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In early April, the National Capital Planning Commission will likely review Frank Gehry’s design for the Eisenhower Memorial to be built in Washington, D.C. Criticism after criticism has been leveled at the design, its urban impact, durability, and symbolism. There are few things we build of greater import than our civic memorials, for they record our history and values and transmit them to future generations. With this in mind, please review the information below and make your opinion known by writing to the following agencies.

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From the middle to the end of the nineteenth century, the landscape of American domestic architecture was a kaleidoscope of revivals of European historic styles.  Gothic Revival, Italianate, Tuscan Villa, Second Empire, Queen Anne, and even Egyptian Revival houses were being built around the country.  Out of this cacophony a new, uniquely American style emerged: the Shingle Style.

  It is important to remember that in the mid-nineteenth century, houses were generally designed by craftsmen and builders rather than architects.  It was not until 1846 that an American, Richard Morris Hunt, formally studied architecture at the École des Beaux Arts.  He was followed in the 1860s by Henry Hobson Richardson, only the second American to study at the École.  Slowly, the profession of architecture was developing in America. 

  At the same time, awareness and knowledge of America’s historic architecture was also growing.   In 1876 the Centennial celebrations refocused the eyes of architects on America’s colonial traditions.  The following year Charles Follen McKim, William Bigelow, and Stanford White took their “celebrated” trip through New England making sketches and measured drawings of colonial houses.

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  In the last decades of the nineteenth century, architects such as H. H. Richardson and Bruce Price, and firms such as McKim, Mead, & White as well as Peabody & Stearns took influences from rural England, Richard Norman Shaw’s Queen Anne style architecture, the open planning and massing in Richardsonian Romanesque work, and blended that with the American colonial tradition of wood frame buildings to create the Shingle Style.

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  Generally, the Shingle style is characterized by open floor plans; low, horizontal massing; dominating gable or gambrel roofs; and a taut skin of shingles curving around corners, sweeping across surfaces.  Volumes of rooms perceptually push out of the skin of the building in bay windows, towers and porches.  On the exterior, trim elements are lightly scaled, painted Indian Red, Olive Green or brown, and classical motifs appear in porch columns, windows, and doors.  Rambling along, relaxed and informal, with great rooms for entertaining and broad porches for relaxing, Shingle Style houses were well suited to the carefree summers that wealthy industrialists spent in places such as Newport, Maine, Cape Cod or Long Island.

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  The Shingle Style is a style which develops from various cultural forces and architectural influences.  Working in the common American material of wood, reinterpreting what they considered to be our only historic American architecture, that of colonial New England, and reacting to the unstudied Victorian revival styles, this early generation of trained architects created a new style which architectural historian Vincent Scully called “a mode of building…which was specifically American.”  In his 1955 book, The Shingle Style and the Stick Style: Architectural Theory and Design from Richardson to the Origins of Wright, Scully coined the term Shingle Style and inspired a new generation of architects who continue to work in the Shingle Style today. 

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If any architectural style defines the Victorian era it is the Queen Anne style, so much so that we often refer to Queen Anne style houses as Victorian.  However, the term Victorian refers not to a particular style but to the era of the reign (1837 – 1901) of Great Britain’s Queen Victoria.

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During Queen Victoria’s long reign, England experienced changes brought by industrialization and a growing middle class.  In response, mid-nineteenth century English architects turned to the comfort of vernacular domestic architecture emphasizing home and pre-industrial times.  This Old English style imitated Tudor manor houses with half-timbering, tile-hung walls, leaded glass windows, and steep roofs.  Richard Norman Shaw also created a related style called Queen Anne, which he rendered in red brick with white woodwork.  Though called the Queen Anne style, Shaw and other architects drew from sources earlier than Queen Anne’s reign (1702-14). 

Likewise in America, rapid changes were taking place.  A growing middle class was developing taste and means; balloon framing replaced heavy timber framing, enabling complex building forms; and building components were mass produced and shipped quickly on expanding train routes, encouraging generous ornament and variety.  In the face of the changes of industrialization and growth, and with the American centennial approaching, Americans were equally nostalgic for a simpler past. 

It is then perhaps no surprise that the half-timbered, multi-gabled British buildings designed by Thomas Harris for the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, were an instant hit, as were the works of Shaw published in architectural journals.  H. H. Richardson first translated this style to American taste with the Watts-Sherman House (1874) in Newport, Rhode Island.  Soon thereafter, the Queen Anne style was born in America.

Queen Anne houses generally have a central block with a steep hipped roof, and projections from the front and sides forming cross gables.  Bay windows, one storey porches, and towers create complex massing.  Brick, clapboard, shingles, and terracotta used in the same building add to the picturesque quality of these houses.  Wooden ornament in the Eastlake style, such as spindles, scrolled brackets, and turned posts decorate eaves, friezes, gables and porches. 

Queen Anne style houses vary from the Old English style with half-timbering, to spindlework and Eastlake ornament, to Free Classic houses with classical motifs, to patterned masonry buildings directly evocative of the English Queen Anne style.  It is a style of infinite variety, color, joy, visual delight, inventiveness, and adaptability.  And while drawing from the past, Queen Anne style houses were a fitting modern expression of the close of the nineteenth century.  Sweetness and Light: The "Queen Anne" Movement, by Mark Girouard, is an excellent history and The Queen Anne House: America's Victorian Vernacular by Janet Foster shows these houses in all their splendor.

 

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The term Second Empire refers to the period in France from 1852-1870 when Napoleon III, nephew of Napoleon I, reestablished imperial rule by a coup d’etat, thereby ending the Second Republic of 1848-1852.  In an ambitious building campaign, Napoleon III appointed Baron Haussmann to oversee a vast program of work including modernization, improvements to living conditions in the revolution-breeding slums through demolition and rebuilding, and turning Paris into an imperial capital replete with magnificent buildings housing new institutions. 

Haussmann created grand boulevards lined with trees and classical facades, all connected by ronds-points and interspersed with new parks such as the Bois de Boulogne.  And throughout Paris sumptuous new buildings were erected, the finest being the Opéra by Charles Garnier. 

Using classical forms popular during the reigns of Louis XIV and Napoleon I, Napoleon III and his architects visually evoked memories of those successful regimes, giving a sense of permanency to the new institutions and, by association, to the Second Empire itself. One building element used widely during this period, the Mansard roof, would come to define the Second Empire style in America.  François Mansart was French architect during the 17^th century who revived these steeply pitched roofs from their earlier use during the French Renaissance.  Though not invented by him, this roof type was so associated with Mansart it came to be called un toit à la mansarde, or Mansard roof.  It is a hipped roof with two pitches on each side, the first rising up steeply from the eave, straight, convex, concave, or bell shaped; and the second being nearly flat sloping upwards to the ridge.  It was a practical roof form, generously accommodating living space in the attic and making it easy to expand older buildings by nearly a whole floor.

Popularized in the Paris Exposition of 1855, the Second Empire style quickly began to appear elsewhere.  In America, it was viewed as a “modern” style different from the romantic revival styles of the Gothic Revival and Italianate.  Predominating in the Midwest and the Northeast, but found throughout the country, it was wildly popular from 1860 through 1880 for both domestic and civic architecture. 

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It is characterized by a boxy mass, either symmetrical or not; square towers placed centrally along the main façade or asymmetrically in more complex massing schemes; a steep Mansard roof commonly elaborated with decorative colored tiles, cast iron filigree-like cresting and dormers; and segmental or round arched windows with decorative hoods. 

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It is similar in massing to the Italianate style, and can be seen as an evolution of the Italianate.   In fact, many Americans simply updated their Italianate style houses with new Mansard roofs to keep up with fashion.  Like most of the eclectic styles running rampant in the second half of the 19^th century, the Second Empire style was popularized in pattern books.  With its opulence and fashion-forwardness, the Second Empire style suitably reflected the early heady years of the Gilded Age.

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            Mid-nineteenth Century America was a time of great energy and change.  Cities grew, immigration soared, railroads expanded, and new building technologies emerged.  To meet the housing needs and tastes of our growing and increasingly diverse populace, architects designed houses in a multitude of styles.  Though widely varied, the Romantic Revival styles of this period all reflect Romantic and Picturesque sensibilities in their yearning for the security of the past to ameliorate the complexities of modern life and in their idealization of nature as an antidote to the city.

            Roman and Greek architectural forms were no longer touted as the only appropriate models for houses.  Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852) writes that domestic architecture should be “less severe, less rigidly scientific, [than public architecture] and…exhibit…the freedom and play…of every-day life.”  To spread their philosophy, and to make house plans widely available, architects published pattern books for the homeowner, unlike earlier builder’s books which were written to instruct builders.  Pattern books, such as Downing’s Architecture of Country Houses (1850) and Samuel Sloan’s Homestead Architecture (1861) presented designs for houses while they celebrated the ideals of family, home, and rural life. 

            The Italianate style was but one of many presented.  Built as early as the mid-1830s, the Italianate style supplanted the popularity of the Gothic Revival in the 1860s and reached its zenith in the 1870s.  Borrowing from “the charming character of the irregular villas of Italy,” according to English Architect Charles Barry, and Italian Renaissance examples, architects filtered these sources through the Romanticism of the 19^th century into something wholly new.  Three distinct Italian-inspired sub-styles emerged:  the Tuscan Villa style, with its asymmetry, arcaded porches, and towers; the more rare Renaissance Revival style inspired by Renaissance urban palaces; and lastly, the Italianate style, shown here. 

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            By far, the Italianate (or American Bracketed) style was the most popular.  It is characterized by its cubic form, vertical proportions, low pitched roofs, and oft present cupola.  Though the massing is simple, elevations are ornate.  One-over-one or two-over-two sash windows, with arched, segmental or flat heads, are elaborated by decorative surrounds, hoods, or pediments.  Windows are commonly paired or tripled together.  Deeply projecting eaves supported by ornate brackets, turned or chamfered posts at porches, quoins dressing corners, horizontal bands separating floors, and stone or materials imitating stone complete this style.  An excellent example is Sloan’s George Allan House in Cape May, New Jersey (1863), whereas the Tuscan Villa style is typified by Richard Upjohn’s Edward King House (1845) in Newport, Rhode Island.

