The View From Rome

Henry Hope Reed loved Rome. Years ago, I asked him where as a young architect I should go to study “the Classical,” as he always called the kind of architecture we both loved. “Rome,” he answered unhesitatingly. “Rome is the place.” It was good advice, though it took me a couple of decades before I was able to follow it.

The obituary in the New York Times reporting Henry’s death on May 1, 2013, at age 97 refers to him as an historian who railed against Modernism, but this very inadequate description utterly fails to do justice to his contribution. He was not so much an historian as a public advocate for the Classical spirit in all the arts – from painting and sculpture to architecture and city planning, from decorative arts to gardens, from lampposts to Central Park.

Piazza Navona, Rome, with Borromini’s façade of the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone rising behind Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers. The synthesis of architecture and sculpture in baroque Rome was one of the great themes of Henry Hope Reed’s teaching and writing about Classical design. (Author photo)

He was a tireless campaigner for beauty in the built environment, issuing such declarations as “a room without ornament is like a sky without stars” and “there is nothing sadder than a blank pediment.” A native New Yorker, he advocated for public art everywhere in his many books, essays, lectures and his famous walking tours. But whenever he paused for a moment of reflection and inspiration, he would talk about Rome.

Those of us privileged to know him were keenly aware of his sometimes irascible spirit and totally unsentimental view of the prevailing realities. His standard response to my youthful enthusiasms about some new evidence for the revival of Classical design was a curt, “Don’t get your hopes up!” If I suggested a subject for a book, exhibition or some other event, he would roll his eyes, wave his hand back and forth and say, “It’s work. It’s work.”

And yet no one worked harder to instill knowledge and appreciation of Classical art and design or give more generous support and encouragement to those of us who tried to follow his prompts. Henry introduced me to my first client for an independent architectural commission, a private house in California, in 1988, and many of my friends and colleagues similarly benefited from his active encouragement. He was a one-man social network decades before Facebook.

Central motif, Grand Central Terminal, New York, by Warren & Wetmore with Reed & Stem. Henry Hope Reed’s great passion was the American contribution to the Classical tradition, and this is undoubtedly among the best examples. The façade designed by Whitney Warren culminates in Jacques Coutan’s sculptural group of Mercury – the spirit of travel and communication – surmounting the clock, a great instance of the Baroque Flourish in the New World. (Author photo)

Acting on his own frequent advice to spend less time arguing with Modernists and instead show people what you are in favor of, he and a handful of sympathetic friends formed The Society for a Classical America (CA) in 1968. Perhaps the organization’s greatest service was to publish the Classical America Series in Art and Architecture, featuring inexpensive editions of such seminal but long out-of-print texts as William R. Ware’s The American Vignola, Geoffrey Scott’s The Architecture of Humanism, Kenyon Cox’s The Classic Point of View and student editions of Paul Letarouilly’s Buildings of Modern Rome (for which CA co-founder and Classical architect John Barrington Bayley provided marvelously insightful texts) and the monograph of the works of McKim Mead & White.

Henry provided insightful introductions to most of these publications, to which were soon added Pierce Rice’s wonderful Man as Hero: The Human Figure in Western Art and a new edition of Henry’s own The Golden City, as well as his volumes on The New York Public Library, The Library of Congress, and The United States Capitol. These last three are unmatched for their comprehensive treatment of Classical design at all scales, from urban design to decorative detail. There is no better library on the subject of Classical art than the CA Series, and I am proud that it continues today and includes two of my own volumes, neither of which would have been possible apart from the longtime influence of Henry’s thought.

Indeed, he was the first to invite me to publish my writing, first for the CA newsletter in the 1980s and then two essays for his edition of Georges Gromort’s Elements of Classical Architecture, before encouraging me to go it alone. He was also the impetus for my taking up teaching when, in 1997, he invited me to offer a course on the Classical interior at the National Academy of Design to mark the centennial of Ogden Codman and Edith Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses, which was reprinted that year in the CA Series. That course was the seed for my The Architecture of the Classical Interior, a book largely inspired by Henry’s insights.

Entrance archway, Municipal Building, New York, by McKim Mead & White. Among the buildings most admired by Henry Hope Reed was William Mitchell Kendall’s design for the greatest Classical skyscraper. At its base, we find this extraordinary entrance allowing the building to straddle Chambers Street by means of a grand screen of Corinthian columns and a triumphal arch. The architectural language of empire and papacy is here transformed into the shared patrimony of a democratic society.

In addition to lectures and events, the society sponsored evening classes at the National Academy of Design, pre-eminently those in Classical drawing and design taught by the late painter Pierce Rice and those in Classical architecture taught by Philadelphia architect Alvin Holm. I studied with both of these masters in 1983-84, and the experience was formative for all of my subsequent creative work. Last December I invited Alvin Holm back to Notre Dame to sit on the final review panel for my students’ design studio projects. I told them, “Your teacher’s teacher is teaching you.” And yet, behind both of us stood an unseen but still present figure who had been our common mentor.

Henry understood that in addition to informing the public about historical Classicism, it was necessary to recognize and promote new efforts, and so with the support of the society’s principal patron, he created the Arthur Ross Awards in 1981. I attended the first ceremony, where Brooke Astor (herself a generous patron) presented the honors and gave the first award in architecture to Philip Trammell Shutze of Atlanta, one of the last practicing American architects of the pre-war generation whose work was profoundly shaped by the experience of Rome.

