region including; loss of young people, low paying jobs and the increasing unaffordability of the region. Today the winners of the competition were announced at a press conference hosted by the Community Development Corporation (CDC) of Long Island at Crest Hollow Country Club, in Woodbury, NY. The competition drew 212 submissions, from more than 30 countries, and showcased designs for retrofitting Long Island's 156 downtowns and train-adjacent areas. A distinguished panel of jurors selected 23 finalists and then 6 winners from entries submitted by architects, urban designers, planners, visionaries and students, all vying for $22,500 in prizes. A 7th winner, for the "People's Choice Award," was selected by the public over the summer. The 40th Anniversary CDC Gala and Luncheon followed the press conference and provided a unique opportunity to showcase these winning ideas. More than 350 attendees, including elected officials, builders, developers, bankers and others talked to the winners, viewed their displays, and discussed how their ideas could be moved from concept to reality.



Marianne Garvin, CDC president and CEO, opened the press conference and stated, "We are proud to host Long Island Index and the winners of their 'Build a Better Burb' design competition. As CDC celebrates our 40th Anniversary, it is fitting to showcase the ideas generated from this competition to stimulate action toward potential solutions for retrofitting Long Island's aging downtowns. While we look back at past successes today, we also look forward to partnering with other committed stakeholders to achieve the revitalization and sustainability of Long Island for the benefit of all of its residents."

Nancy Douzinas, President, Rauch Foundation and publisher of the Long Island Index, explained the significance of presenting the winners at the CDC luncheon and pointed out that, "We are delighted by the imagination of these winning submissions. Long Island needs this kind of creative energy to tackle our problems and open up the discussion to a wider set of opportunities that might be included in our future plans."

June Williamson, associate professor of architecture, City College of New York / CUNY and co-author of "Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs," served as the consultant for the competition and today announced the winners, who are:

AgIsland
Team: Parsons Brinckerhoff: Amy Ford-Wagner, Tom Jost, Ebony Sterling, Philip Jonat, Emily Hull, Will Wagenlander, Meg Cederoth, Melanie George, David Greenblatt, Melissa Targett

Building C-Burbia
Team: The City College of New York, Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture Program: Denise Hoffman Brandt, Alexa Helsell, Bronwyn Gropp

Levittown: Increasing Density and Opportunity through the Accessory Dwellings
Team: Ryall Porter Sheridan Architects: Meri Tepper, Ted Porter, Ted Sheridan, John Buckley
Parsons The New School for Design: William R. Morrish

Long Division
Team: Network Architecture Lab, Columbia University: Kazys Varnelis, Leigha Dennis, Momo Araki, Alexis Burson, Kyle Hovenkotter; and Park: William Prince

SUBHUB Transit System
Team: DUB Studios: Michael Piper, Frank Ruchala, Natalya Kashper, Gabriel Sandoval, Jeff Geiringer

The winning student submission is:

Upcycling 2.0
Team: Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture and Planning and Preservation:
Ryan H. B. Lovett, John B. Simons, Patrick Cobb

The winning Long Island Index People's Choice Award, selected by the public, goes to:

LIRR: Long Island Radically Rezoned.
Team: Tobias Holler, New York Institute of Technology; Ana Serra, Buro Happold; Sven Peters, Atelier Sven Peters; Katelyn Mulry, New York Institute of Technology

"The concepts represented in the winning projects reflect progressive design thinking for suburban centers and regions being explored in the fields of architecture and landscape architecture," said Ms. Williamson. "This competition has been a tremendous opportunity to present these ideas to the public and to help citizens envision how their communities might be redesigned to address some of the key problems that the Long Island Index has been documenting."

The winning designs, richly illustrated with plans, diagrams, renderings andvideos can all be viewed at www.BuildaBetterBurb.org/gallery.