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            Gazing back on this period of rapid change, increasing immigration, rampant eclecticism, and the beginnings of the plan book and housing industries, one must wonder if we today are not more influenced by this time than we might otherwise think.

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[As we approach the twentieth anniversary of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, I thought I would share with you a memoir I wrote for our tenth anniversary.]

ROME

Just before Rosabelli and I walked into the Piazza Navona I asked her to pause for a moment, knowing the thrill that she was about to experience for the first time. Then she walked into the Piazza and with awe she gasped at the beauty of the plashing fountains with their brilliant sunlit sculptures set off in front of the darkly towering San’Agnese in Agone.  Large tears welled up in her eyes as she breathed in a small part of what Rome offers an architect. It was Rosabelli’s first trip to Rome from her native Brazil and it was also the Institute’s inaugural Rome Architectural Drawing Tour.

 Another favorite memory of that 1998 Rome tour is that of Richard Cameron walking through the shaded portico of the Pantheon as we began the program on that first sunny August afternoon. A course of study in Rome had been a hope of his when the Institute first began; now all of the hours of planning and dreaming were finally bearing fruit. The expression on Richard’s face was one of both joy and amazement that the Institute had actually managed to make this program real! We wanted the students to study Rome as architects once did centuries before and return home with spirits renewed, inspired to make architecture. It was an auspicious beginning.

Richard and I planned for the students to experience Rome as an architect might have on the Grand Tour or as the lucky few American Academy Rome Prize winners have done.  So we measured and drew as Academy students once did and we traveled and savored Rome as the tourist on the Grand Tour once did. Midway through the program I surprised the students with a carriage ride along the Via Appia providing me with yet another wonderful memory. It was a morning of carriages, loaded up with thirteen architects and artists, bumping and swaying along the ancient Roman paving stones in the shade of the umbrella pines. We headed out to the tombs so that we could rest in the country a bit and paint views of the same landscape that had inspired Piranesi. That glorious day ended with the most convivial three hour lunch in a restaurant housed in a former columbarium. We’ve gone back each year since to visit Massimo, the owner of the Osteria Antica Roma, who welcomes us, dusty and tired after our day of sketching, and who refreshes us with ancient menus and cool white wine as we share our drawings and stories with one another at the table.

 After six years of conferences, lectures, and numerous programs in New York City, the Institute finally returned to the root of classical tradition for the inspiration and rejuvenation that Rome provides all her students. It is and continues to be our hope that the Institute may succeed in connecting a new generation of practitioners with the language of architecture as exemplified by Rome. That initial Drawing Tour of 1998 established what has become a tradition for the Institute: A ritual of returning to the lessons and beauty of Rome.

NEW YORK  

Standing in the back of the room I silently cheered on our Summer Program students as they took the podium. One by one they presented their vision for the future of New York’s Meatpacking District to the residents and property owners of that very neighborhood. I held my breath, but the students presented their project beautifully and in so doing,  made a very positive contribution to the urban and architectural dialogue that concerns historic districts in New York City.

Thanks in no small part to the extraordinary coaching of Richard John, ten students who had never before given a slide presentation, much less one to a potentially critical public, managed to get up and give an entirely professional and inspiring presentation. It was, in fact, my experience of working with Richard John on the only two Prince of Wales’s American Summer Schools in Architecture and the Building Arts that led me to incorporate the community planning projects into the Institute’s Summer Program.

Now, after four weeks of instruction on proportion, elements, composition, surveying, crafts, construction, and urbanism, the students work as a team for the last two weeks of the program, testing their new knowledge and giving back their ideas to a community in the city of New York. The planning projects provide students with real preservation and or development problems in and around the city, and allow them the opportunity to apply, as solutions, their recently acquired classical training in architecture.

The impact of the community planning projects in our Summer Program goes far beyond the immediate influence on communities here and upon those who are responsible for planning and building our city. Each year, our select group of students goes home to Australia, Brazil, Colorado, Florida, Japan, Ohio, Romania, and Turkey— to name a few of our students’ homes—and takes with them part of a tradition in architecture that will enrich their lives and their homes.

The Institute’s summer program was begun, rather heroically, by Richard Cameron, Donald Rattner, and Richard Sammons in 1992.  It was my honor and pleasure to join their efforts in the Summer Program of 1998 and now, ten years after that first program, it is exciting to see the Institute poised to make positive contributions to the city that provides an extraordinary backdrop for teaching contemporary classical architecture.

FLORIDA 

Realizing that their addresses were in Florida, I asked Bud and Bobby if they were really planning to fly up from Florida every Tuesday for four weeks just to take our class on moldings and ornament. I was astonished when they said, “yes.”  But, after four weeks and thousands of dollars in airfare and hotels, Bud Lawrence approached me and wisely said, “You know Christine, I think it would be a whole lot cheaper just to fly you guys down to Florida; we have a group down in Florida called the AIBD…”

Little did I know that this conversation was about to open an important door for the Institute. The AIBD, the American Institute of Building Design, is a fifty-year-old national organization for those who design residences but are not licensed architects. Most of the members have little or no formal architectural training, and yet, they are responsible for a large majority of the residential design in this country.  Bud Lawrence, secretary of the Florida Chapter of the AIBD, was looking for an educational program to improve the quality of the design work of their members, most of whom design traditionally inspired houses. I immediately saw this as a great opportunity for the Institute to have an impact on one of the most important segments of the building industry, and as a critical way for the Institute to effect change in the quality of American architecture.

Several weeks later, ICA Fellows Steve Bass, Gary Brewer, and I met with Bud and three of his colleagues from Florida. We poured over current house plans by AIBA members and conferred on what would be most important to teach and how it could be most effective.  The result was a seven-weekend program held in various cities in Florida that offers instruction in design, proportion, theory, history, and materials. As of May 2002, this program has 104 participants registered and at each weekend session this entrepreneurial group of designers learns from the faculty of the Institute.

At the first session, in a conference room in Vero Beach, the lights dimmed and I began to speak. But, where to start? Perhaps incongruously, at that moment in Florida, it made sense to go back a few thousand years to Vitruvius who wrote:

“The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many braches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgment that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory…architects who have aimed at acquiring manual skill without scholarship have never been able to reach a position of authority to correspond to their pains, while those who have relied only upon theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow, not the substance.” 

Standing at a podium in a Sheraton Hotel conference room, I smiled as I read this. After all, our Institute is but a means of transmission of knowledge, and at that moment I knew that we were plugging these designers into a power grid greater than any one Institute. I knew that because of what we were doing some of these designers were going to begin to see and think about architecture differently. Somehow the absence of the academy training had left them open to any lesson we would teach.  And like all good students, they are now seeing buildings with new eyes.

Recently, at our third session in Miami, I was thrilled to have a student suggest that we divert the entire bus caravan to the City Hall in Coral Gables so that we could look at an architrave and column relationship that he had been shown earlier that day in a slide. Just that morning I had talked to the participants about the desired alignment of the architrave face and the column neck so that the structural integrity of architecture could be respected. Later that morning as our bus caravan passed the Coral Gables City Hall a student said “I am sure that the architrave and the column don’t align exactly and we should go and investigate.” Well, I was delighted! This incident confirmed that the program was making a difference.

IN CONCLUSION

In the four years that I have been affiliated with the Institute, I have gone from being the Institute’s first Executive Director to being one of our many volunteers and a trustee. I have worked with a remarkable group of people under extraordinary circumstances. It is no small thing to realize that what we have been doing is restarting the engine of architecture. From the practical knowledge that our programs provide to practitioners in all fields, to the awareness we bring to the public, we are leading the effort to refresh a tradition of architecture that can make a young Rosabelli weep with joy.

—Christine G. H. Franck, Director of Academic Programs, April 2002.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 

Houston, TX – September 12, 2011 – The Institute of Classical Architecture & Art Texas Chapter has awarded the Byrd Residence a 2011 John Staub Honor Award in Restoration and/or Renovation.  Fort Worth homebuilder and master-craftsman Brent Hull of The Brent Hull Companies collaborated with Virginia-based design firm Christine G. H. Franck, Inc. to restore this historic home to its original charm.

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            Built in 1938 in Fort Worth’s Colonial Addition neighborhood, this once-graceful Colonial Revival style home was insensitively renovated in the 1990s. Modern additions of incorrectly proportioned columns, heavy-cast stone trim, and stripping of the original whitewashing and shutters all compromised the home’s original grace. 

            In 2009 an extensive renovation and addition returned the house to its former beauty and updated it for modern living. Sensitive façade renovations included replacing ungainly columns and cast stone trim, re-whitewashing brick, and replacing dark green shutters. An addition to the rear of the house expanded both indoor and outdoor living space without unduly increasing the size of the house visible from the street.

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            The subtlest of changes greatly impacted the appearance of this home. In their work together on this renovation, Hull and Franck demonstrate how principles of classical architecture such as proportion and scale, so often misunderstood in today’s typical McMansions, should work together harmoniously.

            Brent Hull is a builder of fine residences, master-craftsman, author, and nationally recognized expert on historic millwork and molding design.  Christine G. H. Franck is a designer, educator, and author specializing in classical architecture and traditional American domestic architecture.

            This and other outstanding works will be recognized at the Staub Awards Celebration at the Bayou Club on October 15, 2011.  Contact Catherine Love for further information at catherine@curtiswindham.com or (713) 942-7251. In 2011, the Texas Chapter of the ICAA launched the inaugural John Staub Awards program for designers and craftspeople based in Texas. These awards honor projects that demonstrate excellence and sensitivity to classical and vernacular traditions and have, in turn, contributed to the legacy of John Staub in Texas.