Uniquely among the awards programs that have proliferated since, the Ross Awards continue to recognize craftsmanship, stewardship and patronage, in addition to artists and architects. This year’s prize for architecture goes to my friends Anne Fairfax and Richard Sammons, leaders among the younger generation of architects who have not only revived but contributed to the Classical tradition in their work. They were faithful pillars of Classical America, even hosting Henry in their office for several years, and have continued their involvement since the merger of Classical America and the Institute of Classical Architecture in 2002. I know Henry would be especially proud of these two, among his many protégés.

While Henry had his curmudgeonly side, he could also express pure joy at the sight of a sculpted frieze of putti or a garden full of flowers. He never tired of praising the great artists and architects who created the American Renaissance, reserving a special admiration for San Francisco architect Arthur Brown. But it was to Rome that he turned his attention time and again.

An austere Classicism was not for Henry. He wanted The Grand Manner and extolled the Baroque Flourish, with Rome always the standard. Classical architecture, he wrote in an essay published in the first volume of Yale’s Perspecta in 1953, is “the Art of Pleasing,” and Rome is the city that pleased him most. I regret that for the last five years my teaching in Rome limited my direct contacts with Henry, though I hope and trust that he would say I did the right thing by coming here.

Thank you, Henry, for all your many gifts, and I hope you will find your new accommodations in the truly Eternal City to your liking.

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Americans’ ideas about Sicily have been mostly shaped by a few well-known films depicting a certain criminal society whose reach now extends around the world. While the island has its difficulties, Sicily today is among the most progressive and culturally engaged regions in Italy, and the island is enjoying a rebirth of prosperity and cultural prominence. From the large cities to the smaller towns, there is a wave of restoration and rejuvenation that is making the beauty of the place even more apparent.

The Oratorio of Santa Cita, Palermo. The stucco sculptural decoration by Serpotta fills the walls with figures and scenes at various scales but is unified by its consistent whiteness. Color is introduced only in the sanctuary, with the painting of the altarpiece. (Photo by author)

Blessed by a superb climate, some of the most appetizing produce and foods in the world, a dramatic and varied landscape and extraordinarily friendly and welcoming people, Sicily is a wonderful place to study architecture, and my students, colleagues and I have the pleasure of doing this for a week every spring. While all the great periods and styles are represented, from the ancient Greek to the modern, what stands out for me is the marvelous Sicilian Baroque. For those more familiar with the grandeur of the Baroque in Rome, the Sicilian variety offers a more intimate and playful variation on the main themes of the style.

Here there are no mile-long axes or ponderous elevations stretching for hundreds of feet. There are no piazzas with acres of stone paving without a tree in sight. Rather, there is always the sense of being in a very well-appointed garden, brimming with orange trees, cypresses and olives. Fountains are frequent, and nature always seems near. Important buildings seem to be sprouting balconies supported on humorously sculpted brackets, while pilasters and entablatures twist and bend as if starting to dance.

In Sicily, the Baroque is not so much about the representation of power, but more about local pride, exuberant craftsmanship and an approach to decorative detail that is simply dessert for the eyes. Those who know Sicilian confections like canoli, cassata, sfince and other pastries stuffed with candied fruit, ricotta cheese, chocolate, pistachios or almonds can make the requisite translation to the visual field.

Cathedral of Modica, view of the nave with original Baroque interior decoration and a late 19th-century organ case designed to harmonize with the pre-existing setting. The limited color palette and geometric rigor of the ornament give the interior a lace-like lightness, in contrast with the more robust quality of the Roman Baroque. (Author photo)

There is a tragic side to this picture, too, reflecting the frequent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other disasters that have struck the region. The towns of southeastern Sicily were all rebuilt after the devastating earthquake of 1693, and Catania has been destroyed and rebuilt at least seven times in its long history. Surprisingly, this series of catastrophes has not led to widespread fatalism but seems only to make the beauty of the place and the life within it even sweeter because of its vulnerability.

Not only is the Sicilian Baroque different from the Roman Baroque, but the Sicilian version differs among the various cities and designers on the island; one must travel around to see the different characters the style takes on. The historic center of Palermo retains the exotic charm of the several different civilizations that built it and left their distinctive mark on it: Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Spanish and Italian.

At the church of La Martorana, several of these layers are visible simultaneously, with Ravenna-like mosaics vying for our attention, along with Baroque sculpture and mural painting beneath an Arabic dome. The Oratorio of Santa Cita, however, is pure Baroque theater and surprising in its intimate scale: The early 18th-century sculptures in stucco by Giacomo Serpotta (1652-1732) covering the walls are marvelous in their number and complexity yet all perfectly composed with the architectural lines and unified by their consistent whiteness.

The Cathedral of Noto. Part of the early 18th-century reconstruction of the city after its destruction in 1693, the cathedral is built of the local golden stone as the centerpiece of the city’s orthogonal street grid and is flanked by squares enclosed by ficus trees trimmed to create green walls. The dome has just been reconstructed after another collapse in 1996.

The city’s elegant squares are unusual in Italy for their landscaping, brimming with oranges, palms, olives and, at the Piazza Marina, giant Banyan trees like those I climbed growing up in Florida. Throughout the historic center, many buildings still show the damage caused by Allied bombing in 1943, though the extensive and continuing restorations are a sign of hope. Happily, the Palermitani are not slaves to the Venice Charter, and so their very capable restorations and reconstructions are returning the city as it was.

In the southeastern corner of the island is a trio of wonderful cities, all rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake and all monuments of Baroque architecture and town making. Modica and Ragusa Ibla were rebuilt where and as they had been before, with their winding streets following the hilly topography, while Noto and Ragusa were rebuilt on new sites according to new, geometrically formalized plans.