Ms. Williamson also served as Jury Coordinator, and the winners were selected by a diverse jury of distinguished academics and professionals. They are:

• Allison Arieff, design journalist, contributor to the New York Times "Opinionator" blog and GOOD Magazine
• Daniel D'Oca, partner at Interboro, New York, and assistant professor, Maryland College of Art
• Rob Lane, director of the Design Program at the Regional Plan Association
• Paul Lukez, principal of Paul Lukez Architecture, Boston, and author of Suburban Transformations
• Lee Sobel, real estate development and finance analyst, U.S. EPA: Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation
• Galina Tachieva, partner at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, Miami, and author of the Sprawl Repair Manual
• Georgeen Theodore, partner at Interboro, New York, and associate director of the infrastructure planning program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology

The jurors met on June 28th and selected the winners. While the LI Index anticipated having a first prize and multiple other winners, the jurors felt that the winning submissions were all strong and rather than have a first, second and third place winner, they decided to honor the top designs equally. Therefore, the $20,000 described in the LI Index brief, will be split among the top five designs; each will receive $4,000: The student prize is $2,500. The "People's Choice Award" does not have a cash prize.

Dr. Bruce Stillman, president and CEO, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, who discussed the importance of the ideas generated by the competition, pointed out that, "In science as in design, breakthroughs come from envisioning a solution in a new light and untried road." He went on to say, "This competition has brought together many innovative ideas that represent those new paths. Long Island has tremendous potential. Following through on any one of these winning ideas could have an incredible impact for the region."

The public is invited to view the exhibitions in two museums:

The Long Island Museum-- October 8th-October 24th
1200 Route 25A
Stony Brook, NY 11790
http://www.longislandmuseum.org/

The Long Island Children's Museum--October 5th-October 31st
11 Davis Avenue
Garden City, NY 11530
http://www.licm.org/

"Build a Better Burb" is an ideas competition for retrofitting Long Island's downtowns. The competition was open to anyone interested in shaping the future of Long Island; architects, urban designers, planners, students, and visionaries. Over 560 people contributed 212 submissions and a jury of distinguished professionals and academics selected the winners. The designs of BBB finalists can be downloaded at www.buildabetterburb.org/gallery.

About the Rauch Foundation: The Long Island Index is funded by the Rauch Foundation, a family foundation headquartered in Garden City, New York. In addition to funding the Long Island Index for seven years the Rauch Foundation commissioned The Long Island Profile Report and a series of polls on Long Island to determine how the region is faring. The Long Island Index 2004, Long Island Index 2005, Long Island Index 2006, Long Island Index 2007, Long Island Index 2008, Long Island Index 2009 and Long Island Index 2010 are all available for download at www.longislandindex.org.

The Long Island Index interactive maps, an online resource with detailed demographic, residential, transportation and educational information, are also accessible from the Index's website at www.longislandindexmaps.org.

The Community Development Corporation of Long Island (CDC) is a not-for-profit organization that supports Long Islanders pursing their housing and small business dreams. Since its inception 40 years ago, CDC invests its resources, talents and knowledge in households, small business and communities assisting more than 76,000 Long Islanders and investing $721 million into their communities. Last fiscal year alone, CDC served more than 14,300 Long Islanders investing nearly $56 million into their communities. For more information, please visit www.cdcli.org.

Prince’s Foundation to advise on re-building in Haiti

The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment along with world renowned planning experts Duany Plater Zyberk have been invited by the government of Haiti to work with the local community to help create a guiding vision for rebuilding an area of Port-au-Prince equating in size to around 25 city blocks, which was destroyed in the January 2010 earthquake.

Participants in the workshops will be Haitian Ministries, local professionals, property owners, representatives of the Haitian American communities and other stakeholders. The result will be a masterplan for an area of the capital including homes, streets, public spaces and amenities as well as plans to help engender a sustainable financial, social, and ecological future. A scoping workshop will be held 1-3 December and the charrette will be held 17-27 January.

