Professor Watkin’s Capriccio. Painting by Carl Laubin.

NEW PALLADIANS
10
 Modernity and Sustainability for the 21st Century
A Discussion between Alireza Sagharchi and Lucien Steil
Alireza Sagharchi Architectural historians as well as theorists have
always tried to condense the defining characteristics of architectural
production for a particular period by attaching various ‘isms’, Charles
Jencks was perhaps the last of those who attempted to classify
or label the different trends for the latter part of the 20th century.
I wonder if we can explore what constitutes New Palladians or
Palladianism if indeed such taxonomy applies.
For me, New Palladians is more than just a definition or a new
taxonomy of recent trends in architectural production. It relates to
traditional architecture as a language, in a sense it is very different
to the late 1980s classification of the proponents of different trends
in architecture as a pure stylistic exercise. These classifications
have since collapsed into an absurd and trivial tautology, where the
unclassifiable have become the main criteria. Now the new wave of
traditional architects, Classicists and New Urbanists have been in
a ‘state of declassification’ for about the last twenty years, perhaps
since the beginning of the construction of Poundbury and other
seminal projects. Here come the New Palladians....
Lucien Steil New Palladians refers to a moral category of people
who very profoundly, actively do something to regenerate the
meaning of architecture in the context of society, politics, landscape
and durable development. They are dedicated professionals who
thoroughly believe that architecture is relevant in the contemporary
world, and they design and act accordingly. Palladio is not at all their
cult figure; rather he is a master, a colleague, and a tangible and
real role model. But at the same time Palladio transcends his own
definition of architecture. The New Palladians are interested in the
reality of Palladio’s cultural and didactic heritage, his example as
a practitioner, as well as in an amplified and refreshed vision of an
expanded Palladianism.
Palladio was an invigorating and compassionate model
craftsman, artist and architect. A conscientious professional with
high standards of integrity and ethics, he was neither the typical
‘universal man’ of the Renaissance, nor a refined and eclectic
‘dilettante’, even less a ‘star architect’. He was a rather modest,
modern and archetypical practising architect, demonstrating solid
professional knowledge and practical expertise combined with
MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
11
the wholesomeness and comprehensiveness of a humanist, and
a generous, unpretentious nature. By accentuating the identity
and character, as well as the contiguity of a limited territory, and
simultaneously transcending the local and provincial, he achieved
universal significance, enriching Classicism permanently with
new, resilient and sustainable patterns and models. His moral
and artistic continuity unfolds in both his dedication to his works
and his clients, and is durably illustrated in the living and timeless
excellence of his buildings. There is no aspect of his life where one
will find a transgression or betrayal; the harmony and virtue of his
professional work matched and embraced the whole culture of
his life. This example of protection, fostering and emulation of the
culture of Classicism, his virtues of professional excellence and
dignity, combined with the delicate and lasting tribute of humanity to
his family, his clients and his community have proven to remain an
appealing and living testimony of modernity, harmony and inspiration
for 500 years.
In the context of today, Palladio offers a vital foundation, a new
platform for an evolutionary process of tradition and Classicism that
integrates intelligently the vernacular and the classical. New
Palladians, rather than canonising a purely mimetic historiography of
Palladio, find and develop new resources of imitation, originality and
invention in a wider classical and Palladian tradition. Contemporary
Classicists may tend to sometimes limit themselves to orthodoxy and
may categorise themselves too restrictively, maybe not considering
enough the vitality and freshness they can capture from a vast
amount of popular, sustainable, inventive and time-tested traditional
and vernacular culture. Classicism, however, has always been new
and vibrant with a great capacity for emulation and complexity,
assimilating and learning within its own traditions, as well as taking
inspiration from various exterior, exotic, foreign influences, from the
Orient or the North, and later from the Tropics and the New
Continents. England benefited from Norman, Gothic and Palladian
architecture, the traditional architecture of friendly and enemy
countries and later its colonies. Christopher Wren, John Soane and
Edwin Lutyens brilliantly pushed and enriched the classical tradition,
by being far more sophisticated in assimilating cultures, which were
not traditionally considered part of the classical milieu.
 The New Palladians’ outlook has the determination, radicalism
and boldness to further enhance this potential of emulation and
complexity; it is much more relaxed, confident and creative in
handling and assimilating a positively enriching dialectic between
classical and vernacular traditions. Additionally there is another
potential that New Palladians are entrusted and empowered with:
the integration of urbanism and architecture in a new, contemporary
culture of building. The synthesis resulting from the combined
complexity, ecology and intelligence of the traditional city with the
classical and the vernacular represents an effective, sustainable and
essential new paradigm for the architecture of the 21st century. It is
genuinely articulating a new culture of building in a sophisticated,
coherent, intelligible language based on solid linguistic and
semiological tectonics.