I find Modica and Noto the most satisfying, reflecting the best of what we might call the “topologic” and the “geometric” approaches to city building, respectively. The first has become an international hot spot, with a particular focus on gastronomy, while the second, with a stronger local flavor, is made more magical by the golden stone of which most of it is built. Noto’s cathedral – designed, like all the principal buildings of the town, by Rosario Gagliardi (1698-1762) – suffered another loss in 1996 when its grand early 18th-century dome suddenly collapsed. Now completely restored “where it was, as it was” under the guidance of Paolo Marconi, the interior is currently being decorated in classical style by a team of Russian painters. Another setback for the Venice Charter crowd but absolutely right in this case.

Cathedral of Siracusa, the heart of the city’s historic center on the island of Ortigia. The Baroque façade masks the Norman cathedral, which remodeled a Byzantine refashioning into a Christian church of the fifth-century B.C. Greek Temple of Athena. The bold Doric peristyle of the ancient temple is partially visible both inside and outside the cathedral. (Photo by author)

At the cathedral of Siracusa on the island of Ortigia, the nave and aisles occupy the former cella and peristyles of the fifth-century B.C. Greek Temple of Athena – perhaps the only place in the world where one can see the Italian Baroque and the ancient Greek Doric in almost inconceivable juxtaposition; the temple-cathedral is also a remarkable example of continuity of form, materials and use over the course of many centuries. Outside is one of the most beautiful piazze in the world – the facades opposite the cathedral bending in a long, graceful arc.

The Baroque is again different in Catania. The lava from Mount Etna that has several times buried the city has also produced one of its main building materials, and the buildings around the main piazza are banded in volcanic gray pumice and creamy limestone. This gray and white palette might be dreary were it not for the abundant sunshine, palm trees, orange trees and bright flowers that are equally characteristic of the place.

While the facades of the churches in Ragusa Ibla, Modica and Noto tend to bow in and out in a dance of complex concave and convex curves, the facades of Catania, like those in Palermo, are more planar, with gently twisting columns and pilasters and lace-like ornamental patterns in the flat surfaces.

Wherever you go in Sicily, the Baroque architecture is food for the eyes and the soul, and the sweets just make the experience even more satisfying.

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In case you missed it, here’s the latest declaration from Daniel Libeskind on the future of architecture.

“It sometimes feels as if cities like Paris and Venice have been coated with formaldehyde and turned into museums. The old formulas of ‘respecting context’ won’t work. We must create a new context and puncture past beauty with raw, powerful contemporary architecture—buildings that shock and amaze and bring out the romance of relics of Victorian and ancient times. It was once true that the palace, Palladian villas, and churches were architectural, while the other structures in a city were just buildings. But I think the art of architecture is ready to come out in every single structure we erect.” Conde Nast Traveler web page

Because Libeskind has a significant following among the avant-garde (especially among architecture professors and the directors of art museums), it is worth taking a moment to understand what he is saying and why everyone with an interest in historic preservation or artistic culture in general should be appalled.

Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

First, the reason many historic cities feel like museums is because that’s what many of them have become – historic environments hosed down in formaldehyde, segregated from everyday life and with high admission fees. But why? The “museumification” of cities like Paris and Venice is precisely the consequence of Libeskind’s modernist predecessors, who made an irreparable rupture between past and present the foundation of their practice.

Since the adoption of the Venice Charter nearly 50 years ago (1964), there has been a strict prohibition against additions to historic environments that might have the effect of keeping them alive: instead, new work must “be distinct from the architectural composition and must bear a contemporary stamp.” Modernist architects, in the spirit of the charter, refused to integrate new construction into the historic fabric except on the basis of conspicuous aesthetic opposition. This spurred many preservationists to oppose all change and relegate new development outside the historic centers, which soon became the exclusive province of tourists and residents affluent enough to pay higher rents. The blatant visual contrast and physical separation between the historic and the new have, indeed, preserved the old centers but at the cost of their economies and authenticity.

The current state of many of our historic places illustrates the difference between preservation and conservation (at least in American usage): The first preserves something that is dead, like a mummy’s corpse, and the second conserves something that is alive, like an ecosystem or a garden. Some historic centers have indeed become dead places, to be visited after buying a ticket, but others show how it is possible for them to remain alive. They do this by allowing growth and change so long as it is consistent with the historic character of the place. But this limitation is unacceptable to the architects, who are not content with the freedom they have to build as they please outside the historic places; they see those historic centers – indeed the continued existence of any traditional architecture – as an affront to their creative freedom.

War Museum, Dresden

Their answer is to end the sequestration of the old and the new by “penetrating” the old with the new. Libeskind’s evisceration of the War Musuem in Dresden and the “lovely, light-filled” (as the interviewer describes it) addition to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto make clear he means this literally: The solution to museum cities is to penetrate them with glass shards and other architectural weapons of mass destruction.

Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin for Paris in 1925 would have torn down the historic center and built a grid of skyscrapers in its place; Libeskind’s, presumably, would leave it there but plunge a handful of skyscrapers into its heart. Perhaps nothing would please him more than to see Venice with one of his glass needles erupting from the side of the Basilica di San Marco to “shock and amaze” us and “create a new context.” It is as if the way to bring renewed youth and beauty to an aging former beauty queen were to have a big machete projecting from her cranium at a jaunty angle. Clem Labine’s recent post indicting architects like Libeskind and their adoring fans as “the New Taliban” is right on target.