Hank Dittmar, Chief Executive of The Prince's Foundation comments:
“We are honoured to have been given the chance to help create a better future for Haiti after the suffering and devastation of the earthquake. We hope to play a small part in bringing hope and benefit to the city by maintaining its authentic character, reducing its environmental impact and helping train local people in construction skills that equip them for future employment.’

The Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment helps to build and improve communities that are beautiful, long lasting and healthy for people and the planet. We believe that it is possible to have the kind of communities and neighbourhoods that contain:

· Lively, interesting streets with a mix of local shops
· Streets that reflect local character and feel safe to walk along
· Parks, schools and shops within walking distance of homes

Homes that look like they belong, that reflect tradition but are also contemporary and comfortable inside
The Prince’s Rebuilding Communities Programme is focused on the regeneration of low income and poor communities. It has a primary focus on locally based, participatory, holistic strategies for upgrading the communities of the urban poor. It seeks to help the residents of such communities to build on their strengths, capabilities and aspirations. The PFBE approach to rebuilding communities is to engage stakeholders to plan and implement regeneration. The goal is to foster sustainable communities that build on the unique aspects of their place, culture and tradition while also participating in the regional, national and global economy.

In Rose Town, in West Kingston, Jamaica, PFBE has been working with Rose Town residents and other local partners to create a sustainable base for regeneration by simultaneously helping to: develop a masterplan; improve local governance; improve local building and crafts skills; incubate businesses and job opportunities to capitalize on local skills and assets; and find sources of low cost business and affordable housing development capital. It is also working to find support for repair of critical infrastructure.

In New Orleans, the Prince of Wales's New Orleans Renewal and Building Crafts Training Program is delivering the skills urgently needed to regenerate and rebuild New Orleans and the Louisiana Gulf Coast, preserve the unique architecture of the region and ultimately help the populations most affected by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans: the urban poor. It is carried forward by a unique partnership that includes PFBE, Delgado Community College, the Preservation Resource Centre and some of the unions. In its second year of operation, it engages over a dozen local apprentices ranging in age from early 20s to 50 -- carpenters, bricklayers, stonemasons, architecture students etc.-- in an eight months building crafts training with live-build projects in the Lower 9th Ward and other distressed neighbourhoods for the restoration of homes, businesses and communities.

Duany Plater Zyberk
Based in Miami, Washington and Charlotte, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) is a major leader in the practice and direction of urban planning, having designed over 300 new and existing communities in the United States and overseas. DPZ’s projects have received numerous awards, including two National AIA Awards, the Vincent Scully Prize, the Thomas Jefferson Medal and two Governor’s Urban Design Awards for Excellence. The firm’s early project of Seaside, Florida, was the first authentic new town to be built successfully in the United States in over fifty years.

Related articles

• Haiti taps Prince Charles charity for city makeover (reuters.com)
• New Urbanist Leader Andrés Duany is Coming to Phoenix (yuriartibise.com)
• New Urbanism in Haiti (Sustainable Cities Collective)

What NOT to do...

from The New Combination of Modern and Classic House by Studio Octopi
By Modern Residential Design July 16, 2010

 

Does this project really have "a unique geometry which seems to blend very well with this building." It may be nicely detailed, however this is just the wrong solution. What do you think?

Wednesday Book Review / Promotion

The Future of the Past

A comprehensive and eloquent argument for “new traditional” architecture that preserves the style and character of historic buildings.
 
With contemporary design being redefined by architects and urbanists who are recovering the historic language associated with traditional architecture and the city, how might preservation change its focus or update its mission? Steven W. Semes makes a persuasive case that context matters and that new buildings and additions to old buildings should be harmonious with their neighbors.