AS This new approach throws up a paradox. Nowadays what is
expected from whoever engages with any language of architecture, is
this constant thrust to come up with new ideas, new forms, ‘novelty’
rather than ‘newness’, and every concept has to be invented from
scratch. When we talk about Palladio being influenced by Gothic
architecture or local vernacular, at best that seems surprising to
us as 21st-century architects; at worst it brings accusations of
plagiarism and pastiche. But when you work within a tradition,
whatever has gone before forms the building blocks of the present
so reinvention is not the revolutionary, avant-garde ideology that
Modernism instilled in the psyche of 20th-century architects.
Nowadays reinvention has become the raison d’etre and self-
referential. Revivalism has become a self-fulfilling and repetitive
philosophy, regardless of whether it is the revival of 1960s Brutalist
architecture, 1970s Kitsch or the New Corbusians models. This
is something almost endemic and I think, we as Classicists and
Traditionalists are not immune to this, however, we see reinvention
in a much more organic way and quintessential to the progress and
development of the classical language. For me Palladio, in a sense,
is a finger pointing at the moon – if you concentrate on the finger, you
miss the essence of his genius. Otto Wagner, Karl Friedrich Schinkel,
John Soane, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and all those who pushed
the boundaries and made the quantum leap in the development of
architectural language display the same characteristics. Palladio
should be evaluated in terms of the way he reassessed antiquity,
the Renaissance, the regional and local vernacular and their mutual
influence on the classical, and how free and mature his oeuvre is in
invention, composition and construction. His interest in reinvention
is, for me, clearly very important to our age because we have come
NEW PALLADIANS
12
to a very crucial point in the development of classical architecture
where as a pure style or as an anti-style, it has found an organic
relationship with other strands that drive and connect it with society.
Classicism has found a new frontier in ecology, environmentalism
and tectonics, supporting, enriching and evolving its language
holistically. Traditional architecture in the form we experience today
emerged from an ideological struggle between the Modernists and
Post-modernists in the early 1980s; so by reconnecting to the reason
and essence of tectonics, by adopting an agenda of environmental
stewardship and an organic understanding of the universe, of nature,
of human culture, economy and society, it has the opportunity to
once again become a whole language that communicates humanely,
meaningfully, intelligently and intelligibly. An architectural language
of that nature and magnitude withstands the critique of being a
shallow catalyst of style or novelty.
LS I would like to add this is also why this language has found
substantial support from science. Nikos Salingaros and other
exponents of New Science have uncovered far more scientific
consistence and intrinsic complexity in the works of New Palladians
than in the sensationalist production of Deconstructivism and
Modernism after studying and comparing thoroughly traditional and
Modernist buildings.
They have indeed researched upon and found that complexity
and fractal qualities are far more intense and rich in classical,
traditional cities and buildings than in Modernist ones. Modernist
buildings seem stagnant, dead and rigid despite incredible efforts
of distortion and animation, collision, contrast and conflict, they
remain boring and dull, confusing and alienating, and surprisingly
within this fanatic ideology of deconstruction and fragmentation,
often they look quite the same. They obviously lack the sensitivity,
complexity and fractal richness of traditional architecture. The
excitement, complexity and fun professed by Modernism are mostly
depressing, forced, provocative, disturbing, transgressive or chaotic.
It is a fragmentation of a superficial, decorative and graphical nature.
It is often an offence to good taste, comfort and well-being, not
expressing the high degree of sophistication, order, complexity and
life encompassed in fractal structures.
Besides the more theoretical discussions of New Science,
New Architecture and New Urbanism (see www.katarxis3.com) we
should also refer to some hard scientific facts in the context of world
population, environmental problems, climate change and global
warming, as well as to recent economic and social phenomena.
The failure of a ruthless and irresponsible economic and production
system, as confirmed by the credit crunch. A profound world
economic crisis has rallied more support for holistic, sustainable and
conservative patterns in a sense of durable ecological development
strategies and identifiable, intelligent structures. The interest in
vernacular and classical traditions is real and comprehensive
because of the high degree of: richness and complexity, character
and adaptability, resilience, humanity, sentiment and compassion
they encompass. They integrate local economies and cultures and
dynamic processes of self-regeneration, innovation and invention in
an organic and sensible manner. They are increasingly considered as
the remedy for the ‘inconvenient truth’.
To come back to Modernist ‘fragmentation’ and ‘deconstruction’,
they are neither scientific categories nor aesthetic principles.
AS I believe the motivating force in that kind of fragmentation is
based on something far more trivial. It is to do with the ‘consumable’
or commoditisation of architecture as an industrial object. If the
object is not reinvented regularly, in order to increase its commercial
appeal, then it becomes unsaleable. The core value of this approach
results in the object having a machine-like quality, which Modernists
have turned into Functionalism as a modus operandi. This is how
architecture, like the machine, is packaged for trade.
The reasons for this are manifold but ultimately it is to do with
the Modernist and Positivist idea of change as a qualitative and
redemptive phenomenon. The idea of revival is like plugging into a
collective memory, by alluding to an aesthetic that represented a
particular epoch. This is in essence ‘branding’, it is also part of the
commoditisation process, the consumer is thought to get tired of
repetition and therefore needs to change brands for change’s sake.