For project information contact: 

Brent Hull, President, The Brent Hull Companies

bhull@hullhistorical.com

(817) 332-1495

Christine G. H. Franck, President, Christine G. H. Franck, Inc.

christine@christinefranck.com 

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Many thanks to Clem Labine's Period Homes Magazine for their September 2011 profile of my work!

http://www.period-homes.com/Previous-Issues-11/SeptemberProfile11.html

The Quintessential Classicist

As a designer, educator and author, Christine Franck is one of Classicism's most compelling proponents.

By Nancy A. Ruhling

"Classical architecture is not a style," says Christine G. H. Franck. "Rather, it is a tradition of thought, a tradition of place-making."

That the award-winning New York City designer makes this statement in the present tense is no accident. "Classicism views the past as useful to the present," she says. "In this view, the best knowledge of how to do things is conserved and transmitted from the past to the present, rather than creating new things for the sake of the new."

To emphasize her position, Franck points to her own past. Growing up in Williamsburg, VA, in a simple Colonial-style house designed by her parents, she acquired an early appreciation of Classical architecture. "Williamsburg's architecture and urbanism are so rich with beauty and meaning that you can't help but learn and be interested," she says.

As a child, she designed her first house on a piece of graph paper her father gave her. Later, thanks to her junior high school's gifted and talented program, she enrolled first in a self-directed architectural mentorship at the College of William and Mary and then in an internship with local architect Robert Magoon. "I was very lucky, because my teachers, mentors and parents guided, supported and encouraged my interests," she says.

Trained as an architect – she holds a bachelor of science in architecture from the University of Virginia and a master of architecture from the University of Notre Dame – she works today as a designer, educator and author.

"In college, we were taught Postmodernism, but it lacked depth and beauty," she says. "The architecture posited by Postmodernism paled in comparison to that of Williamsburg and early American towns. When my parents moved to suburban northern Virginia while I was in college, I was exposed to the dire state of America's built environment and its threat to our well-being. I felt compelled to change that for the better. The contrast between Williamsburg and suburban northern Virginia showed me how much was lost when Modernism rejected the past. After completing my undergraduate work at Virginia, I was thrilled to find others who thought as I did, such as Thomas Gordon Smith, who had formed a new program in Classical architecture at Notre Dame. There I began my education as a Classicist and started filling in the gaps left by my undergraduate education."

During the two decades of her career, Franck has continued to see a vital, contemporary Classical tradition as the answer to today's dysfunctional built environment. "My mission is to make certain that this tradition of architecture – both its Classical root and many traditional branches – continues to be available to new generations so we may create places worthy of us," she says.

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Principles at Work
Chadsworth Cottage, the first home Franck designed, is a stunning example of how she has put her principles into practice. The cottage, which won the 2007 Palladio Award for best new residential construction under 5,000 sq.ft., proved that beauty and budget can live happily ever after.

"A common myth is that you can't afford to build Classical architecture today, and that nobody makes the products you need," she says. "This project, which relies primarily upon stock items, shows that you can."

The house, completed in 2005 on Figure Eight Island in North Carolina for Jeffrey L. Davis, the founder ofChadsworth Columns, was to be formal in language yet relaxed enough to function as a primary residence for the owner and a vacation home for his guests. "We drew upon details from North Carolina towns such as Wilmington and New Bern to ground the house in local traditions," says Franck. "The design is canonically Classical but modified to meet a moderate budget."

Franck designed the house then sought high-quality products, modifying the design to fit them. "This was a challenge for me because I had begun my career interning with Allan Greenberg and working on custom projects with rather large budgets," says Franck. "It took research, creativity and a willingness to forgo dimensional perfection to make this work."

She used Classical architecture to her advantage. "An example of the power of the Classical language is that through careful use of scale, you can manipulate perceived size," she says. "Most people think Chadsworth Cottage is far larger than the mere 3,500 sq.ft. that make up the two main living floors of the house. This is because of the use of the giant order, the corner pilasters and the full entablature, all of which set one large scale for the house. This large scale, through moldings and details, is then broken down so that it is approachable. It feels grand and hospitable at once."

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Fluency
During the 1980s, a 1930s Colonial Revival house in an historic neighborhood in Fort Worth, TX, had been modified with poorly scaled Classical details. "This home shows how important it is to understand the language if you plan to use it," says Franck. "The changes in the 1980s were the equivalent of poor grammar. They demonstrate the difference between the all-too-common uniformed pseudo-Classical architecture and knowledgeable Classicism."

Franck brought the home back to its 1930s grace by undoing the overdone Classical details in the renovation of the front façade. She replaced the Corinthian columns with attenuated Ionic columns and removed the heavy cast-stone trim around the windows and entablature, the cast-stone cladding in the tympanum and the bulbous balusters and added correctly detailed and proportioned wood trim and weatherboards in their place. In keeping with the original, she re-whitewashed the bricks and added green wooden shutters to the windows.

"Because the slate roof and column center lines were to remain, I designed the entablature moldings with slightly less projection than canonically acceptable," she says. "Gibbs' Ionic order, as well as several other sources, helped in resolving the limitations on the projections without sacrificing the alternation of forms."

The renovation, carried out by Brent Hull of Hull Homes, won the 2010 Historic Fort Worth Residential Award for Excellence in Preservation.

"The house looks much as it did when it was built," says Franck. "The Classical language restored the home to its original balance and grace."

Warm Welcomes
Franck, who lives in an Upper East Side townhouse in Manhattan, is equally comfortable working in public spaces. She has decorated and renovated a number of apartment building lobbies.

"This gives me a wonderful opportunity to work in historic buildings," she says. "The lobby is like the vestibule of a private home; it's the first impression for guests."

On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, for instance, Franck brought new life to the old-fashioned lobby of an apartment building. The pre-war space had been altered over the years to create what Franck calls a "mishmash" style all its own. Partnering with the New York City decorator Eric Cohler, Franck added new lighting, furniture, a rug, artwork and custom-designed decorative millwork for the walls and fireplace surround.

"The overmantel was made with stock pieces, which made it a very inexpensive part of the project," says Franck. "The wall moldings were designed to create a pattern of panels that de-accentuate the horizontal nature of the room while integrating the ventilation grilles into the panel scheme, bringing order to the space."

Spreading the Word
Franck's work extends far beyond the walls of her projects, whether they are public or private. The author of several books, including José M. Allegue: A Builder's Legacy,Winterthur Style Sourcebook: Traditional American Rooms, co-authored with Brent Hull, and the ICAA's forthcomingClassical Architecture: A Handbook of the Tradition of Today, Franck devotes nearly half of her time to teaching, writing, speaking and advocacy.

"Writing books and essays and teaching forms an essential part of my work as this helps educate students, professionals and the general public alike about good design, architecture and history," she says. "The greatest obligation we have is to teach. I'm so proud of the students I've worked with over the years."

She began her teaching career in 1996, when she helped create a traditional architecture and urbanism program for the Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture's first American Summer School. "These programs acted as catalysts for two American towns to help change their thinking about the built environment. They also changed the lives of the many students who attended them," she says.

Later, as the first executive director of the Institute for the Study of Classical Architecture (today's ICAA) in New York, she created a series of highly respected programs that vastly increased the influence of the organization and helped bring it international standing. She developed its existing summer program into one that gave students hands-on experience in confronting urban and architectural issues in New York City. Students in this studio program met with local authorities, developed a master plan, created building designs consistent with the plan and presented them to the public.

Franck also revamped the institute's professional continuing-education courses, adding an international program that includes drawing tours of Rome and Naples, and set up a program for the American Institute of Building Design to educate residential designers and homebuilders.

"When I was working on Chadsworth Cottage, I gained an appreciation of the challenges homebuilders face today," she says. "This program, which introduced them to Classical architecture and traditional urbanism, met them where they were and helped them make better design choices. These residential designers and homebuilders are crucial to significant change in the industry because they are the people designing the vast majority of houses."

The homebuilders' program, which included travel, lectures and a residential design project, received the American Institute of Building Design Award of Excellence.

Harkening back to her initial introduction to architecture in Williamsburg, Franck's teaching includes a residential design studio that she has taught at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she was the 2007 Harrison Design Scholar, and in several studios at the University of Notre Dame. "Houses are often considered too simple of a project for students, yet to me they offer an excellent arena for the student to develop a methodology of study and design," she says.

Mapping the Future
Franck's passionate devotion to better architecture, urbanism and education has led her to play integral roles in the formation and development of the International Network of Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism; the New Urban Guild and the Council for European Urbanism; and, most importantly, the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. As a long-serving trustee of the institute, she not only led the development of its academic programs but also the initial formation of its chapters, now the vibrant life-blood of the institute.

In 2002, she received the Prince of Wales' Foundation for the Built Environment's first Public Service Award for her "outstanding contribution to architectural education and design."

In the two decades Franck has been in practice, she has seen great changes, but she also sees a long way to go before the built environment is what it should be. Her career came of age when today's Classical renaissance was in its infancy.

"Thirty years from now, I'd like to see more professionals trained as Classical architects because that's the best way for them to learn how to think responsibly and rationally about the built environment," she says. "The breadth and depth of the Classical tradition over time shows us how to best meet the challenges of today so we may leave a better, more just and beautiful world to subsequent generations." 

Nancy A. Ruhling is a New York City-based freelance writer.

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The Gothic Revival style, popular in America from the 1830s through the 1860s, could be seen as a mere revival of medieval motifs, but peer beneath the scrolls and trefoils that animate this style and one finds more profound meaning.

 

In the last half of the eighteenth century, the long held authority of the Renaissance was challenged by the empiricism of the Neo-classical age.  Archeological investigations began to reveal an architectural diversity not present in the Renaissance works that had guided architecture well into the eighteenth century.  Architects felt a freedom to look to a variety of models for specific imitation.  In addition, romantic sentiment, such as seen in the literary works of Shelley and Byron or equally in music and art, portrayed an idealized past: sometimes found in the golden aura of Greece and Rome but more often in the dark mysteries of the Middle Ages.  Romanticism appealed to the emotional rather than the rational.

