NEW PALLADIANS

10

Professor Watkin’s Capriccio. Painting by Carl Laubin.

MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

11

Alireza Sagharchi Architectural historians as well as theorists have

always tried to condense the defi ning 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 defi nition 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 classifi cation of the proponents of different trends

in architecture as a pure stylistic exercise. These classifi cations

have since collapsed into an absurd and trivial tautology, where the

unclassifi able have become the main criteria. Now the new wave of

traditional architects, Classicists and New Urbanists have been in

a ‘state of declassifi cation’ 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 fi gure; rather he is a master, a colleague, and a tangible and

real role model. But at the same time Palladio transcends his own

defi nition 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 amplifi ed 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 refi ned 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 CenturyModernity and Sustainability for the 21st CenturyA Discussion between Alireza Sagharchi and Lucien Steil

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 signifi cance, 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 fi nd 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, fi nd 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 infl uences, from the

Orient or the North, and later from the Tropics and the New

Continents. England benefi ted 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.

NEW PALLADIANS

12

The New Palladians’ outlook has the determination, radicalism

and boldness to further enhance this potential of emulation and

complexity; it is much more relaxed, confi dent 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 infl uenced 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-fulfi lling 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 fi nger pointing at the moon – if you concentrate on the fi nger, 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

infl uence 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

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 scientifi c

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 confl ict, 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 superfi cial, 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 scientifi c 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

MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

13

system, as confi rmed 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 identifi able, 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 scientifi c 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.

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, redefi ning

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

MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

15

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 confi dence 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

specifi cs – 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 confl ict, angst or instability to fi nd 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 defi nition

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.

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 fi ve 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 profi t-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

Details from the Zappion. Painting by Carl Laubin.

NEW PALLADIANS

16

of the resources that are at our disposal; so to have the tectonic

rigour and be able to go back to those fi rst 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 benefi t 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 diffi cult 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 effi ciency. 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 fi rm, 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,

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 exemplifi ed 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

MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

17

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 fi ts all international style, which is repeated regardless of

context. With new building techniques Classicists and Traditionalists

have to show a level of fl exibility, 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, fi rm, 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

Qualities’.2 Now New Palladians can demonstrate much better, the

traditional way of building, the timeless way of building. The New

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 effi cient 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 fi nd 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

18

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, fi rmness,

delight. The act of building in the fi rst instance, satisfi es 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

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 fi nd in

traditional urbanism and architecture. We can also mention the

famous ‘Butterfl y Effect’ elaborating on the relevance and potential

of change of even smaller, sometimes apparently insignifi cant

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: fi ve 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,

MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

19

fi ve 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 fi nally country

residences and villas. So you have a polarity, a complex stratifi ed

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 unifi ed 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

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 fi nd 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 fi rmly

placed as a true alternative to Modernism and not Classicism’s Salon

des Refusés as it was for the fi rst ten to fi fteen 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

NEW PALLADIANS

20

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 fi nd 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 fi nancing schemes. Too

often we lack courage and suffi cient 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

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 fi nd 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 fi ts and follows a scenario with reduced traffi c, 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

MODERNITY AND SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

21

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 fi nd 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.

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.

1 Theodoro Adorno, Minima Moralia: Refl ections on a Damaged Life, Verso,

London, 2005, p 218. Originally published by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am

Main, 1951. Translation fi rst 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_defi nition.html

4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfl y_effect

5 http://zakuski.utsa.edu/krier/city.html

6 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Production’, 1936.