This inorganic process leaves the language of architecture slave to
the market forces.
LS But that approach no longer works. It is a failed system because
it demands a high input of energy, destruction and frustration. People
are conditioned and asked to regularly change everything they have
become accustomed to because that is the way things are if we
need to ‘progress’. That is the unsustainable way of life of Modernist
obsolescence, estrangement and alienation.
AS That for me is the area of greatest concern: the issue of change.
I think it is one of the main issues affecting architecture today.
Change has become the equivalent of ‘new deal’ in architecture, it is
repackaging the ‘architectural product’ without any fundamental,
sub-structural shift in ideology or other underlying reasons for changing.
MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
13
LS It is change without changing, it is change ‘we don’t believe in’,
and it is change without a purpose.
AS Because it does not question the fundamentals, which is where
the real change should emanate.
LS It changes the package, but we need a real change.
AS It is an ideological and political tool in order to offer a ‘new deal’
within the same old structure, to ensure the survival of a defunct
ideology. It is almost a servile approach, whereby the contingent
realities form the reason for reinvention. The other prerequisite of
reinvention is the separation of construction or the craft of building
from the architectural language, thus enabling the multitude of
expressions to be based on the same framework. Construction
divorced from architecture reduces the plan and the structural frame
to a dry and functionalist machine, while the skin is liberated for the
act of an abstract expression divorced from the contingencies’ of
construction and adaptable to baseless metamorphosis.
LS The schizophrenia of form and content, of structure and
expression, of language and meaning, and no change after all;
only the permanent illusion of a permanent cultural revolution,
a real mess. This is as always the same old thing, which is why I
think the Classicists and Traditionalists offer real change, a change
that one can see, an evolution and an improvement. Innovative
qualities and innovative principles – we should indeed claim more
loudly the potential to bring about change and improve the lives of
people through the environments we create. For many years it was
maintained that originality was the domain of only the Modernists,
like their claim of exclusive ownership of modernity. I think we can
encompass originality, in the sense of going back to the original core
meaning and values, ‘the origin as the essence of something’ (cf.
Mircea Eliade and Martin Heidegger), which are the foundations of
our discipline. Regularly restating, reinventing, relearning, redefining
and celebrating these values and principles, we can update our
traditions and bring about ‘original’ change – not change for change’s
sake but sustainable change – to build a better world. In the context
of ecological, social and economic challenges we really can take a
leading creative, and pro-active role in modernity for the 21st century.
AS This is a very real and exciting prospect. I think the emergence
of Deconstructivism as a celebration of instability and angst, and
the emergence of star architecture or the icon as a triumph of big
NEW PALLADIANS
14
 Details from the Zappion. Painting by Carl Laubin.
corporate imagery in architecture, is really the result of a crisis, the
last convulsions of a failed paradigm. Architecture and architects
living through a fundamental lack of confidence in the validity
and substance of what they produce; culturally this must be very
unsettling and destabilising. It is almost like the ideological rug
has been pulled out from under us. We are not at the dawn of a
new industrial age so Modernism is looking to technology as the
redemptive source to create a whole new language. Basically it
boils down to the proposition that if you change, if you keep up with
transient technology, or try to invent ‘high-tech’ derivatives with
architectural iconography, then somehow you are going to arrive
at the language that is going to redeem you. This self-perpetuating
philosophy is what gives rise to the change. At the basis of this
approach is a response to a crisis in culture. The Modernist
claim is always that it is avant-garde, it is revolutionary and anti-
establishment, but in fact it has become ‘the Establishment’. The
architect has been reduced to a kind of psychiatrist who puts ink
on paper and then holds up the abstract ink blot to a so-called
‘intellectual elite’ to see what they think of it. The interpretation
has become completely open, there is no structure, no thinking, no
specifics – a total fragmentation of ideas.
What we need to understand is that, modernity and the
classical are not chronological categories. Modern Classicism is
a progressive force in architecture and artistic production today. It
does not rely on conflict, angst or instability to find expression and
to construct a meaningful and intelligible world. In a sense modern
Classicism is in a state of perpetual modernity as its language goes
beyond the political, or the contingencies of technology or the crisis
of a particular era.
LS This refers also to the classical idea of architecture as a
manifestation of the ‘common good’, a very real and passionate
concern of traditional architecture. In Palladio’s example,
beautifully characterised by virtue and the highest degree of
citizenship, the commitment to harmonious, beautiful, comfortable
buildings and places, contributing to the well-being, happiness and
delight of the community.
AS And it should be stressed how crucial the issues of happiness,
harmony, beauty and the ‘common good’, are in the definition
of a modern and convivial sustainability. We are addressing here
essential aspects of professional and environmental ‘citizenship’
and civic virtues as part of the creative and vital synergies of the
region, city and countryside.
MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
15
LS Speaking about civic virtues and professional and ecological
ethics in the context of Palladio is indeed appropriate. Palladio
was an enlightened provincial architect with a discrete life, but an
anti-star despite being quite famous during his lifetime. He was
committed to his profession and dedicated in his practice, responsibly
using materials, energy and economic resources in the most
ecological, economical and sustainable way to create comfortable,
delightful structures. Palladio’s buildings are cool in summer and
temperate in winter because of the correct relationship between
fenestration and wall, solar orientation, appropriate thermal mass
and solar gain, not to mention low embodied energy and minimal
carbon emissions. Imagine that. The buildings of Palladio produced
less carbon emissions during five centuries than a contemporary
high-tech building does in a week! This is clearly the case in
Palladio’s architecture and generally in traditional architecture and
urbanism, which characterised all our built historic environments.
A number of Palladio’s buildings are not completely new, they
are redevelopments of existing properties, recycled or expanded
and refurbished. This is economy in a humanist sense (meaning
sustainable quality, not just commercial value and profit-making), to
use intelligently what was present, integrate with and develop it, and
adjust it to a new context, and not completely trashing the past as an
irrelevant collection of relics as proposed by Modernist consumerism.
In the same context, another aspect of the sustainable strategy
is the capacity to use the existing crafts of an area – local or regional–
and to organise the economy of the building, for example, the quality
of detailing, the choice of materials so that these elements become
an integral part of an affordable agenda. Although Palladio may have
worked predominantly for wealthy bourgeoisie or the aristocracy,
above all he worked for an enlightened humanist clientele and
developed sustainable strategies of design and construction, which
really were based on the idea of an affordable, comfortable and
durable building, an issue of particular and special interest for
New Palladians.
AS I think this is a very interesting discussion because in some
ways this is the easiest route for Traditionalists and Classicists to
claim the moral high ground. That is to say, tradition and Classicism
are inherently connected with nature and inherently economic
and referential to nature. As practicing architects this for us is an
opportunity and a great challenge, because even today architects
are faced with the issue of choice, both in terms of the materials
they use and the techniques of construction they adopt. Nowadays,
where we build and how we build is almost immaterial because
of the resources that are at our disposal; so to have the tectonic
rigour and be able to go back to those first principles needs an
incredibly disciplined approach. Modernists are trying to mitigate the
shortcomings of their language with technology. Like Traditionalists,
they have the same concerns about the environment but the
approach is as different as the end result. Modernists build a glass
box and then try to do gymnastics with technology to make the built
object conform to some kind of ecological standard. New Palladians,
however, can only claim to be different if the classical object is not
turned into a veneer, or conceived through a purely stylistic approach;
only then can we claim to be truly ecological. Theodore Adorno said a
very interesting thing, ‘modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological
category’.1 So: to be modern today means building with quality but
by quality I don’t mean just the quality of the material but the quality
of the ideology. It is the benefit you give to the environment, the
way you change the quality of life and the quality of the language of
architecture. I think in this sense, Classicists have claim to modernity.
LS New Palladians obviously have the upper hand here; I think
they can be the real catalysts for a ‘New Culture of Building’, though
there is a complicated struggle ahead through the wilderness of the
building industry. The idea of sustainable choice is a difficult ideal.
There is a confusing situation in the building industry where, rather
than having twenty good sound materials, we have thousands, some
of them not so good, confusing our choices rather than enhancing
our freedom and efficiency. Like medical practice, which is largely
conditioned by huge pharmaceutical corporations, the building
business is thoroughly controlled by large industries prescribing
the ingredients of ‘green architecture’ and ‘sustainability’ with an
array of technological gadgets, almost esoteric technologies and
paradoxically, sometimes even toxic materials.
AS This is a very real dilemma and challenge New Palladians face
today. That is how we justify to our clients building in solid durable
materials when the building industry is moving towards disposability
and industrially produced ‘green materials’, where two centimetres of
insulation purports to replace a masonry wall. In this context our only
choice is connection with nature.
LS So I think that’s why the New Palladians can really make a
difference, by establishing a very firm, very uncompromising strategy
on materials, on technologies and on issues of environment. They
need also to claim back and make themselves the defenders of the
integrity of building, of a tectonic wholeness, of an organic complexity,
NEW PALLADIANS
16
and healthy construction systems and materials in a perspective of
clarity, simplicity and intelligibility and reject the history of buildings
composed as a complicated assemblage of hostile parts. That
is where we are at the turning point, we are trying to establish a
New Culture of Building, we have to work against existing codes,
bad practice and ignorance, against the building industry and
corporations, against developers, against administration, and against
a professional establishment and its institutions, which rather than
defending architecture and the integrity of a profession, promote a
single Zeitgeist ideology and advocate the unsustainable status quo.
