PAGE 7 Projects from China, France, Spain, Belgium, the Persian Gulf, the United States, and elsewhere
PAGE 215 Essays regarding the value of manual drawing and painting for the formation of architects
fall 2021 Issue No. 2
PAGE 267 Perspectives on critical contemporary issues and aspects of the current architectural debate
Selena Anders
Managing Editor Mary Beth Zachariades
Editorial Committee Members
Stefanos Polyzoides
Selena Anders
Richard Economakis
Michael Mesko
Steven Semes
Paolo Vitti
Jonathan Weatherill
Samir Younés
Graphic Design
Christina Duthie
Copy Editing
Heather Grennan Gary
Archives of New Traditional Architecture is prepared by the staff and research associates of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture and published twice yearly. ISBN: 978-0-578-36131-4
In an age dominated by the climate crisis, the role that Architecture plays in securing the future of human life on our planet looms larger than ever. Most people are deeply concerned about global warming, yet at the same time are under the false impression that this crisis has somehow suddenly descended upon us and taken us by surprise. The fact is that for a hundred or so years we have been steadily building in the wrong places, in flawed form, by questionable means, and absent transcendent intentions. We have embraced the car as the dominant mode of transportation and, in accommodating it, have consumed prodigious amounts of land, energy, and resources without being much concerned about the massive damage this has caused our cities and nature. Finding ourselves in the midst of an environmental crisis, which is in fact an urban crisis, we are in dire need of rethinking the way Architecture is taught and practiced today. Not only for what it is, but also for what it means and for how our design thoughts and actions may be affecting the integrity of our habitat now and going forward. Human beings have been asking two interconnected questions since the dawn of urban civilization three or so millennia ago: Where am I? and Who am I? The first question addresses issues of sustenance, health, and shelter; does harnessing nature while establishing and managing the places where we all live generate a stable and productive habitat? The second question probes the meaning willed into our projects, whether buildings, settlements, or landscapes. Are they realized as a platform for belonging, one that addresses spiritual needs and provides for a discrete individual and community identity? Answering these two questions has always been a profound responsibility for architects and builders. The invention and refinement of credible design ideas and construction skills and their constant transference from generation to generation is what we have come to call Traditional Architecture.
Up until the middle of the twentieth century, every village, town, city, and metropolitan center in the world had an established, unique form that was shaped to best support their economic, social, and spiritual life. The public and private architecture and urbanism of all these places gently morphed over time, powered by changing living needs, clear symbolic programs, received models of design, and best tectonic practices. Change was managed by building slowly, deliberately, organically, and operating with an understanding and appreciation of received knowledge. In the process, urban and rural places were cast in a clear balance with nature and reflected the cultural predilections of their inhabitants. This classical and vernacular order of building going back millennia was weakened after the Industrial Revolution and ruptured after the end of World War I in 1918.
Encouraged by the collapse of many European empires, appalled by the inequity of the social and economic systems then in place, and horrified by the brutality of trench warfare, many young architects turned away from the authority and guidance of tradition. They imagined themselves being aligned with the organizational and aesthetic prowess of the rising high industrial economy that had just won the war, rejected all precedent, and aimed for an ex novo, more enabling and more politically egalitarian society to be delivered through a brave new architectural and urban culture. Their ultimate vision was not realized until after the Second World War, when the cores of many of the world’s greatest cities were destroyed by aerial bombardment and their reconstruction became an urgent task. The architects that had previously only imagined the birth of a new society were finally given the grand opportunity to deliver it by having their theories adopted as the form and process of choice for post-World War II reconstruction. They accomplished this extraordinary transition by hitching their cause to the idea of the inevitability of perpetual progress: harnessing the industrial economy and financial might of their countries, serving the political ends advocated by governments across the political spectrum, adopting new technologies as a fashion platform, dominating the professional press, and taking over architectural education worldwide.
From the 1950s to the 1980s this radical modern political, economic, and architectural elite was entrusted with the rebuilding and extending of European cities and the restructuring of US ones through urban infill and suburban expansion. In the next decades, and through an insidious process of economic neocolonialism, they also became
the de facto leaders of the radical transformation of cities throughout the rest of the world. As we now well know, the results of this grand experiment in tradition-canceling design turned out to be catastrophic: every world culture has lost most if not all of its built heritage and huge swaths of its natural endowment. Their habitat burdened by the ugliness, uniformity, impermanence, declining economic values, deficit of meaning, and social injustice caused by just a few decades of sloppy suburban sprawl and irreversible damage to historic urban cores.