Nobody evokes this ideal better than Horace Walpole in his villa in Twickenham, Strawberry Hill, which has recently undergone a substantial restoration. A short video introduction may be seen here: http://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/video1.php. Unlike his mid-eighteenth century neo-Palladian contemporaries, Walpole looked to the Gothic for inspiration for his renovations to transform a few cottages into his “little gothic castle.” If you’re a researcher and can’t make it to England, you might enjoy learning more (by appointment) at Yale University’s Lewis Walpole Library, a research library for eighteenth-century studies and the prime source for the study of Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill.”

Later English architects and theorists would argue the moral superiority of the Gothic over the classical. In A.W.N. Pugin’s Contrasts (1836) and then in The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841) the Gothic is presented as the true Christian architecture, rather than the pagan Classical architecture of the Greeks and Romans. John Ruskin extends these arguments, connecting architecture and morality, in his books The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851 – 1853).

The Gothic Revival is complexly rooted in the divergent forces of the newfound freedom of the modern age and a corresponding nostalgic yearning for the past.  In Hugh Morrison’s Early American Architecture he describes the shift in American 19^th Century architecture as being brought on by “scientific archeology [having] destroyed the theoretical bases of Renaissance architecture, while Romanticism [destroyed] its taste.”  Roughly paralleling the Greek Revival in America, the Gothic Revival found its popularity in houses, particularly rural ones.  Books such as Andrew Jackson Downing’s The Architecture of Country Houses (1850) sold some 16,000 copies promulgating the taste for the romantic residences set in picturesque landscapes.

Buildings of the Gothic Revival style fulfill Romantic ideals with picturesque, asymmetrical massing and plans.  Buildings formed of varying heights and projections; capped by multiple, steeply pitched gables; lit by angled bay windows and leaded glass casement pointed arched windows, often paired; shadowed by entry towers and wide porches gave the effect of some distant mysterious past and touched the emotions.  Elaborate scroll-sawn verge-boards decorate gables; scrolls and finials, trefoils and quatrefoils, brackets and pendants are everywhere to be found.

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Perhaps the most quintessential American Gothic Revival house is Andrew Jackson Davis’ Lyndhurst, located in Tarrytown, New York. Begun in 1838 Davis doubled its size from 1864-65 for its second owner, George Merritt. Though Lyndhurst is built of stone, many Gothic Revival houses were built of more affordable and easier-to-work wood. In many cases, earlier Georgian homes were fashionably updated with new porches or other decorative Gothic-inspired details.

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Houses in the Gothic Revival style range far and wide across the country, whimsical and lovely.  When they were built, they were about far more than their appearance.  In The Architecture of Country Houses, Downing describes why his countrymen should have good houses: “A good house (and by this I mean a fitting, tasteful, and significant dwelling) is a powerful means of civilization.  A nation whose rural population is content to live in mean huts and miserable hovels, is certain to be behind its neighbors…But, when smiling lawns and tasteful cottages begin to embellish a country we know that order and culture are established.” An excellent book looking at the taste for the Gothic in America is The Only Proper Style: Gothic Architecture in America, by Calder Loth and Julius Trousdale Sadler, Jr. 

 

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The Greek Revival, or Grecian, style (at its height from 1820 to 1840) parallels a period of geographic expansion and growing national identity in America.  Part fashion, part conscious aesthetic, the Greek Revival is defined by its inventive use of ancient Greek forms.  Publications such as Stuart and Revett’s Antiquities of Athens drove a fashion for the Grecian style first in Europe and then in America.  But in America, it was more than fashion, it was political.  As a young country emerging from the shadow of our British colonial past, we sought new paradigms.  Viewing ourselves as inheritors of the Greek democratic tradition, we saw ourselves as the new Athens. 

From the East to the Midwest we find towns named for Greek ones such as Corinth, Athens, or Ithaca.  In these towns we built city halls, banks, churches, houses, even outhouses, with orders borrowed from the Parthenon or the Tower of the Winds, for example, and ornamented with palmettes, fretwork, and friezes.  The Grecian influence even extended to the decorative arts and dress.  In many ways it represents our first, and perhaps only, national style. 

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Its rapid and consistent spread as a style was due in part to the publication of numerous builder’s books such as the sixth edition of The American Builder’s Companion (1827) or the Practical House Carpenter (1830), both by Asher Benjamin.  From these and others, builders learned the Greek orders and used them to create buildings that while Greek in inspiration were wholly American in spirit. 

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A typical Greek Revival house might be one to two-and-a-half stories with a low-pitched roof oriented with its ridge perpendicular to the street so its end gable formed the pediment of a classical temple.  To further the temple front motif a full entablature (cornice, frieze, and architrave) wrapped the entire house or returned deeply under the gable end.  Sometimes this gable end extended out over a porch with columns, sometimes only wide pilasters were used to achieve the image of a temple front.  Side hall plans were typical as the house was turned so its plan was narrow and deep, but it was challenging to fit the normal house functions within the pure temple form so one story wings were commonly added to one or both sides.

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The Greek Revival period nurtured both the birth of a national style of architecture and the architectural profession in America.  During this time architects such as Latrobe, Mills, and Strickland approached their training and work professionally, though most houses were still built by craftsmen.  What better captures the spirit of America than everyman having a little bit of Athens?  An illuminating book about this period is Greek Revival Architecture in America by Talbot Hamlin. Practice of Architecture (1833) and The Builders Guide (1839), both by Asher Benjamin have been brought together in a most useful manner by Thomas Gordon Smith and published by Da Capo Press in 1994.

 

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After emerging independent and free from the colonial yoke of Great Britain, post-revolutionary America began to form its national identity. Whether inspired by the works of Seneca or the life of Cincinnatus, early leaders like George Washington understood this nation to be the inheritor of Roman republican traditions. They sought to imbue America’s Novus Ordo Seclorum with symbols and architecture evocative of this.  Concurrently, a growing class of merchants and landowners desired ways to show their taste and wealth.  This confluence of interests in symbolic meaning and fashionable forms flowered into America’s Federal Style.

The rediscoveries of the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii in 1719 and 1748, respectively, showed a variety in Roman architecture not quite revealed by Renaissance architects like Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) and later Anglo-Palladian architects such as Colen Campbell (1676-1729). As the world of ancient Rome began to open up, architects traveled throughout France and Italy studying, learning, and drawing. 

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This focus on antiquity sparked a new fashion in late 18^th century English architecture popularized by architects like William Chambers (1723-1796) and the Scottish brothers James and Robert Adam (1728-1792).  In the Adams’ work they translated classical motifs into a style of architecture and decoration so identified with them it came to be known as the Adam Style.

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The fashionable Adam Style influenced the architecture and decorative arts of the young America during a period when the Federalist Party was promoting a strong federal government, hence we refer to the style, spanning roughly from 1780 to 1820, as the Federal Style.  Architecture and furniture of this era moved away from the heavier Palladian correctness of the American Georgian tradition to more vertically orientated proportions and an overall grace and lightness. Additionally, classical motifs such as urns and floral swags were employed decoratively and often transformed into motifs with particular American resonance such as eagles, sheaves of wheat, and busts of Washington.

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The Federal Style house was typically two and one-half to three stories high with exterior walls often articulated with panels and stringcourses.  New room shapes were incorporated with elliptical or circular rooms even breaking through the mass of the house at times.  Windows were symmetrically disposed about the entrance, unless the house was narrow with a side hall and entrance, when the windows were sometimes grouped into a tri-partite window.  Double or triple hung sash windows decreased in height from first to second to third floors with the first floor windows having a width to height ratio of 1:2, 1:2.5, or 1:3.  Palladian, elliptical, or round windows occur frequently.  Sashes were commonly divided into 6 lites with thin muntins and were protected by paneled or louvered shutters.

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Entrances were elaborately designed with a surround of attenuated pilasters or engaged columns framing side-lites and an arched or elliptical fanlight, both accented by delicate tracery, and frequently covered by a small porch.  Ornamental motifs, richly deployed, included swags, urns, eagles, flags, arrows, and more. In materials appropriate to the locale, walls were of clapboard, smooth faced brick or, rarely, stucco which was sometimes scored to imitate stone; with metal, slate or wood shingle roofs.

 Architects and craftsmen like Samuel McIntire (1757-1811), Charles Bulfinch (1763-1845), and Asher Benjamin (1773-1845) along with numerous others popularized this neoclassical taste in America’s architecture. Among America’s finest Federal Style houses are Homewood (1801-1803) near Baltimore, the George Read II House (1801) in Old New Castle, the Nathaniel Russell House (ca. 1809) in Charleston and the Gardner-White-Pingree House (1804) in Salem.

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In the decorative arts, English cabinetmakers’ books such as Thomas Sheraton’s Cabinet-Maker’s and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book (1793) and George Hepplewhite’s Cabinet Maker and Upholsterers Guide (1788) influenced America’s craftsmen greatly. Cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore were home to many fine American furniture makers like Duncan Phyfe. From architecture and furniture, to textiles, silver and more, the spirit of the Federal Style infused and enthused America’s design culture.

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With its ebullience balanced by modest restraint and its use of classical motifs, the Federal Style mirrored the youthful excitement of a new nation that had been forged through rational thought out of the classical tradition.  An excellent introduction to the style is covered in Wendell Garrett’s Classic America: The Federal Style and Beyond. And with over 300 carefully researched and drawn designs, MaryBeth Mudrick and Lawrence D. Smith’s Federal Style Patterns: 1780-1820, published in 2005 by Wiley, assists today’s designers in understanding and utilizing this style for new work. These books and others related to American house styles may be found here: http://www.christinefranck.com/bookstore.html.

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In the early days of America’s founding, along the eastern seaboard, English colonists built robustly beautiful homes that are today often referred to as Colonial. However, Georgian, or more descriptively American Georgian, better describes these houses and distinguishes them from earlier colonial traditions of our English, Dutch, Spanish, and French colonists. The term Georgian refers to the period of British history encompassing the reigns of Kings George I through IV (1714-1830).  American Georgian architecture is most prevalent prior to and just after our revolution, after which other stylistic influences drawn from discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum captivated popular taste.