But we win the challenge with, and for, the inhabitants and citizens
freedom of choice and emancipation. We also have to educate
and teach and that is where there are other strong references to
Palladio. As in Palladio’s case, New Palladians are designers and
also educators – every design is or ought to be a lesson, a didactic
demonstration, and a new precedent to learn from. Palladio was
able to be convincing and almost archetypical because his buildings
had clarity, simplicity, a rationalism and universal originality. Every
building exemplified and celebrated ideals of craftsmanship, cultural
excellence, clear humanist references, and clear rules of proportion
and composition. They sophisticatedly and elegantly encompassed
principles that can be explained, understood, and communicated
to professionals, builders and laymen. New Palladians share with
Palladio a commitment to buildings which foster or cherish their
inhabitants, which inspire and teach. This is something completely
missing from the mainstream Modernist work where everything
depends on the arbitrary and improvisation. The didactic moral
coherence Palladio promoted is a timelessly reliable and inspiring
guide for contemporary New Palladians.
AS Its interesting the kind of adjectives you use to describe
Palladio’s work. That is why I am saying this is a challenge for
classical and traditional architects. Modernists use exactly the
same rhetoric, in terms of the freshness, the clarity, the liberation
and democratisation of space, and pushing the boundary of the
language to somehow mimic a make-believe high-tech age, which
will come with the architecture. The promise of early Modernism is
still repeated. It is not that the promised paradigm is here, but that
it will come with the architecture. I think the challenge Classicists
are going to have is how they can actually adopt a nature-based
mode of construction that is inexorably linked to the language of
architecture and work with it, because once you divorce the tectonic
from architecture the plot is lost. Modernists suffer from the
same dilemma; they have descended into a pastiche Modernism
and servile replication of the Corbusian or Miesian model without
the revolutionary construction or cultural avant-garde that once
sustained it. They are also Internationalists. This goes against the
grain of being a Classicist because we are Regionalists, we don’t have
a one size fits all international style, which is repeated regardless of
context. With new building techniques Classicists and Traditionalists
have to show a level of flexibility, in how they can actually marry
the language to transient technology. Technology of the machine,
for Modernists is the raison d’etre for the architectural language;
for Classicism the aesthetic of load bearing, the post and lintel or
arcuation is derived from the mode of construction. The challenge is
how Classicists can actually harness transient technology and makes
it servile to the language of architecture.
LS When we talk about construction in the modern world the
tradition of Classicism cannot escape the contemporary condition,
we are challenged to address conditions by the building industry,
the economy and technology. This is, however, where great
opportunities are also unfolding; economic crisis, climate change
and environmental challenges force and offer a possibility, or rather a
long overdue necessity to restate fundamental issues about building
beautiful, firm, durable structures and cities.
Considering how buildings are produced today, the distinction
between Traditionalist and Modernist buildings in the average market
may be but a difference of image, of intention or style, because
often they are forced to use the same technology and materials and
participate in a similar culture of construction based on simulation,
pretension and fake. A larger percentage of the building materials
used have: high embodied energy; an alarming degree of toxicity;
are based, derived or dependent on fossil fuels; have an intolerable
degree of obsolescence and are mostly poor in terms of fractal
qualities. The need to requalify and reassess all major aspects of
building technology and building materials is more than urgent. The
Prince’s Foundation is taking this quite seriously in its endeavours
for ‘A New Culture of Building’ and the ‘Natural House’ built at the
BRE Innovation Park. It is also what many scientists, government
bodies, builders and developers are doing. Many people are now
considering reducing carbon emissions and improving the overall
quality of the built environment as a primary priority. The materials
and technologies we use have to be really consistent with a wider
philosophy of life, a wider comprehension of nature and the universe.
They have to obey what Brian Goodwin calls ‘A New Science of
2
Qualities’. Now New Palladians can demonstrate much better, the
traditional way of building, the timeless way of building. The New
MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
17
Palladian ethics are based on healthy natural materials, sound
tectonics, appropriate rational structural systems and appropriate
detailing. New Palladian architecture can demonstrate in the most
economical way, conditions of insulation, thermal mass, air-
tightness, climatic comfort and acoustics, ventilation and lighting,
in a most efficient and simple manner, without using toxic and
obsolete materials, unsustainable and unpleasant structures and
uncomfortable technologies.
AS It is also perverse to see Modernists claiming use of natural
material, as green credentials. Unfortunately, as Classicists, we
also find those who are only interested in emulation. Modernists are
very clear and have a very pragmatic approach; they maintain that
their aesthetic agenda is the representation of the spirit of the age.
It is to do with high technology, their building’s reason for being is
to express the Zeitgeist. We have to represent the Zeitgeist. What
has happened, however, through Modernist urban planning, is that
they have ended up expressing the poltergeist of an environmental
catastrophe, left by the post-war destruction of urban centres in
the hands of Modernist urban planners. Traditional architecture
represents what I call ‘natural Functionalism’, whereas Modernism
attaches itself to ‘industrial Functionalism’. Natural Functionalism in
contrast, is a completely organic process; it is to do with how nature
reacts, to certain conditions, and why now Traditionalism, Classicism
and New Science are part of the avant-garde that New Palladians
represent. This is a completely revolutionary and different way of
looking at construction, environmental stewardship and how to live
with the challenges of global warming and climate change. Humanity
is coming to the conclusion that its response to natural phenomenon
does not lie in a mechanistic response and that building and
architecture have to embrace nature in order to live in synchronicity.