 

Semes mounts the most thorough attack I’ve ever read on the anti-tradition stance of many architectural and historic preservation professionals. The need for this book is intense….Everyone, including general readers, will find this book’s many illustrations, with their pithy captions, illuminating. This book should help the confused 21st century to create and maintain places of lasting value. (Philip Langdon - New Urban News )

[P]resents a persuasive case against the preservation ethic of oppositional styling; that is, the argument that new additions to historic buildings must be deliberately un-period so as not to be confused with the existing, ‘authentic’ section of the building. Semes illuminates the error of this way of thinking, and walks us through a history of architecture and preservation in the process. (Planetizen.com )

[A] stirring and passionate call to get historic preservation right by respecting the past without making it sacrosanct. (Civil Engineering )

[A] clear and comprehensive argument….adds significantly to the discussion, one that should continue as an important topic within the historic preservation, urban planning, and architecture professions. (AASLH History News )

The Decade’s Most Important Book on Urban Architecture….With the publication of this volume, Steven Semes has vaulted into the first rank of contemporary architectural critics and preservation theorists…. should be must reading for all preservationists and people serving on landmark commissions and design review boards. (Clem Labine - Traditional Building )

Semes has written an indictment so complete and so damning, and yet expressed with such grace and diplomacy, that all thoughtful preservationists and even some modern architects will finally understand, if not admit, the error of their ways….so clear, so strong and so compelling that professionals in the field may be judges by how they react to it. (David Brussat - The Providence Journal )

[S]peaks in common-sense terms, it is didactic and approachable, and the laymen who are in the trenches…will find powerful ammunition in it. (American Arts Quarterly )

[B]eautifully illustrated….comprehensive….[N]eeds to be understood and followed by professional architects and preservationists; most of the lay public, which likes old buildings and neighborhoods, is already on Semes’ side. (Rob Hardy - The Commercial Dispatch )

I do not think I've ever come away from a book more impressed. Its erudition and its force in putting across a complex contrarian argument are incomparable. This book should be required reading for modern architects, who will start to whistle past the graveyard, and preservationists, who will see the error of their ways and, if they are honest, will admit it.... All I can say is read the review - or better yet, go out right now and get the book itself. It is my new bible. (David Brussat - Architecture Here and There, The Providence Journal ) 

 

The Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism and Historic Preservation
by Steven W. Semes

Retail:  $60.00 Amazon: $37.80

Grand plans are afoot in Earls Court as Terry Farrell reveals his masterplan

Masterplanning is not big architecture, as Terry Farrell’s winning proposal for the competition to redevelop London’s Earls Court illustrates.
July 2010 | By Sutherland Lyall from Architectural Review

 

The entire area around London’s Earls Court Exhibition Centre is to be redeveloped by Capital & Counties Properties, with Farrells as masterplanner. The site is bounded by and connects with different aspects of London’surban and social texture.

High-value South Kensington is immediately to the east, gentrified Barons Court and West Kensington to the west. The north boundary is the elevated section of Cromwell Road, London’s primary artery in from the west. To the south is a pair of open tracts: Brompton Cemetery and an exhibition visitors’ car park.
This is a backland, effectively a hinterland of the exhibition building on its triangular plot to the east. The site behind this and to the north is owned by Transport for London with its complex configuration of Tube lines and overland rail line, and attendant rail depots above and below ground.

Beyond, on the west side of the site are two housing estates mostly owned by the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. There are no through routes, little connection to the surrounding urban fabric, no social focus and no physical focus except, perhaps, for the 31-storey Empress State Building at the bottom of the site.

Several years ago Capital & Counties decided to buy the site and join up with the two other major landowners, Transport for London and the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. Capital & Counties believes the 28-hectare site could potentially accommodate as many as 8,000 dwellings, and three or so million square feet of commercial, cultural and retail space.

This is an immense project which over the next 10 to 15 years will create a major London residential district and, it is hoped, will absorb the high social, environmental and property values of adjacent South Kensington, effectively shifting the notional edge of central London a whole district’s width to the west.