As I suggested in my previous post, the answer to the problems of historic cities is neither sequestration nor “penetration” but integration on the basis of knowledge and respect. Those of us who love beautiful historic cities and monuments must insist that economic authenticity and vitality for historic places require an architectural culture in which new and old are partners instead of antagonists.

If the only way to prevent these places from being destroyed by the likes of Libeskind is to pour more formaldehyde on them, so be it. This is the mainstream preservation answer at the moment, and at least it keeps the old bits around long enough that a potentially more sensible future generation might do the right thing. In the meantime, we can only hope that a half century of preservation efforts will not be swept away by a short-lived fad.

But there is a still better way: Change contemporary architecture from being the enemy of beauty to being the agent of its loving care. Train young architects in knowledge and respect for what is beautiful, sustainable and just in the historic environment and equip them with the skills needed to make more of it. Then we can put away the formaldehyde and instead nurture our cities with an economy and a building culture that will keep them alive, not as museums but as living cities once again available to all.

Libeskind’s other error is the idea that the historic distinction between “monument” and “fabric” should be abandoned, that “architecture is ready to come out in every single structure we erect.” As is so often the case with Libeskind and his followers, the words are not the problem. Why shouldn’t every building represent an artistic response to its purpose and site? It is when we see his work that we realize what he means. In contrast with the decorum of traditional cities in which the city hall, the church, the public library are given more noble expression than the private house, office building or apartment block, he is suggesting that every building, regardless of purpose, ought to be an iconic object. But if every building is a unique gesture, an isolated specimen, a sculpture intended to “shock and amaze,” then there is no city at all, but only an architectural zoo. Libeskind would replace the “museum” of historic Venice with the museum of objects designed by himself. Which of those museums would you willingly pay to visit?

So “the old formulas of ‘respecting context’ won’t work.” Really? Those of us who can still tell the difference between an architectural culture of inestimable value and the marketing slogans of a hustling architectural firm need to tell Daniel Libeskind, “Keep your hands off our historic places. We don’t need your new context. We want respect rather than vandalism and character-preserving transformation rather than ‘penetration.’”

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Over a century ago, Henry James captured the mood that I feel now as I return to Italy, a country that both inspires and frustrates me, as it did James. Revisiting the country in 1877, just several years after Unification, he wrote:

The old has become more and more a museum, preserved and perpetuated in the midst of the new, but without any further relation to it. . .than that of the stock on his shelves to the shopkeeper. . .The Italy that we sentimentalise and romance about was an ardently mercantile country, though I suppose it loved not its ledgers less but its frescoes and altar-pieces more. Scattered through this paradise regained of trade. . .we see a large number of beautiful buildings in which an endless series of dusky pictures are darkening, dampening, fading, failing through the years. By the doors of the beautiful buildings are little turnstiles at which there sit a great many uniformed men to whom the visitor pays a fee. Inside, in the vaulted and frescoed chambers, the art of Italy lies buried as in a thousand mausoleums. It is well taken care of; it is constantly copied, sometimes it is ‘restored’. . .Like it or not, as we may, it is evidently destined to be; I see a new Italy in the future which in many important respects will equal, if not surpass, the most enterprising sections of our native land.” (From “Italy Revisited,” in Henry James’s Italian Hours, Ecco Press, 1987, pp. 112-113.)

The Piazza San Marco, Venice, seen from San Giorgio Maggiore. Restoration theorist Cesare Brandi wrote in 1963 that the Venetians should not have reconstructed the bell tower of San Marco after its 1902 collapse but replaced it by an abstract “vertical element.” Like Brandi, modern architects can rarely resist the impulse to dramatize the rupture between new and old, impoverishing new environments and driving a destructive mass tourism in historic places like Venice (with, thankfully, its campanile rebuilt). Photo: Steven W. Semes

The good news is that Italy has become a prosperous country, and the fading paintings and beautiful buildings are, for the most part, well preserved and maintained. Visitors to historic centers and restored sites, at first glance, see a world where the new and the old seem to have struck a truce; but a closer look reveals this is illusory: The old things constitute an immense museum collection that has even less relation to the contemporary life of most Italians than it did a century ago. As in most Western European countries, the modern Italian economy continues to depend on tourism for a significant percentage of its income, though this comes at a high price.

We can see the destructive effects of tourism on the social life of Italy’s historic centers, where even many churches charge admission. In Venice, of course, this transformation into a kind of amusement park has been going on for centuries, as James recognized, though it now seems to have reached a crisis point. The tourist economy inexorably displaces every other activity, so that the foreigners strolling through the Piazza San Marco see only one another and the few locals still visible all seem to wear uniforms or period costumes. The wear and tear on the buildings and artworks is obvious and costly to mitigate, and the balance between the costs and benefits of tourism becomes increasingly hard to sustain. Over the long term, unchecked tourism is self-destructive, ruining the very attractions that make places worth visiting, driving out the local population and crippling other parts of the economy. Our very presence as tourists has directly and indirectly contributed to the problem.

The Rome tourists don’t see: Condominiums and shopping center on Via Aurelia, M. Coronelli, architect 1971-76. This must be one of the ugliest buildings in Rome, though it is highly regarded by historians of Modernist design. The urbanism is that of suburban New Jersey, and the ubiquity of this kind of development has rendered the historic center unaffordable for most Italians. Photo: Steven W. Semes

The other side of this coin is the conspicuous contrast between the historic places we like to visit and the built world most Italians occupy today. We travel thousands of miles, only to find that some of the most beautiful places on earth are surrounded by some of the ugliest. Most of today’s Romans, Florentines and Venetians spend their lives in suburban sprawl, participating in a global culture little different from our own. Like us, they want a higher standard of living (at least in terms of modern conveniences) than the historic centers afforded before their restoration, but the ensuing environmental, cultural and spiritual losses are increasingly evident.

