I recently spoke in Charleston at the first national meeting of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. The ICAA is, in its own words, “committed to promoting and preserving the practice, understanding, and appreciation of classical design.” Exactly what is “classical design”? According to Wiki, “classical architecture usually denotes architecture which is more or less consciously derived from the principles of Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity.” That is the art historical definition, but judging from the Professional Portfolio regularly published in the ICAA’s journal, The Classicist, Gothic, Moderne, Art Deco, and various vernacular residential styles such as Shingle Style, Mediterranean, and Craftsman, also qualify. If this sounds reactionary—“anything but Modern”—well, maybe it is. But therein lies a challenge. Architects have always looked back in order to move forward, as James Stirling wisely observed, but move forward they do. This was true of Stirling, but equally true of his predecessors such as Bertram Goodhue, Paul Cret, and Raymond Hood, the last generation before Modernism’s ascendancy in the postwar era. These architects saw the past, including the Classical past, not as a strait jacket but as a springboard. The iconoclastic Goodhue once remarked, “All rules in architecture save absolutely basic ones are outside the subject.

I heard a new architectural term today: “multiple expression.” It refers to changing the architectural style of the facade of a large building to make it appear to be two or more smaller buildings. This strikes me as profoundly un-architectural. It’s true that architects in the past have sometimes combined different styles to give the impression that a building grew by accretion over a long period—Addison Mizner did this in his shopping alley in Palm Beach. But this had to do with chronology, not size. Generally architects have welcomed the challenge of designing a looong facade, whether it was Bernini in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, or John Nash in a Regency terrace in London (above). Not that I have any objection to visual trickery—trompe-l’œuil can be delightful. But somehow “multiple expression” bespeaks a lack of confidence, a poverty of the imagination.

For some reason the YouTube algorithm has been sending me videos of my old lectures: a recent lecture at Penn on ornament, a 2002 Toronto ideacity talk on Palladio, a 2013 talk at McGill University on architecture,and a talk about the history of the chair at the New York School of Interior Design. In 2011 I gave a lecture at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. The occasion was the publishing of Makeshift Metropolis, a book about the ideas—good and bad—that have influenced the planning of our cities over the twentieth century. The four big ideas I talked about were: the City Beautiful movement; the garden city; Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse; and Jane Jacob’s idea of the humanist city. My main thesis was that American cities are driven by demand rather than supply, that is, by what people want rather than what city planners and architects suggest. I still think that’s true.

My friend Michael Imber sent me this. From Russborough House, a famous Palladian house in County Wicklow, Ireland, designed in 1741 by the German architect Richard Cassels, who introduced the style to Ireland. Cassels, known locally as Castle, also designed Leinster House, which was James Hoban’s model for the White House.