The design is under the direction of project development director Richard Powell - formerly advisor on the Treasury Taskforce and more recently First Base. Six planning practices were invited to submit proposals: Benoy, Allies and Morrison, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), Studio Egret West, Make and Farrells.
The brief was to give an idea of how issues such as routes through the site and connections with the surrounding area might be resolved, and provide some sense of the grouping and form of urban blocks, as well as massing and height - but this was not to be worked up as an architectural proposal.

Practices had seven weeks to develop submissions and Powell was enthusiastic about the response: ‘We were extremely impressed. They were all great and really different, and one presentation at least was magical.’ Terry Farrell is, among other things, adviser to the Mayor of London and author of Shaping London: The Patterns and Forms that Make the Metropolis (2009).

In this, he makes the point that London is a series of villages that gradually joined up during the 19th and 20th centuries: it has been created without a ‘grand overarching, superimposed design hand or ordering geometry.’

Barcelona planning guru David Mackay also points out that no grand masterplan in history has ever been completely implemented. But because they look positive, are capable of being visualised and seem to offer comprehensive solutions, the temptations of finite masterplans are irresistible for both developers and architects.

Farrell doesn’t disagree with Mackay, but argues that masterplans rarely fail totally. However, he says, ‘I don’t think this masterplan is about the buildings. That’s starting at the wrong end of the process. Issues of height and density aren’t starting points. You have instead to talk about things like the street and its width and what makes a good city. Towns and places are not the result of design. Design ends up with products. Masterplanning ends up with processes. Masterplanning is not big architecture.’

The shorthand for the proposal that won Farrell the post of masterplanner is four villages and a high street. And it adopts a somewhat Mackay-esque incremental approach. It starts at the edges and focuses on four new London villages at important corners of the site named after their locations: West Kensington and North End Villages to the west, Warwick Green to the east and West Brompton to the south.

Happily there are Tube stations (providing centres for three of the four villages) ranged around the edge of the site, so the transport infrastructure already exists. That makes it possible to phase development from the outside in, eliminating the massive, long-term disruption occasioned by installing central services.

A big problem with the site is connectivity and the absence of through roads. So internal traffic and pedestrian routes pick up on streets from outside the site to enable passage across the site from east to west and north to south.

One option would be to create a new double-sided north-south high street serving as an urban and cultural magnet that would link a new commercial development to the north alongside the elevated Cromwell Road, with Lillie Road on the south boundary.

The new street layout is a loose grid with perimeter blocks surrounding green spaces which echo, at a tighter scale, the layout of adjacent Kensington. With a timeframe of up to 15 years there is a need for the proposals to cope organically with changing developments in finance, planning constraints, social change and sustainable technology.

Unlike masterplan-as-design, this is masterplan-as-process in which Farrells ‘acknowledge that [the] masterplan form will change over time… within a robust strategic framework following a set of agreed and consistent principles.’ No doubt Farrells architects will design some of the urban blocks and some of the buildings. But this is intended to be an architecturally diverse quarter of London, with many different architects designing schemes over time.
  
The site has been formally designated an Opportunity Area in the Mayor’s London Plan and the development collaborators have recently established a joint working group to create a Supplementary Planning Document. The working group involves the three planning authorities - the Greater London Authority, the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham, and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

It’s anticipated that a formal planning submission will be made in the summer of 2011. Work won’t start before the end of the Olympic Games in 2012, because the exhibition hall is to be the official volleyball venue.
The process between now and next summer’s formal planning submission is one of extensive workshop-based consultation with local authorities and communities whose input will help decide on a final masterplan. ‘We will set out a series of planning and organising principles,’ says Farrell. ‘The Capital & Counties team have already had early meetings with other landowners, tenants, local societies, everybody involved - lots of conversations. This sort of project will only succeed if you can find a way where there is something for everybody. It may seem like an exercise in compromise. But it’s a process one would recognise in politics or the development of, say, a new car. It’s extremely real.’