An enforced contrast between the historic and the modern built world (enshrined in the Venice Charter of 1964) impoverishes newer neighborhoods but also threatens historic areas. Mass tourism is driven by demand: The unrelieved ugliness of modern cities prompts millions of people to travel to environments that a century ago were accessible to nearly everyone but which can now only be enjoyed by those who can afford the entrance fees. If their own neighborhoods were more beautiful alternatives to suburban sprawl, perhaps they wouldn’t need to overrun Venice. In this sense, the harms done to historic sites by mass tourism are a consequence of the failures of Modernist architecture and urbanism to create a built world that satisfies human needs and allows architecture of different eras to coexist in harmony.

This problem is worsened by the intellectual and artistic elite who, like their counterparts in other Western European countries, have a love-hate relationship with their cultural heritage. On one hand, they revere it as an invaluable inheritance and a source of communal identity; on the other, they persistently mock it. The urge to subvert any traditional practice, belief or symbolism is nearly irresistible in contemporary “high culture.”

On New Year’s Eve, I attended the Ballet of Rome’s production of “The Nutcracker.” In it, Clara’s dream of a Kingdom of Sweets was rendered as a grunge-inspired nightmare in which the Sugar Plum Fairy – a male dancer in drag – appeared as a repulsive character reminiscent of the hippopotamus in a tutu in Disney’s “Fantasia.” Being Italian rather than, say, French, the ballet’s put-down of the traditional imagery of Tchaikovsky’s romantic ballet is played for laughs, but the artistic impulse is the same as Marcel Duchamp’s 1919 painting of a moustache on the Mona Lisa. The same reflex drives both the need to subvert the beauty of all traditional art and the refusal to build a contemporary urbanism in which the present and the past can live together in harmony.

Some Italian cultural officials believe the way to make places likeVenice more authentic is to install contemporary art around the city, making it a center for the “art of our time,” rather a museum of antiquities. However well intentioned, such initiatives inevitably fail for two reasons. First, the new art does not bear comparison with the artistic heritage but, on the contrary, only further dramatizes the rupture between the historic and the contemporary. Second, the problems of Venice are not going to be solved by competing with Basel or New York for the contemporary art market.

Instead, what the city needs desperately (apart from a solution to the ever-present danger of flooding) is an economy based on something other than tourism. It must become a real city again, a place where the residents make things and provide services that support human flourishing. Historic preservation, new architecture and new urbanism could work together to build an environment in which such a community could thrive – perhaps with appointments for visits by a limited number of tourists awarded by a lottery – but, more important, we need to make living in a place of beauty the birthright of those of us elsewhere who do not live in historic places.

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The group SOS Paris has once again raised the alarm about skyscrapers proposed for this great city. The mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, backed by the city council, is pushing to allow the construction of a series of out-of-scale buildings within the historic center of the city that threaten to do to Paris what similar buildings over the last decades have done to London – turn it into a preposterous “wannabe” skyscraper city in competition with the likes of Shanghai and Abu Dhabi.

Here is how you can help: Read Mary Campbell Gallagher’s illustrated post on the Classicist blog and join the letter-writing campaign. You can also read her Forum in the June 2011 issue of Traditional Building magazine. I urge all the readers of this column to write to Mayor Delanoë letting him know that Paris doesn’t need towers.

The argument advanced by the champions of tall buildings is always the same, whether in Paris, London, New York or Rome: The city needs skyscrapers because it needs to increase densities, business corporations will move elsewhere if the office space isn’t provided, there is an urgent need for new housing in the city, the new buildings are going to be “green” and – hey – skyscrapers are cool and represent progress and modernity. It is abundantly clear to anyone without a vested interest in these boondoggles that none of these arguments makes any sense.

The best way to increase densities is to build sensibly, infilling already developed areas with new fabric that respects the historical patterns of the traditional city. Skyscrapers do not always increase density, and some of the densest neighborhoods in the world, like the center of Paris or Amsterdam, are no more than four or five stories tall. Most historic cities are already dense. If new towers are needed for some other reason, build them well outside historic districts.

It is unlikely that business corporations that have a real interest in being in Paris will move away because there are no skyscrapers ready to occupy, and if they are hungry for space, new buildings as tall as you like could be built in enclaves outside the center, continuing the pattern of such developments as La Défense and Paris Rive Gauche – those architectural zoos dedicated to exhibiting collections of aberrant towers utterly incapable of composing a city – where they will be in good company. They certainly do not have to build in areas that are essential components of the architectural patrimony of all humanity.

Tall buildings like London’s recently completed “Shard” were justified by their promoters as addressing the need to increase the supply of housing, but now we know that the expense of such buildings makes them out of reach for all but international jet-setting corporate executives and financiers whose top priority is ready access to spas and restaurants without having to leave the building. Not one skyscraper has been built anywhere to my knowledge to house people who were not prepared to pay millions of dollars for an apartment, so the housing issue is bogus.