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Our American Georgian architecture is part of a conversation over time which began in the temples of ancient Rome; develops during the Renaissance in Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura; and continues in England first in the work of Inigo Jones and then in the Anglo-Palladian tradition promoted by Lord Burlington.

This classical tradition of architecture was brought to America’s shores by the mid-18^th century when patrons and craftsmen were using English treatises, pattern, and builder books, such as Gibbs’ Book of Architecture (1728).  Great American houses such as Westover, Wilton, Mount Airy, Drayton Hall, and equivalent exemplars in the north, owe their appearance to this millennia-long conversation.  And though their materials varied greatly from north to south and they varied in character from Baroque to Palladian, these houses were all tied by their common classical root as interpreted through Renaissance Italy and Georgian England. 

A simple rectangular mass, generally two and a half stories high, two rooms deep with a center hall, and five to seven bays wide, the American Georgian house is a spare form ornamented with restraint at carefully chosen moments.  Often this central block was added to with hyphens and wings creating a five part plan.  Roofs varied with more steeply pitched gambrel, hipped, or gabled roofs in the north and hipped, clipped hipped, or gabled roofs in the south.  This style’s beauty resides in its proportions and symmetrical disposition of its elements.  Windows were arranged symmetrically about the front door and aligned one atop the other, often with upper windows diminishing to be narrower and shorter.  Windows were double hung wood sashes with heavy muntins and small panes of glass, typically 9 over 9, 9 over 12, or even 12 over 12. 

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The most expressive aspect of these houses was at the entry.  Often copied directly from pattern books, entries were created with elaborate classical details and occasionally glass as a transom or fan light.  Equally important to the character of these houses are the materials used.  In the north wood siding predominates, most often beveled and lapped.  More typical in the south was brick, often in Flemish bond, accented with shaped water tables, glazed headers, and rubbed or gauged brick at openings.  Interiors were as well-proportioned and detailed.  They were typically paneled with mantelpieces and door and window surrounds being highlights in main rooms.

There is a uniquely American spirit in these houses.  A spirit that borrows freely from what is best, adapts it creatively in difficult conditions, and forges something wholly new that nonetheless embodies immutable ideals.  In the case of the American Georgian house, beauty is that ideal.  An excellent resource is Great Georgian Houses of America, Volumes I and II as reprinted by Dover Publications.  The author wishes to draw attention to Fiske Kimball’s introductory essay in this book and to acknowledge the Wythe House in her hometown of Williamsburg as the model for the sketch showing typical details of an American Georgian house.

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From Vernacular to Classical: The Perpetual Modernity of Palladio

University of Notre Dame, June 10-12, 2011

 Palladio as Paradigm for Education and Practice Today

by Christine G. H. Franck

Dean Lykoudis, faculty, alumni, students, and colleagues it is a pleasure to be back at Notre Dame for this remarkable conference and exhibition. I offer my sincere thanks to the School of Architecture and Lucien for organizing the conference, to Lucien and Ali for their thoughtful and thought-provoking New Palladians, to the RIBA for their inspirational exhibit celebrating 500 years of Palladio, to Calder Loth for his inimitable contributions to Palladio’s Transatlantic journey, and last to my fellow Institute of Classical Architecture & Art trustee, Anne Kriken Mann, for ensuring that the Palladio made it to America.

Reflecting upon the conference theme of the “Perpetual Modernity of Palladio,” I began to question Palladio’s value today. What lessons can Palladio teach us?

We have heard excellent presentations on how the Palladian tradition has manifested itself in built works from such disparate locations as India, Spain and America, across the path of time from the distant past to the recent present, and throughout the spectrum of building from the sacred to the secular. We have also had the opportunity to gaze upon and reconsider Palladio’s harmonious, beautiful works of architecture. Few before or after him have achieved such meaningful, masterful, melodious effects.

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So, his work is influential. It is to be admired. It achieves beauty. But are there other lessons we may draw from Palladio to assist us in our work today?

As we seek today to recover from the amnesia of modernism, to reweave our present and future back to our best past, we are not unlike Renaissance practitioners. A dark age of modernism almost succeeded in extinguishing the flame of civilization, but we, like our Renaissance predecessors, are working today to eliminate “strange abuses” and “barbarous inventions.” We see both the beauty and truth of the classical tradition and believe we may use it to better our condition. To do so, yes, we can utilize Palladio’s built works and his Quattro Libri to guide us, but we should perhaps turn even more fully to Palladio as our “Master and guide.” We should turn to Palladio himself as a paradigm for education and practice today.

Palladio as Paradigm for Education Today

There are several components of Palladio’s training and education which I propose allowed him to reconnect to the classical tradition in the meaningful way that he did, such that his work exemplifies the true spirit of the classical, being at once both canonic and inventive, both eternal and temporal, both ideal and particular. I would define these components, or subjects and methods, as:

·         Learning Materials and Methods through Building

·         Learning Theory and Practice by Studying Vitruvius

·         Learning Architectural Composition by Drawing Rome

·         Learning Purpose within a Humanist Tradition

  For each of these, I submit that their near absence in today’s mainstream architectural education is detrimental to our built environment and quality of life. In particular, I argue that without these a modern renascence of the classical, and a healing of the ills of modernism, is unlikely if not impossible. Let us look now at each of these in a little more detail.

Learning Materials and Methods through Building

In 1521 when Palladio, at the age of 13, was apprenticed to the stonemason Bartolomeo Cavezza of Padova, there was neither formal training nor guilds for architects. Rather, architects were generally placed in charge of building projects after having distinguished themselves in some other art such as goldsmithing and clockmaking, like Brunelleschi, or in painting, like Bramante.

            After a brief three years with Cavezza in Padova, and after trying once, unsuccessfully, to leave him, Palladio and his father relocated to nearby Vicenza where Palladio was enrolled as an apprentice in the Pedemuro workshop.  He was 16 years old when he moved from Padova to Vicenza in 1524. Over the coming twelve to thirteen years he would continue to learn the craft of building as a stonemason.

If we consider his first work of architecture the Villa Godi (1537), Palladio spends more than 16 years in learning the craft of building before undertaking work on his own. Add to that too, that he likely worked alongside his father as a child, and we have a man who literally grew up with a chisel in his hand.

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We cannot underestimate Palladio’s intimate knowledge of building materials and processes when we judge his future accomplishments. For rather than simply conceiving of the design, he knew how building materials would behave, how much things would cost, how long something would take to build. He was, first, a builder and maker of things.

Nor can we divorce the necessary role of the apprenticeship system from this solid education. Knowledge and skill passed from master to apprentice is the essence of a living tradition. In the building arts, the apprenticeship system creates a shared body of knowledge of how to build well. It takes a long time to learn how to do anything well. Something our immediate-gratification, short-attention-span culture has forgotten.

Consider that Palladio did not take on his first design until after 16 years of experience, whereas today an architect can theoretically do so after a mere 8 years or less of education and experience: 5 years of education earning a professional Bachelor of Architecture, 3 years of experience interning and passing the exam. And they can do all this without ever having held a chisel, laid a brick, or swung a hammer.

Learning Theory and Practice by Studying Vitruvius

Towards the end of Palladio’s time with the Pedemuro workshop, he would meet a different sort of master: Gian Giorgio Trissino. Around 1537 the Pedemuro workshop was engaged to work on renovations to Trissino’s villa at Cricoli, which Trissino was transforming from a medieval castello into a villa in the all’antica style of Ancient Rome for what would become his Accademia Trissiniana. A nobleman, diplomat, scholar, and poet well-connected to Popes and Emperors alike, Trissino would not only bestow the name of Palladio on Andrea di Pietro, but also introduce three important subjects to Palladio’s education: Vitruvius, Rome, and the Humanist tradition.

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Palladio’s biographer, Paolo Gualdo, recounts: "Finding Palladio to be a young man of very spirited character and with a great aptitude for science and mathematics, Trissino encouraged his natural abilities by training him in the precepts of Vitruvius.” Palladio himself describes Vitruvius’ pre-eminence in his education when he writes in I Quattro Libri: "Guided by a natural inclination, I dedicated myself to the study of architecture in my youth, and since I always held the opinion that the ancient Romans, as in many other things, had also greatly surpassed all those who came after them in building well, I elected as my master and guide Vitruvius, who is the only ancient writer on this art."

While Palladio may have first been exposed to Vitruvius’s theories with Trissino, or perhaps first perused a copy of Vitruvius in the Pedemuro workshop, it is in his collaboration with his later patron, Daniele Barbaro, that he learns the lessons of Vitruvius most fully. Danielle Barbaro, a Venetian scholar and diplomat, published an edition of Vitruvius in 1556 with extensive commentary.  Illustrating the text throughout were Palladio’s drawings. We all know that it is one thing to read a text, or even to study drawings, but it is another thing altogether to wrest architectural form from a text. This carefully acquired knowledge would greatly impact Palladio’s work.

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Vaughn Hart and Peter Hicks describe an example of the connection between Palladio’s study of Vitruvius and other texts from antiquity and his work. In Barbaro’s Vitruvius is Palladio’s reconstruction of the Roman house. This house type is then later included in his Quattro Libri and also provided the model for his plan of the Venetian monastery of Santa Maria della Carità.

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It is, in large part, through Palladio’s extensive and careful study of Vitruvius’ text, and his interpreting in drawings and built work what was written in words, that Palladio comes to know and claim the classical tradition for himself. Had he merely sat in a class discussing the text, or even read it but not worked through the words in drawings and buildings, or had he used an abridged version of classical architecture like the American Vignola, he would not have meaningfully re-connected with the classical tradition and his work would be far less rich.  The limited extent to which many contemporary classical architects, let alone mainstream architects, learn from Vitruvius retards a reinvigoration of the classical tradition.  

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I should say that while I focus here on Palladio’s study of Vitruvius, as it is the text central to the theory and practice of architecture, this is not to exclude his study and knowledge of other authors from antiquity such as Pliny, or that of early Renaissance and contemporary authors such as Alberti and Serlio.