LS The machine condition in architecture works merely statistically
but it does not work in the realm of human comfort and sustainable
delight. Modernist eco-homes or the famous ‘Passive House’
reduce the pleasure, comfort and the freedom of its inhabitants
under the pretext of a zero-carbon ideology.3 This fully insulated,
sealed machines à habiter with a hostile and schizophrenic interior–
exterior dialectic and abstract, minimalist packaging, rejects any
reference to a cultural memory, biological and psychological needs
of intimacy, life and identity, and ultimately degrades architecture
to produce mere climate boxes, experimental housing prototypes
or anti-biological, aseptic containers for micro-families fragmented
into suburban greenery and segregation. The traditional architecture
New Palladians propose is more like a natural organism of friendly
proportions and character, with mediating exterior and interior
spaces and public and private realms fostering life, community,
communication and social interaction, creating durable delight and
happiness. You will have solid, breathing walls, sheltering roofs,
windows and doors you can open freely, agreeable textures and
colours and pleasant, elegant details. In Modernist technology-
dominated eco-design you have instructions to follow. When you use
a machine you have to follow instructions of its maker. You can only
open the window under certain conditions, some days you cannot
open it at all because you completely deregulate the mechanism
and disrupt the climatic balance controlled tightly by the pitiless
monitors of the eco-machine. In this defensive sealed environment
surrounded by a ‘hostile’ exterior environment, you are a warrior, the
fully harnessed eco-warrior in control of a mechanistic metabolism,
a ‘Passive House’ or ‘Eco-House’. You are living in a fortress, which
ultimately controls you and your life.
AS This is quite a paradox. The primary goal of architecture is to
provide shelter, not imprison its inhabitants in machine à habiter.
Traditional architecture for New Palladians is inexorably
imbedded in the fabric of tradition, it has an organic relationship
with its host culture, it rests on an internal rational structure of the
Aristotelian and Vitruvian, triadic principals of: commodity, firmness,
delight. The act of building in the first instance, satisfies the basic
human need for shelter, the other facets that constitute durability/
craft and beauty come out of the process, which depends on the
cultural context, the environment and tectonics, so the whole is an
interrelated organic process.
Modernism starts with the same human need for shelter but
that is exactly where it departs from Classicism, by becoming self-
referential, a-cultural and anti-contextual, much like Modernist
abstract art. It derives it aesthetic from the tension and clash
between craft and beauty and it is borne purely out of the contingency
of a mechanistic response to shelter.
LS But the real commodity, comfort, ought not to be detached from
an integral culture of quality, and this includes happiness also.
AS The shelter or comfort, becomes a living organism that should
be in complete synchronicity with the occupier, The urban realm
is the same, you cannot have a classical building dropped into
a Modernist urban context and expect it to behave in the same
way, because traditional architecture and urban design exist in an
NEW PALLADIANS
18
interconnected world. The piazza is connected to the palazzo, the
back street is connected to the house, the way the shutters open,
the way natural ventilation cools the fabric, is all connected; it is an
organic relationship to how you build and place buildings in context.
The way you relate the public and private realm, all goes hand-in-
hand to support that kind of natural process.
LS This is very much what the new science of complexity relates
to, speaking of architecture in terms of ‘Pattern Language’ (cf.
Christopher Alexander), ‘architectural connectivism’ (cf. Michael
Mehaffy) as an ‘art of relationships’ (cf. Ugo Sasso) and insisting
on the integration of scales and networking systems you find in
traditional urbanism and architecture. We can also mention the
famous ‘Butterfly Effect’ elaborating on the relevance and potential
of change of even smaller, sometimes apparently insignificant
elements.4 You were mentioning urban space and its relationship to
interiors and vice versa, and I would like to add to this the organic
relationship between the building and the territory. Let us consider
the relationship between the villa and the countryside: the villa is
not an object just dropped into a beautiful countryside, it is a part
of the countryside and it operates positively in a context of a wider
ecological metabolism integrating various scales of architecture
from city to countryside. The work of Palladio is often reduced
to the design of some iconic villas and we often forget that these
villas were only part of a comprehensive, urban building production
integrating various architectural scales, both for the countryside and
the city. Palladio’s masterworks sophisticatedly relate to an exquisite
‘architecture savante’ of the late Renaissance, the evolutionary
genius and creativity of the European and Italian city and landscape,
and the organic complexity of the territory of the Veneto as a
comprehensive polis.
AS Yes, the smallest project is considered as an urban
conglomeration, the way the brief is broken down into its constituent
elements results in the emergence of a community of buildings in an
urban relationship to each other.