Then there is the myth of the “green” skyscraper, a myth that has proved largely unsubstantiated by the actual performance of glass towers over a longer term. So far, most tall buildings have failed to sustain the energy consumption claims made for them by their designers. Given the new energy standards—always being raised inEurope—it will soon be very difficult to build new buildings with glass skins—however “hi-tech” they may be—that can compete with old-fashioned masonry. More important, those who tout the sustainability of skyscrapers never seem to include in their calculations the effects these buildings have on the cities where they are built, the impacts on transportation, land use and other resources beyond the building’s footprint.

Finally, there is the sentimental justification that skyscrapers are emblems of modernity. Nonsense. Skyscrapers are emblems of failure: environmental, imaginative, social, economic and cultural. As many of my New Urbanist colleagues have described them, they are high-rise gated communities and vertical cul-de-sacs.

Paris, like other places, wants to think it is in the center of innovative and creative new architecture – and indeed it should be – but why does that mean we have to confront projects whose design has nothing whatsoever to do with the character of the city for which they are proposed? What aspects of the tower designs proposed for Paris by Herzog & DeMeuron, Renzo Piano or Jean Nouvel would not be equally at home (or equally absurd) anywhere else? In what way will any of these preposterous objects contribute to the quality of city life? Have we learned nothing since Le Corbusier’s 1925 Plan Voisin that proposed demolishing all of central Paris(except for a handful of monuments like the Louvre and Notre-Dame) and replacing it with a gridded array of high-rise apartment blocks? That vision, now nearly a century old, seems still to have a grip on the brains of many people who should know better.

On the contrary, what is really cool and an emblem of modernity is real city life, the kind of urbanity and freedom that can only come from a city any pedestrian can comprehend and where strangers meet and interact in public space – in other words, in cities like the historic center of Paris. The most innovative and revolutionary thing the architects could do now would be to make more of Paris, not less.

Whoever would have imagined that Paris, of all places, would succumb to the kind of boosterism and provincialism that some second- or third-rate city might fall prey to? Paris doesn’t need to impress anyone with faceless, could-be-anywhere new architecture. Leave that to the upstart cities still trying to put themselves on the map. Paris was right to corral these feral buildings in clumps outside the center, and it should continue this policy, making new clumps if needed, but well outside the periphérique.

Here is the address to send your letter.
Mr. Bertrand Delanoë (Note the two dots over the “e”)
Mayor of Paris
Place de l’Hôtel de Ville
Paris, France
75004

U.S.postage is $1.05 or three Forever stamps. Be sure to include your return address inside and on the envelope.

Here is a template letter you can use if you like.

Dear Mr. Delanoë,

There is no advantage in making Paris look like every other city in the world.
Paris is unique!
Paris is Paris!
Skyscrapers will diminish Paris in the eyes of the world.
Please let Paris be Paris!

Sincerely, (or, if you prefer, Sincerement)

Your name

Many thanks again to Mary Campbell Gallagher and bon chance!

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One of the essentials of all Italian cities and towns is the piazza, the public square or plaza that acts as an “outdoor living room” for the community. For example, most visitors to Rome are familiar with the monumental Piazza Navona that takes the oblong form of the ancient Stadium of Domitian and is graced by three marvelous fountains (the famous Fountain of the Four Rivers by Gianlorenzo Bernini at the center), as well as the great church of Sant’Agnese in Agone to which Carlo Rainaldi and Francesco Borromini contributed their baroque mastery.

Other piazze in Rome may have a less elevated or civic character; many are simply modest gathering places for the immediate neighborhood or an outdoor market. Its origins traceable to the ancient forum of Roman cities, the modern piazza is a node within the street network where various functions of daily life or public ceremony naturally take place.

Piazza Cavour

I am often asked which is my favorite. Among those whose primary importance is architectural, I would vote for Piazza Navona without hesitation, but the piazza I like most to hang out in is Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina, which, though undistinguished architecturally, demonstrates the social function of this type of space. It is a long, narrow trapezoid, the wide end of which opens to the Via del Corso, Rome’s main north-south street; in turn, the narrow end links several smaller streets of shops and restaurants around the Palazzo di Montecitorio, home of the Italian Parliament.

The piazza is animated by three cafés whose tables and umbrellas spill into the space, a newsstand, some luxury stores, and a former cinema (designed by a young Marcello Piacentini) now in the process of being converted into a mini-mall. Both a destination and a passageway, the piazza is always animated and, unusually in the center of Rome, it’s typically full of Italians rather than tourists.

This summer saw the re-opening of two piazze that had been closed for construction projects. The first of these, named after one of the fathers of Italy’s unification, was laid out in the late 19th century as part of the development of the neighborhood north of the Castel Sant’Angelo, known as Prati. The focus of the new neighborhood was the gigantic building of the Palazzo di Giustizia, facing the Tiber, and on the other side of the building, the Piazza Cavour occupied the entire frontage of the building, giving it a landscaped forecourt to match its riverside vista on the other side.

Piazza Cavour

The Piazza Cavour is not, in fact, a piazza in the historic sense. It is more like an English square. It is a city block that was left unbuilt upon and has streets running all around it (the one between it and the Palazzo di Giustizia has now been closed), like a smaller version of New York’s Washington Square or the squares of Savannah, GA. It is landscaped in the style of a Romantic English garden, with grass lawns (rare in Italy), winding walks, benches (certainly rare in Rome) and clumps of palm trees. At the center is a monumental bronze statue of Camillo Cavour, looking indomitable, as a national hero should.

All of this was reinstated after a multi-year project to construct an underground parking garage below the park, but the re-opened square is far more attractive than it was formerly, when it was ringed by traffic and bus stops. It is also much livelier now, as Romans are also susceptible to the attractions of grass, trees and benches – features usually not found in traditional piazze, where paved surfaces predominate and one normally strolls or stands unless one is seated in a café.