Construction Proceeds at Breakneck Pace

The Push To Finish Gaudi's Masterwork
photos: by the author

Old and new 

The Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudí's unfinished masterpiece, is one of Barcelona's most popular tourist attractions. Construction on this church, originally scheduled to be finished in 2041, has been moved up due to new funding resources and is now planned for completion for 2026, which will be the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death. It has become Barcelona's most important landmark.

 

Work concentrating on the nave 

The idea for the construction of a new church was launched by a devout organization whose goal was to bring an end to the de-christianisation of the Barcelonese, which had started with the industrialization and increasing wealth of the city. The organization purchased a plot of land in the new Eixample district in 1877. The architect Francisco de Paula del Villar designed a neo gothic church and led the construction which started in 1882.

 view of the Sagrada Familia in 1915

One year later, the modernist architect Antoni Gaudí took over as lead architect at the age of 31. From that moment on, Gaudí devoted most of his life to the construction of the church. Instead of sticking to the original plans, Gaudí changed the design drastically. The neo gothic style made way for Gaudí's trademark modernist style, which was based on forms found in nature. When he died in 1926 only one facade (the nativity facade), one tower, the apse and the crypt were finished. Because Gaudí was constantly improvising and changing the design while construction was going on, he left few designs and models. And most of these were destroyed during the civil war in 1936.

detail at the roofline
 

Still, architects now have a clear idea of what Gaudí had in mind. The last version of his design called for a church 95m/312ft long and 60m/197ft wide. The church will be able to accommodate 13,000 people. When finished, the Sagrada Familia will have a total of 18 towers. Four Towers on each of the three facades represent the 12 apostles. The towers reach a height of 90 to 120m (394ft). Another four towers represent the 4 evangelists. They will surround the largest, 170m/558ft tall tower, dedicated to Jesus Christ. The last tower, dedicated to Virgin Mary, will be built over the apse.

forest of columns

After Gaudí's death in 1926 construction slowed dramatically due to a lack of funds and the civil war. Construction pace started to pick up again in the mid 1950s and now two facades and eight tower have been completed. The main nave was roofed in 2000. Currently construction is mainly focusing on the nave and the main southern facade known as the Glory Facade. This facade will picture life and death.

Ceiling is very dramatic 

The first facade, facing east, is known as the Nativity Facade. It was finished by Gaudí himself and is ornamented in a baroque fashion with motifs of animals and plants. Opposite the Nativity facade is the 'Passion Facade'. Construction started in 1954, but only in 1987 sculptures depicting the crucified Jesus Christ were added. As soon as they were installed, the abstract figures caused a storm of criticism, as the style was very different from Gaudí's.

stained glass based on watercolor painting
spiral stair

openings wait for glazing

Even though the Sagrada Familia is far from finished, the remarkable church is well worth a visit. You can visit the crypt were Gaudí is buried. A museum tells the story of this great architect and the history of the church.
You can also visit the towers. An elevator and a long walk will lead you to the top of a tower from where you have a magnificent view over Barcelona. The climb is not recommended for those with fear of heights or for people with claustrophobia!

Classical Architecture: Three Fallacies

7 May, 2010 The Architect's Journal | By Robert Adam


Hindon Lane, Tisbury by Ben Pentreath

Classicism has been wronged, argues Robert Adam. Although its longevity proves people still want classical buildings, three fallacies about style, relevance and authenticity are used to justify the hostility it receives from the profession.

In Europe, the Americas, the Antipodes and even India you can’t get away from classical architecture. It’s been around for 2,000 years and has had an unbroken run in Europe for 500 years. Classical forms are so deeply lodged in our collective subconscious that every time an architect designs a building with a row of columns, square or round, and puts a beam over them, there seems to be something classical about it. Some contemporary architects, like Eric Parry, say this is deliberate, while others, like David Chipperfield, claim it isn’t. Classicism can even be attributed to its antagonists: Robert Venturi claims that Mies van der Rohe was a classicist and architectural historian Colin Rowe famously linked Le Corbusier’s houses with Palladio’s villas.