In less than half a century, the previously unique character of every world settlement has been reduced to a state of wanton placelessness. Social culture, political regime, economic conditions, local natural resources, geographic location, and climatic inputs no longer seem to have an effect on the definition of an architecture and urbanism that promotes attachment to place and local belonging. The modern project has delivered dire consequences: cultural disruption, memory loss, and alienation across the board, everywhere and for everyone. It continues to do so at present, its promises dominating most individual practices and architecture schools alike. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the perpetual invention of obscure innovative form and achieving starchitect status are still considered as the most prized goals of our discipline and profession. Yet the tragic gap between architects’ claimed intentions and the actual results of their labor continues to widen from year to year.
Not surprisingly, the reaction to this kind of relativist and ultimately corrosive approach to architecture has been swift. Beginning forty years ago, a few lone voices began to argue for a return to an architectural culture of continuity, first by the postmodernist attempt to introduce classical and vernacular architectural fragments into new projects, and then by launching a full-throttled movement to seek a reconnection with the traditional cultures of place-making that were severed two generation earlier. Urbanism was slowly rediscovered as a discrete discipline. Walkability, mixed-use development, typological variety, neighborhood, district and public realm design, transitoriented development, multimodality in transportation and light site imprint have all together become a potent platform for imagining urbanity anew. At the same time architecture has also been recast in its full complexity. Accessing the diverse classical and vernacular traditions of the world has allowed for framing the future under the best possible ideas that humans have ever entertained or realized into form. Typological design, diverse programming, project character based on local culture and climate, contextual design in the city and nature, a focus on the human scale, and the aesthetic, social, and psychological effects of buildings have all together become the ingredients of a new traditional architecture. Its ultimate purpose is the incremental healing of our physical world and the reintroduction of beauty as the measure of contemplating our broader place in the world. We find ourselves in the midst of this long journey to revise our understanding of architecture from an autonomous fine art practiced for the benefit of a few to a unified discipline and practice of building, urban and environmental design reaching out to benefit all people of the world. We will all be engaged in this search for place and meaning for decades to come. And we will not stop practicing, teaching, writing, advocating, or serving the cause of this other kind of Architecture until the physical and spiritual integrity of the human habitat, it cities and nature, has been fully restored.
STEFANOS POLYZOIDES Professor and Dean The University of Notre Dame School of Architecture
ANTA 2 highlights the considerable realizations of traditional architecture worldwide with projects in Belgium, China, France, Guatemala, India, Italy, the Persian Gulf, Spain, the UK, and the US. This issue contains seven sections: Urban and Architectural Projects, Essays in Architectural History and Theory, Critique, Reconstruction and Restoration, Drawing, Debates and Positions, and Recent Books of Note.
The Urban and Architectural Projects demonstrate how their authors have solidly anchored their work within the regional architectural characters. Some projects provide a comprehensive urbanity with well-articulated quarters, streets, squares, and blocks, and a hierarchy of civic and vernacular buildings. These include L.Krier and J. Sepehri’s proposal for a maritime city in the Persian Gulf, Estudio Urbano’s Ciudad Cayalà in Guatemala, and J. Simp-
son’s Dickens Heath and Poundbury in the UK. Other projects, such as P. C. Bontempi’s Labirinto della Masone, S. Bastidas’s Villa on Mallorca, M. Culot’s proposal to replace the Tour Blaton in Brussels, or Torti Gallas’s apartment buildings in Washington, DC, having a more modest scale, are no less anchored in the architectural characters of their regions. L-F. Gómez-Stern’s reconstruction and restoration of the Judería illustrates how one of the densest quarters in Seville can be successfully re-integrated into the city.