The new Piazza Cavour also has a café inside it – a smart idea – and this stays open late, ensuring that there is a convivial, social atmosphere even after dark. Although the piazza is not particularly “Italian” in its origins and character, it certainly has been embraced by the Romans, proving that not all 19th-century innovations are to be looked down upon.

Piazza San Silvestro

Across town, the Piazza San Silvestro is another modern innovation. Like many places in Rome, the current space was formed as a result of the demolition of buildings that formerly separated two neighboring spaces. In the 20th century, the Piazza San Claudio was merged with the adjacent San Silvestro to allow a larger space for what became the turn-around for a number of bus lines. Until this summer, this was a piazza in name only: an expanse of asphalt with concrete islands where people waited in little shelters for the bus.

The bus stops have been relocated nearby and the piazza re-paved, and traffic has been diverted. Paolo Portoghesi, the architect known for his post-modernist designs and his valuable studies of baroque architecture, was brought in to “accessorize” the new space. Sadly, Portoghesi was given a shoestring budget and was hired after many of the technical decisions had already been made, so he had little to do but design the benches and choose the planters.

Piazza San Silvestro

Not surprisingly, there was controversy. Some wanted no change, some wanted change resembling historical forms and some wanted something “transgressive” and “of our time.” We should be grateful, I suppose, that a compromise was found: the new piazza is “clean” and abstract, but the forms are familiar ones.

The piazza is now paved in sanpietrini (the traditional cobblestones of Rome), and benches have been built, forming a large rectangle on the west side and a large oval on the east. These shapes respond to the entrances to the church of San Silvestro and the Central Post Office, respectively. The stone benches themselves are not unattractive, surprisingly comfortable and welcome in a city where there is almost no place to sit down without buying something.

La Repubblica, the center-left newspaper, criticized Portoghesi and attacked the new piazza because the benches got hot in the direct sun of an August afternoon – over 120 degrees was measured on the surface of one – and the new piazza seemed deserted. But this is unfair, as nearly all piazze are deserted in summer mid-afternoons, unless there is shade from trees or café umbrellas and the like. On the other hand, the new Piazza San Silvestro has been livelier in more moderate weather and in the evenings. Its position in the heart of the center will likely ensure its acceptance as a major gathering place. There is only one café on the piazza now; naturally, two or three more would only add to the sociability of the place.

While both of these “new” piazze are pleasant enough and will doubtless become part of the city’s physical and social network of spaces, neither is really a piazza like those from before the Modernist period. The traditional piazza does not have through streets on more than two sides and is completely enclosed by buildings with mixed uses. Have we lost the ability to design such places today? The formless, useless “open space” that accompanies most contemporary architecture would suggest that we have.

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It seems that the currently fashionable architects are competing to plant their “contemporary stamp” on the historic face of the Eternal City. It all began with the completion in 2005 of Richard Meier’s Museum of the Ara Pacis, which seems to have opened the way for new Modernist architecture in the city. Upon its completion, the Meier building prompted protests even from the mayor of Rome, and now its entry plaza is to undergo a makeover in answer to some of the criticisms that met its debut, most notably the wall that blocks the view of two Neo-classical churches from the riverside boulevard of the Lungotevere.

As disturbing as the counter-contextual imposition of Meier’s building is, there is something worse afoot in Rome: the gutting of historic buildings of more recent vintage and their incorporation into crudely cannibalistic new construction. Modernist architects are becoming perversely parasitic in this way: They insist on using historic structures as a “foil” to their unprecedented forms and high-tech materials. Aggressive “shards” and “blobs” are suddenly exploding from the bellies of older buildings like the creature in the movie “Alien” that burst out of the abdomen of an ill-fated earthling. Daniel Liebskind’s Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and War Museum in Dresden are the best known examples of this approach.

MAXXI Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome, Zaha Hadid, 2010. View from Via Guido Reni, showing existing and new buildings. Photo by the author.

Designed by Zaha Hadid and holding forth as the latest new building in Rome by a leading contemporary architect, the MAXXI gallery of contemporary art was received with worshipful praise by the establishment, including the 2010 Stirling Prize of the Royal Institute of British Architects. The architecture critic of the Guardian described it as “Hadid’s finest built work to date. . .and a masterpiece fit to sit alongside Rome’s ancient wonders.”

So far as I am aware, there have been no official calls for its demolition, to date, although the future of the building is clouded. It seems the 150 million euros spent on constructing the new museum were invested without providing for operating funds, building maintenance or much of a permanent collection. Recently, the government announced that the building may soon close, a casualty of the economic crisis and government belt tightening.

The Hadid proposal, winner of a 1998 design competition and completed finally in 2010, “convinced the jury by its capacity to integrate itself in the urban fabric and for its innovative architectural solution” proclaims the museum’s website. In what way the new MAXXI can be said to have any relation to its physical context other than brute aggression is puzzling, as it makes no concession whatsoever to anything around it.

Across the street is a 1920s public housing project that, like many from that time in Rome, combines humane urbanism and exemplary traditional architecture. In other words, it creates the benign urban fabric that Hadid willfully ignores. But what many people who have not seen the MAXXI in person may not realize is that Hadid makes use of two existing buildings from an entire district of turn-of-the-20th-century military barracks. These buildings, in contrast to Hadid’s, are very simple and dignified structures, and one of them forms the southern flank of the MAXXI, facing the street.