LS It is conceived as a community but also it is conceived in a
network, this is something you can see – at least in the European
countryside – but generally in many traditional territorial organisation
patterns. You can measure distances between villages in manageable
sizes: five minutes, half an hour, two hours, half a day, either on
foot or on horseback. Then there is an economy of interaction and
synergies between various scales of settlements: within settlements,
five to ten minutes walking; between villages and hamlets, half
an hour to an hour; from town to villages, half a day and town to
city, mostly less than a day’s walking or riding between Palladio’s
major villas and Vicenza. Note how New Urbanism considers
how to transect, with dense central areas, less dense areas and
then individual hamlets, rural settlements (relevant in terms of
organisation of an agricultural economic realm) and finally country
residences and villas. So you have a polarity, a complex stratified
system of territorial polarities, networks, transects; you are creating
cities, towns, hamlets, farms and they all work together in a wider
urban framework. It is very similar to the concept of the Greek polis
where the countryside and the city are unified in a type of federation
or territorial organism similar to what Léon Krier calls, ‘The City
within the City’. It is far more sophisticated than the traditional
dialectics of city versus countryside with far more intricate levels
of hierarchy, transect complexity and connectivity. The patterns
and models developed by New Urbanism offer quite interesting
reading and promising new strategies in this context. Léon Krier has
convincingly stressed the dialectics between city and countryside:
you have a good city and it make a hard edge to the countryside,
or at least a very clear, articulate and legible boundary. But on a
larger scale you have a number of cities or urban developments
neighbouring smaller, more rural structures, villages, hamlets, villas,
interacting at various scales throughout the urban transect. They are
not diluting the city into the countryside as a large suburban pot-
pourri, they are synthesising a rich urban organism where you have
a subtle range of settlement types, scales and densities articulated
with, for example, large natural and rural areas and urban parks.
AS I remember Léon Krier also said if you ask anyone to imagine
a beautiful landscape with a building in it, no one would imagine a
Modernist building or at least any building built after the early 20th
century and this is regardless of where one may be in the world:
in China, the deserts of Saudi Arabia or in the Black Forest. He
cleverly singled out Milton Keynes as an exception. I think that says
something about human nature and also the organic relationship
that our perception of beauty has with nature, it rises out of nature
and is not an object that has been dropped into a context and I think
by extension, the same thing can be said about urban design. The
atrium contains the DNA of the piazza within the house, and the
house is the precursor of the palazzo. In the case of Palladio the
buildings either side of a great public space have the germ of an
organisation that is very basic and vernacular and contains all the
elements that one needs in order to analyse or to read into a larger
MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
19
city. The relationship between the public and private realm, the farm
court as opposed to an entry court, the vistas and separations that
embrace nature are all to do with urban planning.
LS Quinlan Terry also mentioned that when you have a building in
the countryside, it is only considered an eyesore and problem when
it is a Modernist building. It is true that in Italy with its many the
beautiful landscapes, these are all urbanised landscapes; rural towns
and cities and many farmhouses spread through the countryside,
not sprawling but organically organising and ordering the rationality
of the landscape and you have an incredible density. The landscape
with Palladio’s villas is not to be understood as suburbia, it is a
really interesting settlement structure that works within the logic of
the agricultural territory, or maybe within the interface of town and
countryside, in a very measured and appropriate dialectics. It has to
do, of course, with the type of soil and crops, or type of geography
and topography you have As mentioned, you can find many farms
sitting in the middle of a rural property organising the farming and
harvesting activities and in wine-making regions there are often
dense towns or villages, strategically located to leave the best land
to agriculture.
AS Going back to the beginning of our discussion about Palladio,
I think the Traditional and Classical movement in the past ten years
has gone through a major upheaval in it’s approach to urban design
and architecture. Movements like Congress for the New Urbanism
and traditional urban design have been quite successful in trying
to answer the ecological challenges that we face. The emergence
of the Institute of Classical Architecture (ICA) in the United States
of America and the International Network for Traditional Building
& Urbanism (INTBAU) with it’s vast network and the Traditional
Architecture Group (TAG) in the United Kingdom, shows that
contemporary Classicism and traditional urban design is now firmly
placed as a true alternative to Modernism and not Classicism’s Salon
des Refusés as it was for the first ten to fifteen years of its life. The
reason for its emergence as an avant-garde is that it is ecologically
sound; it is Regionalist and Internationalist at the same time. I think
that will actually underpin its future. New Palladians, however, are
a much looser grouping, within it are many strands. One can liken
the current condition to the 19th century when Classicism was trying
to respond to the contingencies of industrial production but without
really losing the basis of the tectonics language and its fundamental
philosophical underpinning. For example, the iron bridge: the mass,
the weight, the incredible span and visual aesthetics of the metal
girder were alien to Classicism. Otto Wagner took the contingency of
its construction and technology and transformed it into a classical
object, IK Brunel used it in Victorian bridge architecture, so I see now
contemporary Classicism almost at the same tipping point in the 21st
century, where it has somehow found it is the natural choice when
environmental stewardship and ecology is a concern. The challenge
remaining is how it becomes commercially viable and how in turn
that affects its language. We now find in practice clients who want
to build in new territories within natural surroundings, which are
protected and who would not even consider using Modernists. They
are opting for traditional architecture using the local vernacular to
express the values to which they aspire, and to be in harmony with
the host environment and culture. Modernism can never claim
the vernacular, that is one of our strengths. I believe the battle of
ideologies is over, now the challenge is for Classicists and traditional
architects to establish themselves and be able to deliver.