Learning Architectural Composition by Drawing Rome

In tandem with, supporting and elucidating his study of Vitruvius, was Palladio’s meticulous observation of the buildings of ancient Rome through surveys and drawings over many years. His biographer Paolo Gualdo recounts: “Palladio measured and made drawings of many of those sublime and beautiful buildings which are the revered relics of Roman antiquity.”

First visiting Rome with Trissino for several months in 1541, and then again four more times over the course of his career, Palladio would come to know the best buildings of Rome through surveying and drawing them directly, himself. In his Quattro Libri, he describes that he has “traveled many times to Rome and other places in Italy and abroad where I have seen with my own eye and measured with my own hand the fragments of many ancient buildings.”

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There is no better way to learn lessons of good design than to survey and draw exemplary buildings. I’ll say that again: There is no better way to learn lessons of good design than to survey and draw exemplary buildings. Neither picturesque views, no matter how fun they may be, nor pretty watercolor sketches, nor gigabytes of photography can replace the lessons learned by surveying and drawing a building.

In an essay on Palladio’s drawings, Beltramini points out that Palladio’s training as a maker of things affected how he analyzed buildings in drawings. Palladio’s drawings weren’t made for pictorial purposes, but by drawing in plan, section, and elevation, the drawings were analytical for Palladio. Palladio also engaged in the ever-valuable exercise of reconstruction, which forces one to become familiar enough with a building’s language to be able to imagine how the language one has discovered might have been extended to create what once stood.

These trips to Rome and study of her buildings had a profound impact on Palladio. He was able to better interpret Vitruvius’s text, even check, if you will, what Vitruvius wrote. And he was able to collect examples for his own use, to see components of classical architecture in composition, and to imagine the city as a whole.

Now, we have looked at three essential aspects of Palladio’s education:

·         Learning Materials and Methods through Building

·         Learning Theory and Practice by Studying Vitruvius

·         Learning Architectural Composition by Drawing Rome

Today’s architecture students are impoverished by comparison. For example, if we take a look at the breakdown of the educational requirements of the National Architectural Accrediting Board, the body which assesses schools of architecture for accreditation, we see thirty four criteria (1). Thirty four criteria is quite a lot, so it must be comprehensive.

But let us look at this differently by rearranging the criteria into similar groups and see what we have (2). Well, on the far left we have what I would say are general social skills and education that one should expect of any well-educated, thinking, caring person. And on the far right we have criteria which reflect the professional and legal aspects of architecture today. In the middle we have those subjects most directly related to the design and construction of buildings. Of these, only one mentions the materiality of architecture.

In general, architectural education today has little to do with the craft of building. Indeed, it often seems to have little to do with the built environment at all. If, however, we consider that much of the architecture we admire was designed and built by people we would today identify as design/build professionals, and that we have so many students of architecture going on to work in graphic design, product design, and even gaming and film effects, one has to question whether we should not perhaps increase our focus on the craft of building.

Some architectural programs do incorporate building projects in their curriculum such as the Yale building project, which has been offered at Yale since 1967. The program is mandatory for all first- year students. After a five week design project, one team’s project is chosen and then constructed by the students. Likewise is Samuel Mockbee’s Rural Design Studio at Auburn University, which began in 1994 as a strategy to improve the living conditions in rural Alabama while imparting practical experience to architecture students. Again, students design and then construct a house.

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The most extensive opportunity students have to learn the craft of building today is the solar decathalon where the U.S. Department of Energy challenges 20 collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive. In general, though, the integration of building crafts and construction in architecture schools today is very limited. Out of more than 100 accredited schools of architecture and 61 degree programs in construction, only 14 universities contain degree programs in both architecture and construction in the same college. We have separated building and architecture to the detriment of both. And while one semester of construction experience is better than nothing, it is a whole lot less than Palladio’s 16 years of practical experience.

We do have some building crafts programs which continue to teach traditional building trades, but these are not generally for teaching architects.  At the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment we have the re-introduction of live build projects, which are projects designed by students and then built by the Foundation’s building craft apprentices who study in trades such as stonemasonry, carpentry, blacksmithing and roofing.

And at the American College of the Building Arts in Charleston which does offer two degree programs, but not in architecture, we have students designing and building in the trades of stonemasonry, metalworking, carpentry, plaster, preservation masonry, and timber framing.

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And recently here at Notre Dame, Kevin Buccellato has been developing a concentration in the building arts. This focuses on constructing architectural models and details through four courses during which students research an historically significant building, produce drawings and build a detailed model. Subsequently they then design and build a traditional architectural element such as a mantel piece, stair, or newel post. It’s a good start at reintegrating the craft of building with the art of architecture. But we need more.

We also need to consider that in the United States, in almost no state today can someone qualify to sit for the architectural registration exam through experience alone, as one used to be able to do. In nearly every state today one must hold a degree from an accredited school of architecture with its thirty four criteria.

Along with the minimal focus on the building arts in architectural education today, few students ever hear the name of Vitruvius or survey and draw a building in Rome. And while we can do little to change others, we have room for improvement in our own camp.

If we take Palladio as a paradigm for education today, we must acknowledge the degree to which he confronted Vitruvius with “lively mental energy.” A common refrain among the classical architectural offices is that the students graduating from Notre Dame today have less facility with the classical language than in the past. For my own part, I have observed on recent juries that the classical language appears to be less understood and more often applied as stylistic decoration rather than being generative to the design. Now, that may or may not be true, but I suggest that every student who graduates from this school should at one time or another construct the orders, a temple, a house (or more) directly from Vitruvius’ text. Vitruvius has to be worked through to be understood, not just read or referenced.

And for those architects in the room who have never constructed an order or diagrammed intercolumniations from Vitruvius? Do so!

Why? Well, in Vitruvius, without drawings to guide one, one is forced to understand the architecture better. Additionally, Vitruvius presents classical architecture in all its flexibility and variety. By returning to Vitruvius, we return to first principles rather than imitating other people’s imitations of those.

Likewise, we have room for improvement in the way we approach studying Rome. Some fifteen years ago Lucien and I taught together on our Notre Dame Rome Studies Program. We ran several design projects as part of our studio. But I came away from that experience believing a far better use of our students time while in Rome would be to simply survey and draw buildings and spaces in Rome, and only, perhaps, at the end of their time to undertake a small design project.

I imagine if I were to ask Palladio to sketch a plan and elevation of, well, just about any of the buildings he surveyed, that he would be able to do so. Because in the act of surveying and then representing the information gathered in a drawing, the information is burned into your mind. If you ask our students to draw from memory a building they saw in Rome, even the most important ones, even just the basic elements of the composition, few could.

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At the Institute, when I developed our Rome Drawing Tour along with Richard Cameron, we organized it around three types of drawings: pictorial, analytical, and visual notes. Then over the course of two weeks, we conducted two drawing exercises per day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. But of course, this barely scratches the surface of Rome.

In general, whether considering how contemporary classicists engage with Vitruvius or Rome, we need to vigilantly keep our standards high. We should know Vitruvius and antiquity as well as Palladio did.

Learning Purpose within a Humanist Tradition

This educational foundation of knowledge of building, careful study of Vitruvius, and learning from Rome is the educational foundation we need for a revitalized practice today. But that practice must be purposeful. And it is this final aspect of Palladio’s education, his intellectual development within the humanist tradition and thus his sense of purpose, which I propose we adopt as our principle paradigm in practice today.

           Trissino’s academy at his villa in Cricoli was in the tradition of the Florentine academy. At Cricoli, one could learn in rural solitude, in rooms decorated with Greek and Latin inscriptions; where one developed through Study, arts, and virtue; and undertook a regulated schedule of study of Latin and Greek, philosophy, astronomy, geography, music. While it is not known to what extent he was involved, Palladio seems to have taken part of the life of Trissino’s academy.

Underlying the academy was the concept of virtú, which we may think of as work in service to the public good. As we recover the classical tradition of Rome, of Palladio, we do so not merely because we prefer this or that aesthetic, but we do so because within the classical we find an architecture and urbanism to ameliorate the challenges of life, to express in built form the ideal world, to provide the best setting for our public and private lives.

Like Palladio, we purposefully choose to reach back into history for the good of our present and future. Palladio himself hoped he would help in this regard. In his introduction to his Quattro Libri he writes, “I am longing to say that I have perhaps shed so much light on this area of architecture that those who come after me may be able, with my example before them and using their own intellectual acuity, readily to add the true beauty and elegance of the ancients to the magnificence of their buildings.”

And so let us go forward, with Palladio’s example before us, readily adding the true beauty and elegance of the ancients to the magnificence of our buildings.

___________________________________________

1) NAAB’s Student Performance Criteria

For the purpose of accreditation, graduating students must demonstrate understanding or ability in the following areas:

1. Speaking and Writing Skills 

2. Critical Thinking Skills 

3. Graphics Skills 

4. Research Skills 

5. Formal Ordering Systems 

6. Fundamental Design Skills 

7. Collaborative Skills 

8. Western Traditions 

9. Non-Western Traditions

10. National and Regional Traditions

11. Use of Precedents

12. Human Behavior

13. Human Diversity

14. Accessibility

15. Sustainable Design

16. Program Preparation

17. Site Conditions

18. Structural Systems

19. Environmental Systems

20. Life Safety

21. Building Envelope Systems

22. Building Service Systems

23. Building Systems Integration

24. Building Materials and Assemblies

25. Construction Cost Control

26. Technical Documentation

27. Client Role in Architecture

28. Comprehensive Design

29. Architect’s Administrative Roles

30. Architectural Practice

31. Professional Development

32. Leadership

Social Skills  

1. Speaking and Writing Skills

2. Critical Thinking Skills

7. Collaborative Skills

12. Human Behavior

13. Human Diversity

32. Leadership

General Intellect 

4. Research Skills

8. Western Traditions

9. Non-Western Traditions

10. National and Regional Traditions

Procedures and Legalities 

25. Construction Cost Control

26. Technical Documentation

27. Client Role in Architecture

29. Architect’s Administrative Roles

30. Architectural Practice

31. Professional Development

33. Legal Responsibilities

34. Ethics and Professional Judgment

Codes, Equality, Safety 

14. Accessibility

15. Sustainable Design

20. Life Safety

Planning and Composition 

5. Formal Ordering Systems

6. Fundamental Design Skills

11. Use of Precedents

16. Program Preparation

17. Site Conditions

28. Comprehensive Design

Systems 

18. Structural Systems

19. Environmental Systems

21. Building Envelope Systems

22. Building Service Systems

23. Building Systems Integration

Representation 

3. Graphics Skills

Craft of Building 

24.Building Materials and Assemblies

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Following close upon the heels of the Virginia Company’s 1607 settlement of Jamestown, a second group of English colonists put down roots in the Northern parts of what was then known as Virginia.  Settling Plymouth in 1620 “for the glorie of God, and advancemente of the Christian faith, and honour of [their] king and countrie,” the Pilgrims brought with them to New England their belief in simplicity of worship and strict morality.  The English Colonial architecture of New England is perhaps best seen in relation to the character of its Puritan and Separatist settlers. 