The Essays section addresses four general themes: architectural regionalism, the relationship between the city and nature, the difficult legacy of architecture and colonialism, and architecture and water heritage. J. Cenicacelaya and F. Bajo analyze C. Petersen’s Faaborg Museum in Denmark by placing it within the larger context and influence of Scandinavian
classicism. In a blended architectural and anthropological approach N. Crowe argues that the city is natural, and suggests a number of strategies through which cities can be transformed to better fit within the natural environment and fulfill humanist priorities during the Anthropocene. V. Bharne considers present architecture and urbanism, in Goa in particular and India in general, comparing the earlier regional architectures with the vicissitudes of colonialism and its effects on postcolonial Indian architects. C. Wilson’s essay on the exemplary regional work of John Gaw Meem demonstrates how continuity and renewal within the Pueblo traditions can be realized. R. Rhodes introduces P. W. Broneer’s pen and ink drawings of the vernacular architecture of ancient Corinth as a keenly sympathetic way to understand the sense of place.
P.Sheth, T. Jain, and A. Sheth’s essay on the famed stepwells of India and their remarkable and unique architecture draws attention at once to their established ecological role, and the urgent need to restore them to operation.
The Critique section features an essay by J. Dutton on O. Wagner’s Postparkasse, which exhibits the tensions between the expressive qualities of stone and those of iron in relation to the implied tectonics in joinery and bolting.
The section on Drawing contains several broad approaches emphasizing the instrumental importance of manual drawing for forming architects as well as conceiving, expressing, and realizing architecture. L. Olin reminds architects that the act of sketching is also an act of knowing or understanding, as it trains the mind and the eye. D. Graves discusses the evocative and deeply personal artistic phenomenon known as duende and its indelible effects on the artist’s psychology.
The illustrations of S. Boni make cultural heritage sites accessible to modern visitors through the unique manner in which he combines traditional and digital drawings in the development of dynamic illustrations.
The work of K. Gruber shows how meticulous historical inquiry, served by clear graphic documentation, can be used not only to recon-
struct or restore the German mediaeval city, but also its regional character. G. Chaillet’s able conjectures in reconstructing fourth-century Rome offer an especially rich exemplar for the study of urbanism. S. Anders examines the student drawings produced by the Roman architect Giuseppe Valadier, revealing how architectural design was taught in the classroom at the Accademia di San Luca in the second half of the eighteenth century.
In Debates and Positions, we republish a critique of the intentions and effects of New Urbanism by A. Krieger and a response to that critique by A. Duany.
The Recent Books of Note section includes texts that provide refreshing new perspectives and insights on historic cities such as Paris and Rome, in addition to others that explore the topic of drawing and its importance for contemporary architects.
Opposite page: The market hall at Poundbury, designed by John Simpson Architects. See page 22 for more about this project.
This page: A view of Pier Carlo Bontempi’s Masone Labyrinth. See page 12 for details.
Pier Carlo Bontempi
page 12
John Simpson Architects
page 22
Torti Gallas + Partners
page 32
Estudio Urbano
page 44
Tian Leng and Xiaoxin Zhao
page 66
Breitman & Breitman
page 78
Bastidas Architecture
page 96
Nicolas Duru
page 98
Maurice Culot
page 108
Léon Krier and Jamshid Sepehri
page 112
Translated from Italian by Samir Younés
The most frequent answers that I receive to my persistent question about what is the greatest masterwork built in Italy over the past two millennia are these: the Colosseum, Michelangelo’s cupola and Bernini’s piazza at Saint Peter’s, Piazza San Marco in Venice, the Rotonda of Palladio, the Campo dei Miracoli with the leaning tower in Pisa, the cupola of Brunelleschi at Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. Notwithstanding the extraordinary quality and the exceptional aesthetic and constructional characteristics of all these works, which are certainly fundamental for our culture and our collective imaginary, the responses are very removed from that which I consider to be the most profoundly true question. The masterwork about which I am thinking, contrary to other cited works, cannot be attributed to a single author or some well identified artifice; it was not completed in a definite arc of time; the client who wanted to realize it is not known precisely, nor have the economic, creative, and cultural resources deployed ever been quantified. The Italian landscape is the biggest masterwork that humankind has built within a very long arc of time. It is millennial, never finished— always subject to constant transformations, which are at once changing and permanent, varied, complex, solid and fragile, delicate, and at risk of being irremediably lost today. Italian landscape is a giant collective work, the result of constant work by generations of farmers, shepherds, lumberjacks, breeders, bricklayers, carpenters, blacksmiths, stone masons; builders of bridges, of streets, of gates and cities. A numberless array of artificers built it. The work lasted for the entire life of every one of these builders, and entire generations of these communities
have transformed a geographically identifiable territory into an extraordinary landscape.