LS They need to take on, in a much more articulate way, the
challenges of their own traditions. For example, they have to be more
radical about the region, about character, about place. They promise
the sensitivity of a vernacular culture but sometimes they have not
been able to deliver convincingly architecture of place. It is linked, of
course, very much to modern production technologies, development
strategies, marketing techniques and financing schemes. Too
often we lack courage and sufficient dedication to the principles
of our movement. We are dedicated to a place, we are celebrating
coherence, tectonics, we are exposing the Vitruvian and the Palladian
but often we are not doing it well enough; compromising too easily.
So it is a challenge to be much better at what we do, be more
coherent in our designs and productions and live up to our promises
and hopes. Besides, as we have discussed before, the monumental
challenge of climate change is really an opportunity to radically make
this a major platform of discussion for a New Palladian agenda.
AS I think the quality and diversity of the work we have collected
together in this book is a testimony in itself to how the boundaries
have been pushed, and how the language has become almost
commonplace for a great sector of building and development in
NEW PALLADIANS
20
many parts of the world. The important thing is to no longer feel
that we are a minority, and to recognise what we practice is a viable,
commercially successful, progressive and a modern alternative to
old-style Modernist Neo-Corbusian pastiche.
LS It was quite interesting when Barack Obama made his pre-
electoral speech; he was in a setting like a classical backdrop.
AS I find the Modernist claim to democracy contradictory,
particularly as cultural and ecological or environmental nuances are
totally ignored, or become marginal when they are dealt with within a
regional context, style takes over and everything else is secondary.
LS So we need to have a coherent, integrated urban strategy.
That does not mean building dense neighbourhoods everywhere,
but it does mean we have to have some sustainable perspective
and articulate narrative. As mentioned before, the ideas of a polis
in a wider urban area where we have the integration of the urban,
the rural, and the natural , or Léon Krier’s ‘The City within the City’
where all this fits and follows a scenario with reduced traffic, a
tamed and proportioned mobility and the comfort of walking easily.
No need to use a car for the basic functions of your life and you live
more in unison, in synergy with the environment, community and
with yourself. You have agriculture, farming, urban farming, and
you can produce locally the elements you need for your everyday
life. Ultimately you will also be able to extract, harvest and produce
materials for your buildings. So there is a wider, more profound and
utterly sustainable coherence.
AS I think that comes naturally to Classicists and Traditionalists
because even with the smallest project, the tendency is not to build
megastructures. It is to break down a brief into its elements so that
one can create a community, even as a microcosm.
LS So it is a deconstruction which makes sense.
AS It’s to do with manageability of the size and organic growth.
Once you break the brief down into its constituent elements you need
to establish some kind of relationship and hierarchy. It is at that point
that urban design comes in, even in the most mundane vernacular
construction – like the farm court – you find the core of the hamlet,
which then becomes the core of the village and the village becomes
the core of the medieval city. All of these things in the germ state
contain the DNA approach to urban design and this is traceable from
St Peter’s in Rome to the Great Square in Isfahan.
LS I have an Italian colleague, who said that architecture was above
all the art of creating relationships. Architecture is not only the art of
designing buildings, it is the art of designing relationships between
built structures and networks for living communities, creating
wholesome, living and organic systems.
1 Theodoro Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life, Verso,
London, 2005, p 218. Originally published by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am
Main, 1951. Translation first published by New Left Books, 1974.
2 Brian Goodwin/ A New Science of Qualities
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/goodwin/goodwin_p2.html
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
http://www.passivhaustagung.de/Passive_House_E/passivehouse_definition.html
MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
21
AS Looking at the projects in the book and given the progress that
we have made since the emergence of contemporary Classicism
in the 1980s, the harsh economic conditions ahead of us and the
challenge of climate change, I believe the next ten years will result in
a tectonic shift in the way we look at our buildings, in much the same
way that urban design was re-examined in the latter part of the 20th
century, when it was concluded that traditional urban design is the
only way to bring a sense of order, harmony, complexity and organic
growth to the way we occupy and develop our built environment.
Walter Benjamin said, ‘The uniqueness of a work of art is
inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This
tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable.’6 That
should be our motto.
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
5 http://zakuski.utsa.edu/krier/city.html
6 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Production’, 1936.