Their first concern being shelter, the earliest homes were little more than cellars or huts with sod or thatch roofs.  But as time allowed and experience with harsh New England winters necessitated, they quickly built larger and sturdier buildings.  Using late-medieval rural building techniques familiar to them, houses were most commonly timber framed with the infill covered in wood clapboard or shingles to protect it. 

The first houses were generally one room with the chimney located on the end wall and a chamber under the steep roof for sleeping.  This soon expanded to two rooms wide with the chimney in the center shared between the rooms to conserve its warmth.  Also designed with conservation of warmth in mind, the entry and stairs to the upper chambers were commonly in a small enclosed vestibule located between the front door and the central chimney.  Expansions were made by adding a lean-to at the back of the house, resulting in the familiar Saltbox form.  

Windows were small casement or sash windows made of diamond-shaped panes, the small opening size reflecting both the need to conserve warmth and the high price and limited availability of glass in the colonies at that time.  With the medieval tolerance of asymmetry, windows and doors were placed in relation to interior spaces rather than for exterior symmetry. 

Owing to its medieval origins and timber framing techniques, second floors often overhung the first with the ends of the posts shaped into pendants, a lone element of ornament on these otherwise simple houses.  Roofs were gabled, sometimes with the framing at the gable end projecting beyond the second floor.  Eaves were shallow and devoid of the decorative modillions or bed molds found in later Georgian style architecture.  This plain box exemplifies how construction technique combined with locally available materials can create clear form and characteristic style. 

At its best, domestic architecture reflects the culture and knowledge of its builders and the time and place in which it is built.  The English Colonial homes of New England admirably achieve this.  Standing calm on the shores of the New World, these houses are a sober reflection of the Pilgrims’ reserve and fortitude.  A fine example is the Parson Capen House in Topsfield, Massachusetts (1683) and Fiske Kimball’s Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic contains an excellent chapter on early Colonial architecture.

For an immersive experience into the life of New England’s colonial settlers, a visit to New Hampshire’s Strawberry Banke Museum, with many original buildings, may be to your liking.  It is on a visit there some years ago that I purchased my copy of A Building History of Northern New England, by James L. Garvin, an informative and comprehensive discussion of New England’s architecture. These books and more on America’s traditional domestic architecture and classical architecture may be found at my online bookshop. 

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With population expanding, immigrants arriving, rapid industrialization, and urbanization, it is little wonder that late-19^th century Americans viewed their simpler colonial past as a Golden Age. Emerging wearily from Reconstruction, Americans patriotically celebrated their past and future at Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition.  The “New England Farmer’s Home and Modern Kitchen” was a particularly popular exhibit.   Inside this log cabin, women in colonial dress exhibited artifacts such as a Pilgrim’s cradle and spinning wheel, idealizing an America heroically hewn out of New England by hard-working colonists.

Poems like Longfellow’s The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), sang of Priscilla the Puritan maiden, “never idle a moment,” laboring virtuously at her fireside spinning wheel.  Such stories imbued the colonial past with an appealing rectitude.  Popular taste for the colonial, no matter how loosely defined, was fueled and fed by entrepreneurs like Wallace Nutting.  His Old America Company sold reproduction furniture and textiles, and millions of hand-tinted photographs of bucolic landscapes and colonial homes with period-costumed ladies.

Concurrently, interest in studying and preserving history was growing.  Organizations like the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (1910) were formed.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its American Wing of period interiors in 1924.  And in 1926 Rockefeller and Goodwin began restoring Williamsburg from a “straggling, dusty ghost” to its 18^th century character, while H. F. du Pont began transforming Winterthur. 

With some degree of patriotic and aesthetic reaction against popular European revival architectural styles, architects and historians rediscovered America’s past.  Colonial buildings Jefferson once characterized as “rude, misshapen piles of brick” were now admired.  From books such as Early New England Interiors (1878) to Whitehead’s Monograph Series (begun 1916), photographs and measured drawings of early American buildings became available while scholar-architects like Fiske Kimball wrote about America’s architectural history.  Whether custom designed for the wealthiest, or distributed as a kit through catalogues like Aladdin Houses or Sears and Roebuck, Colonial Revival houses, and their good taste, were now democratically available to all.

Colonial Revival architecture purposefully draws upon English, Dutch, or even Spanish colonial architecture, as well later Georgian and Federal styles; though buildings are generally larger and proportions more slender than historical examples.  Details are borrowed freely, but not without care.  If architects began loosely interpreting the past, they were soon fluent and creating new architecture worthy of its sources.   

With its combination of nostalgia and patriotism, reaction and rediscovery, popular taste and academic inquiry, the Colonial Revival is a complex part of American material culture.  One may argue that the colonial lives on today in the worst pseudo-traditional architecture populating American suburbs.  On the other hand, the architecture of early America, its rediscovery during the Colonial Revival, and much of today’s Contemporary Classicism all branch from the same Classical root.  In this architectural lineage the highest ideals of American culture are manifest.  For more on Colonial Revival architecture read Richard Guy Wilson’s, The Colonial Revival House, and Brent Hull and Christine G. H. Franck’s Winterthur Style Sourcebook: Traditional American Rooms.

 

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On Monday, May 2 at 3:00pm, preceding that evening's 2011 Arthur Ross Awards, Michael Franck and Arthur Lohsen will discuss their work at a special presentation at the office of Peter Pennoyer Architects in New York City. It's FREE for ICAA members, employees of professional member firms, and full-time students with valid ID; $20 for the general public. 1 AIA/CES LU. (Theory). For more information http://bit.ly/eJE7TF.

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University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN

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Sometimes the best way to measure a city is to set out without destination and see how the city reveals itself to you. I did just this recently on my first trip to Calgary. Having studied a map of the city prior to my trip, and finding a neatly gridded, compact plan, snuggled in the arc of two rivers between the flat prairies and the rolling foothills of the Canadian Rockies, I imagined in my traditional urbanist’s mind's eye, a beautiful city in the clear Canadian air. While exploring Calgary I was at turns disappointed and delighted.

I arrived early in the morning at Calgary International Airport just northeast of the city and boarded a local bus to connect to the C-Train, Calgary’s rapid transit system in operation since 1981. As my bus drove through still frozen farmland covered in pools of melting snow, I saw two things rising from the prairies.  To the west, the majestic Canadian Rockies, mountains of such size I could not have imagined them bigger.  And to the south and east, like mushrooms sprouting on the dark forest floor, clumps of builder beige housing developments.  A clump here, then an expanse of land covered only in bales of hay, then another clump of houses there. I wondered if the city of my imagination was going to exist or not.

Leaving the bus and boarding the very comfortable C-Train, within twenty minutes I was in the city.  After a quick trip to the Calgary Stampede grounds, where I was to speak later that day in the Big Four Building for Restore Media and the Pella Pro Expo, I headed back to the city center.  Here the C-Train runs right down 7^th Avenue, one line going in each direction, with sidewalks elevated at the stops. Efficient and dignified, it is an excellent system. I alighted in what I thought was about the center of town and started walking.

Wanting to see the river, I struck off northward.  I was entirely unprepared and sad to find myself walking through a sea of hi-rise glass and steel office buildings little better than a dense office park.  The combination of the dreary gray colors, cold steel, and plain glass, with black asphalt streets, grey concrete sidewalks, and dirty mounds of still melting snow left me feeling a bit depressed, as if my soul itself were gray that day. Gazing around me I began to notice the company names on the buildings and I was reminded that Calgary is oil and gas rich. It felt as if Houston had moved north to Canada.

I wondered if the early history of Calgary: timber, grain, and cattle farming could still be found anywhere. Or had it been entirely eclipsed by eighties-style office buildings?  Finally reaching the Bow River near the Eau Claire market, I found a sad intersection of old and new: the little Eau Claire Market and Bow River Timber Company building, Calgary’s history, dwarfed by the Calgary built by oil and gas. Likewise at the market that I had hopefully imagined might be an indoor market with local goods, I found a mere indoor shopping mall had replaced what was once the main market.

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Frustrated I thought I would head back toward 7^th Avenue, for surely there must be s few good buildings somewhere.  Walking along streets of glass with building entrances visible only because of signs marking them, I was struck once again that while the street and blocks and even transit of a city may be great, without good architecture, good urbanism cannot exist.

At last ahead I glimpsed three buildings in a row that looked like the city I had imagined.  Three to five story commercial buildings with active ground level shops.  Finally, a small remnant of what once must have been a lovely city. 

But my illusion was shattered again when I turned to look east at the blinding sun reflecting off the Bow Tower.  Under construction, the Bow Tower will be the tallest building in Western Canada, or so boasts its job site advertisement.  And it will use a lot of steel, boasts another advertisement. As I looked at it overwhelming the buildings at its base, I was not surprised the Foster+Partners had not boasted that this building would be a good neighbor.  It won’t be.