For all this, 60 years of anti-traditional architectural education have created [a] profession largely ignorant of the history and vocabulary of classical architecture. Although they don’t know much about them, few architects will condemn great buildings of the past. To give their designs some sort of classical pedigree, architects sometimes claim they’ve used classical proportions (often of dubious provenance) or have drawn inspiration from the abstract qualities of a classical building. When dealing with literal new-classical designs, however, there’s little sympathy, and they’re frequently attacked as being ‘pastiches’ or ‘not of our time’. Justifying this hostility, and fuelled by ignorance, architects entertain three common fallacies about classical architecture.

The first is that classicism is just one style.

While there is a common ancestry in ancient Greece and Rome, the differences between the renaissance, baroque, rococo and early 20th-century ‘Swedish Grace’ styles (to name only the most obvious) are profound and very visible. Use-types have moved from temples to churches, huts to palaces, and offices to airports. Following the single-style fallacy is the idea that classicism inevitably represents some distasteful political regime that corresponds with one period in its history. But such is the variety, flexibility and ubiquity of the type that it has, in its time, been used to express democracy in the USA, autocracy in Nazi Germany, civic pride in the 19th century, paganism in antiquity, Christianity from the renaissance onwards, and much more besides.

The second fallacy is that, due to its antiquity and origins in ancient building technology, classicism simply doesn’t belong in the modern world.
 
But this can only be claimed if you have some determinist theory of what the modern world ought to be. Classical architecture is a part of the modern world. It continues to be widely demanded and supplied (both well and badly) around the world. It’s never been limited to one form of construction: the ancient Greeks imitated wood; the Romans not only added the arch, but made brick structures look like marble; renaissance domes introduced tension members and the industrial revolution cast-iron; early skyscrapers were classical; and glass walls date back to the 16th century. Now, to the surprise of many, the traditional construction at the source of classical design turns out to be the most sustainable. The idea of obsolescence often leads to a comparison with dead languages – usually Latin. As any linguist will tell you, however, a language is only dead if no one uses it.

Most architects may have abandoned it, but in the wider world the classical language is alive and well. The overwhelming desire for traditional and classical houses has been established beyond doubt and the sale of classical cast stone, plaster mouldings and plastic details (regardless of how well they are produced) continues apace. These things mean something to those who want them. Research would be required to find out what this might be, but we can be fairly sure it’s not an association with the Greek Dorian tribe or animal sacrifice. In all languages meanings change, but this doesn’t mean the language has died. In fact it is exactly this quality that gives languages their richness and complexity.

The third fallacy is that it’s no longer possible to build ‘proper’ classical buildings, due to a lack of skills or the expense of decoration.

In the first place, the skills are available and modern technology helps to deliver what was once complicated and labour-intensive. Classical buildings need be no more or less expensive than any building. In the second place, and most significantly, a lack of design practice has led to the idea that classicism is only the application of decoration, and the more of it the better. In fact, classical design is as much about what’s omitted as what’s included. Due to its complete familiarity, when decoration is stripped away there’s still the lingering impression that it could be put back. This gives classical design great flexibility, but it can also lead people to believe that buildings such as Foster + Partners’ Carré d’Art (1993) in Nîmes, France, are classical when they’re not.

This ambiguity is evidence of the underlying persistence of the classical ideal, which should be exploited rather than ignored. The architectural establishment often freezes out the few practising classicists or locks them safely in a box marked ‘reproduction’. For their part, too many classicists see modernity as the enemy. Neither attitude is healthy. A public desire for both the benefits of modernity and the depth of tradition is commonplace. A liberal profession should accept and even combine the energy of invention and the wisdom of classicism. The creative potential is enormous.

Classical architect Robert Adam is a director of Adam Architecture