It is important however, to clarify exactly what we mean by landscape. Very often, in fact, this term is associated with the natural environment as it is found in those parts of the planet that have not been subjected to any human transformation or where human presence had disappeared for some time. A desert with successive dunes modelled by the wind, a canyon eroded by a river’s swirling waters, the walls of a mountain with rocky pinnacles and giant sheets of ice, spectacular cascades, exterminated and impenetrable forests are not landscapes. These natural environments, which we are able to visually perceive through our sensibility and our culture, can also transmit profound emotions. These environments, however, remain within the natural context of which humans form a part, but without us, such an environment will remain undisturbed in its incessant dynamism.
Landscape is something else. The word landscape [paesaggio in Italian] contains in its root the word paese (from the Latin pagense, a space that is occupied by the pagus, the village) which is a place inhabited by humans, a portion of territory that is no longer entirely natural but transformed by human presence. Cultivation, delimited pastures, terraces with retaining walls, the roads of communication between the lightest but perceptible paths, roads and bridges, water courses controlled by embankments and canals, barriers and dams, rock water breakers that protrude into the sea, houses, factories, castles, churches, villages, and cities are all works from the most elementary to the most refined that mark the human presence within the environment.
Opposite page, top: View over the roofs of the Masone Labyrinth from the south tower.Notre Dame’s School of Architecture offers four graduate degree paths for students seeking professional and post-professional degrees, including those joining architecture from other disciplines. All three paths offer extraordinary learning opportunities for our students. Instruction is personal, and the learning environment is highly supportive. School and University resources are significant, and the content of the education is unique.
Architecture is a part of the unity of all knowledge, and it operates in a cultural continuum. While its principles are time-tested and permanent, its renewal through every new generation of young architects is as necessary as it is inevitable. Graduate education at Notre Dame involves learning that is based on this conception of architecture.
Students can expect to experience the following while attending the program:
1) Receive a concurrent education in Architecture, Urbanism, and Ecological Design;
2) Be taught by nationally and internationally prominent academic and practicing architects;
3) Study the theoretical and historical foundations of architectural/tectonic forms and urban place-making;
4) Understand how universal principles of design are manifested and applied to the vernacular and classical traditions of the world;
5) Partake of a one-semester course of study in our 50-plus year program in Rome;
6) Design for communities and institutions in the US and abroad and engage with their varied cultures, physical settings, and resources;
7) Incorporate the important social justice and environmental issues of our day into design, by working directly with people in need and employing enduring, natural materials and techniques whenever possible;
8) Integrate manual and digital techniques into design and graphic communication;
9) “Learn by doing” through Dean’s charrettes, summer programs in the US and abroad, and other outreach projects;
10) Have access to a world-class architectural library, machine shop, computer lab, and an architectural drawing archive;
11) Be involved with architectural journalism through the publishing of this journal;
12) Be part of a school that sponsors the renowned Richard H. Driehaus Prize and Henry Hope Reed Award that lend international credence to our unique academic focus.
Learn more about the program at architecture.nd.edu/graduate.
“Beauty, harmony, and context are hallmarks of classical architecture, thus fostering communities, enhancing the quality of our shared environment, and developing sustainable solutions through traditional materials.”
—richard h. driehausThe Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame complements the School of Architecture’s classical and urbanist curriculum, providing a forum for celebrating and advancing the principles of the traditional city with an emphasis on sustainability. Established in 2003, the Richard H. Driehaus Prize is awarded to a living architect whose work embodies the highest ideals of traditional and classical architecture in contemporary society, and creates a positive cultural, environmental, and artistic impact.
In conjunction, the School presents the Henry Hope Reed Award to recognize achievement in the promotion and preservation of those ideals among people who work outside the architecture field. Together, the $200,000 Driehaus Prize and the $50,000 Reed Award represent the most significant recognition for classicism in the contemporary built environment.
Monographs are produced for each laureate–the print quantity is limited but some editions are available for purchase.
Place your order at architecture.nd.edu/monograph