Walking further, still seeking something other than trophy office buildings, I finally spied at the end of the next block an interesting corner on a building.  Approaching the intersection, the Hudson Bay Building revealed itself to me.  Stretching an entire block with an arcade at its base, I was happy to see some part of Calgary still preserved. And just one block further, I discovered Stephen Avenue.

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Now a pedestrian mall, Stephen Avenue is one well-preserved street of historic buildings dating to the early twentieth century.  Bank buildings, commercial buildings, old hotels: here I found the city I had imagined.  And here too was the greatest concentration of people. Busy walking, having coffee, enjoying the early spring, conversing, laughing and happy, this was not the depressed canyons of glass and steel I had just wandered through.

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Along the way, I also found the beautiful old Grain Exchange.  Built out of local yellow sandstone it sits just nearby the Canadian Pacific Railway and the great Fairmont Hotel.  Happy to have found remnants of the city I imagined, I returned to the Stampede fairgrounds to deliver my lectures. I hope in the future Calgary will utilize its history rather than cordoning it off on one street.

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Finishing my lecture that evening, I headed to the bus depot, for the greatest leg of this adventure had yet to begin.  That evening I hopped on board a bus and traveled overland from Calgary, across the shocking flatness of Saskatchewan punctuated only with grain elevators and long lines of trains, through the still-snow covered mountains above Lake Superior with its frozen waves along the shoreline, and onwards to Toronto.  

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Three days across Canada by bus, and another twelve hours from Toronto across the hilly Finger Lakes region of New York, down through the Poconos and through the Delaware Water Gap, finally, after the longest overland trip I’ve ever done, my beautiful city, New York, came into view. No imagination needed.

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February 9, 2011

 My dear friends and colleagues,

I wish I could be with you today, but it is a good sign I could not be, since a lecture to over 200 architects in Boston yesterday meant I could not make a late evening flight to London. Indeed, while the years beginning in the fall of 2008 have been terrifyingly slow, over the last six to eight months there has been a palpable optimism that we will recover.

Although the unemployment level among architects remains an astonishing 24% (according to the AIA’s chief economist(1)), the architects I just lectured to all reported being busy. Profits and schedules are tighter, but work proceeds. The luxury residential market is getting back on its feet due to many on Wall Street making record earnings. However, the vast housing and development market remains extremely slow due to lack of lending and credit and a housing surplus. Institutional projects are picking up again, but slowly, as many institutions have seen the value of their investments decrease. Yes, slowly, things are moving ahead.

 Hand in hand with that, though, is the recognition that the post-recession world will not be the same. This is a good thing.  The excesses of the boom years of the 1990s and 2000s were unsustainable, wasteful, and ultimately destructive. As traditional architects, designers, and urbanists, we are uniquely poised to offer solutions to what we can now see as the last baroque hurrah of this excessive, disjointed, dysfunctional modern life.

 There are significant shifts occurring in America’s economic, cultural, and social life that seem almost to be reversing most of the last half century. To my mind, these are some of the trends most critical in their impact on architecture and urbanism:

 1) Economic-based Cultural Shifts

As Americans settle into the realization that the recovery from the Great Recession will be long and slow, there is an increasing sense that the “American Dream” of each successive generation faring better than their parents through hard work, is less possible. This general view coupled with the loss of faith in homeownership as a path to wealth has shaken assumptions that have long-driven middle class America.

 However, hand in hand with that has risen an increasing pride in austerity, and what is, even now, a belief in the possibility of success through hard work. This “Puritan work ethic” at the root of American culture seems to be reasserting itself in a positive way. There is among the middle class a rejection, for now at least, of the trappings of wealth. Wall Street wealth is now distrusted in favor of common sense Main Street wisdom.

 2) Economic Changes Impacting Housing

Tightening credit has limited homebuyer choices and indicates a shift toward renting rather than owning. New homebuyers are focused toward smaller housing options since they can’t finance as much as in the past. Indeed, still limiting development is the simple fact that “nobody is lending.” And when banks do begin lending again, common wisdom is that it will never be the same.

 Anxiety over future finances has homeowners scaling back, even seeking out homes with land for gardening. 

Adult “boomerang kids” un-able to find work moving home to live with their parents, coupled with grandparents who’ve lost the value of their savings are trends increasing multi-generational households.

 We should view these as positive cultural developments. Wouldn’t it be better if we lived smaller and smarter?  Wouldn’t it be better if we sourced food locally?  Wouldn’t it be better if our families remained closer?

 3) Economic Realities Impacting Commercial Development

The commercial credit crisis looms large in the next five years. Short-term commercial loans made at the height of the boom from 2005-2007 were based on over-inflated values. According to the Congressional Oversight Panel, $1.4 trillion in commercial real-estate loans will expire and require refinancing; 50% of these are currently underwater (2). When commercial properties fail, the economy will contract further, job losses will occur, storefront and office buildings will deteriorate and the banks serving these sectors will risk failure.

 A potential solution and future market for architectural and urban services may be the redeployment of office space for housing. Professor, architect, and urbanist Ellen Dunham Jones’ Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs provides excellent solutions for remaking our suburban environment.

 4) Economic Changes Impacting Planning and Jobs Patterns

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the American economy has undergone a fundamental shift since the end of WWII from an economy based on manufacturing to service industries. In the 1970s, 48.8 million jobs were service providing, while only 22.2 million jobs were goods-producing; a ratio of 2.2:1. By 2005, this gap had widened to a ratio of 5:1, with 111.5 millions jobs being service-based and only 22.1 million being goods-producing (3). Even so, the US remains the world’s leading producer of manufactured goods, with a focus on increasing manufacturing. The Recovery Act allocated over $100 billion in grants and tax cuts toward investments in manufacturing.

 Though architects and urbanists should assume the US will retain its manufacturing base, it is likely to be a new model of smaller, compact plants dealing in advanced technologies, surrounded by clusters of small firms that service them. (4)

 5) Demographic Trends Affecting Architecture and Urbanism - Aging

According to the US Census Bureau, in 2009 12.8% of the American population was 65+; by 2050, 21% of the population will be. For this aging population critical issues will include accessibility, options for “aging in place” and adaptability of buildings, and ease of access to public transportation.

 6) Demographic Shifts Affecting Architecture and Urbanism - Increasing Urbanization

82% of the US population lives in cities and their surrounding suburban areas as of the 2008 census. That is projected to increase in coming years. In Foreclosing the Dream: How America's Housing Crisis is Reshaping Our Cities and Suburbs, Professor William H. Lucy explains that the trend toward dispersed, suburban life is turning toward an urban future.

 Indeed, our commonly held assumptions about where Americans live and work are outdated. Most still see America as suburban, with those suburbs populated by a wealthy white majority and cites inhabited by poor ethnic minorities. However, a Brookings Institution study of 2000-2008 census data, “The State of Metropolitan America” (2010) indicates instead that for the first time in history a majority of all racial and ethnic minorities in metro areas live outside of the city center in the inner suburbs. Likewise, the majority of those at or just below the poverty line now live in the suburbs (5).  There is no doubt that this is will put increasing pressure on public services, such as mass transit, which are largely non-existent or extremely disconnected in our suburban environments.

 This re-urbanization trend is also examined in John McIlwain’s Urban Land Institute report: “Housing in America: The Next Decade.” He observes, “The age of suburbanization and growing homeownership is over…coming decades will be the time of the great re-urbanization as 24/7 central cities grow and suburbs around the country are redeveloped with new or revived walkable town centers.” (6)

 7) Culture of Environmental Awareness

Increase in oil prices a few years ago caused one of the first increases in public transportation ridership. But Americans have short memories, the minute the oil prices went back down, so too did use of public transportation. Convincing Americans of the value of public transit remains a challenge, and though we may not like it, America remains a car-obsessed culture.

 Increases in energy costs, coupled with decreases in household income, as well as Federal stimulus packages aimed at assisting homeowners while supporting environmentally sound choices has caused greater environmental awareness among nearly all Americans.

 The Federal Government, as well as many institutions, such as universities, have adopted strict energy policies and/or requirements that their buildings meet certain LEED and/or performance levels.

 Summary

In sum, while there are many issues affecting the future of architecture and urbanism, I view the above demographic, economic, cultural, and environmental shifts as those which will change our built environment the most and for the better. Most if not all of the positions we take as traditional architects and urbanists are uniquely suited to solve the above challenges.

 I think, quite simply, that we must seek facts and argue not philosophy but fact-based solutions. We should waste no time arguing old negative arguments about modernism, but get about the business of understanding the problems we face and position traditional architecture and urbanism exactly where it ought to be:  in service to our fellow citizens.

 Best wishes to you all on a bitterly cold New York morning,

 Christine G. H Franck

 President, Christine G. H Franck, Inc.

Trustee, Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America

Member, International College of Chapters, INTBAU

1. Hughes, C.J. “Exactly How Many Architects in the US are Unemployed?” Architectural Record.  October 25, 2010. http://archrecord.construction.com/news/daily/archives/2010/10/101025real_employment.asp
2. “Congressional Oversight Panel Analyzes Commercial Real Estate Losses and the Risk to Financial Stability.” Congressional Oversight Panel. February 11, 2010. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:AOWOn6ht4GwJ:cop.senate.gov/press/releases/release-021110-cre.cfm+Congressional+Oversight+Panel,+%241.4+trillion+in+commercial+real-estate+loans+will+expire+and+require+refinancing&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com
3. “The American Workplace - The Shift To A Service Economy.” http://jobs.stateuniversity.com/pages/16/American-Workplace-SHIFT-SERVICE-ECONOMY.html.
4. Stokes, Bruce. “Act II for American Manufacturing?” National Journal Magazine. December 9, 2010. http://nationaljournal.com/member/magazine/latest-issue-20101211?print=true
5. The State of Metropolitan America. The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy program. 2010. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/Programs/Metro/state_of_metro_america/metro_america_report.pdf.
6. McIlwain, John. Housing in America: The Next Decade. Urban Land Institute. 2010. http://www.uli.org/~/media/Documents/ResearchAndPublications/Fellows/McIlwain/HousinginAmerica.ashx.

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