The new structure, engulfing and extending north from the older one, is entered from a new garden and courtyard, the older building acting as a kind of impenetrable mask behind which the bulk of the new building pokes out at each end. Another of the old buildings, set perpendicular to the street, encloses the new garden on the east and houses additional bookshop and café spaces.

Hadid uses the existing building simply as a shell, hollows it out, paints it white and makes it all but disappear, nearly overwhelmed by the onslaught of the new structure that seems to be attacking it like some colossal monster in a science-fiction film. But, unexpectedly, the old structure’s dignity of composition, satisfying proportions and human scale resist the architect’s act of appropriation. It stands its ground, still recognizable as architecture, refusing to be destroyed. This persistence must keep Hadid awake at night. Not allowed to demolish the buildings, she is powerless to rob them of their meaning, despite the considerable effort she gives to the task.

Maxxi Museum, Rome. View of new museum building from northwest. Photo by the author.

On the other side of the city, another out-of-town. avant-garde architect has attacked and gutted an older building but more ineptly and with a sorrier fate for the “host” structure. The former Peroni Brewery, designed by the Roman architect, restorer and scholar Gustavo Giovannoni and constructed between 1908 and 1912, is a multi-block complex regarded as a landmark of early 20th-century industrial architecture.

Remodeling part of it between 2004 and 2010 for yet another museum of contemporary art – this one called the MACRO – Paris architect Odlie Decq asserted that “it was necessary to maintain both of the existing facades, so we removed a little piece at the corner to show that we existed.” In an egregious instance of “facadism,” the old street walls were isolated and left as mere screens unrelated to the reconfigured spaces behind them. At the corner, the walls are interrupted and penetrated by glass volumes that seem to be breaking them apart.

Projects more respectful of Giovannoni’s buildings and the surrounding context were submitted in the competition won by Decq, but these were set aside for “the lack of risk, novelty and rupture in the schemes, attributes which instead fully characterized that of the winner,” according to the official jury report. Now we know that Ms. Decq exists, but she need not have bothered. An architect who must ruin a historic structure in order to prove her existence has proved what, exactly?

MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome, Odile Decq, 2010. Photo by the author.

Demonstrating that the hometown architects are just as capable of contempt for their cultural inheritance as their foreign colleagues, Massimiliano Fuksas has designed a radical alteration to the former Unione Militare building on Via del Corso, right in the heart of the historic center. Among the few examples of turn-of-the-20th-century Classical commercial architecture in the center of Rome, the temptation to mess with its Classical symmetries was irresistible.

Taking a cue from Decq, Fuksas blows open a corner to prove he exists, and a flood of his signature glassy shapes spills out of the breach. Now under construction, this transgressive treatment of the existing building was likely approved by the authorities because the older building, as in the previous two cases, was not considered “historic.” In Italy, the boundary of what usually qualifies for preservation is drawn at the start of the 19th century, which leaves nearly all the excellent architecture of the city from the last 200 years vulnerable to the parasitical appetites of the Modernist architects.

In Italy, as elsewhere, the historic patrimony, viewed by most of us as an evolving tradition to be sympathetically adapted to new conditions, is seen by many architects as material to be “mined” or used as a pretext for dramatizing “rupture” and “transgression.” With the value of 19th- and 20th-century architecture only now beginning to be recognized, this leaves an important part of the European heritage under threat – a loophole architects like Hadid, Decq and Fuksas are only too eager to exploit.

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Many of us were cheered to observe the recent testimony before a congressional subcommittee about Frank Gehry’s proposed Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, DC, including members of the Eisenhower family and representatives of the National Civic Art Society (NCAS). For many of us, the concerns expressed about the proposed design represented a breakthrough for public discussion of Modernist architecture, its merits and deficiencies, as well as possible alternatives to it. But we would be naïve not to expect that the Modernist establishment would launch a counter-attack, and indeed it has.

An intemperate article in Architectural Record about a panel discussion on the general theme of monuments, co-sponsored by NCAS and the American Enterprise Institute, reduced the conversation to a conflict between Modernism and Classicism, which the author characterized as representing left-wing and right-wing politics, respectively. He accused those promoting a Classical design of “bashing” Modernism and advancing odious conservative political values. This attempt to turn a stylistic debate into a political one is nothing new and, in my view, based on an ignorance of history.

Government-sponsored public housing for workers in the Garbatella district, Rome, 1928-29, designed by Innocenzo Sabbatini. This and other housing projects in Rome, begun before the dictatorship but completed under it, were socially progressive and made explicit use of the architectural vocabulary of the historic center, in contrast with the modernist projects of the same time in Germany, whose industrial abstraction stood in sharp contrast with the adjacent built environment. Sadly, post-war housing projects in Europe and the United States alike followed the Bauhaus model instead of the Roman one. (Author photo)

Modernist critics have often equated a preference for Classical art with a conservative, reactionary or even fascist political commitment. One can, in fact, find plentiful examples of authoritarian and repressive regimes that have used the Classical language of architecture to express their aspirations for power and permanence. This is not surprising, considering that most regimes of whatever kind in human history have been authoritarian and repressive to a greater or lesser degree.

Democratic societies are historically exceptional, but they are also rarely distinguishable from the others by their architecture, despite arguments to the contrary from both proponents and critics of Classicism. Modernism, too, now just a century old, has been appropriated by both democratic and repressive regimes. The historical record shows that neither Classical nor Modernist expressions were consistently used by those societies that employed them, and often both stylistic tendencies were in use in the same country at the same time, making nonsense of any simplistic alignment between design and politics.

This was certainly the case between 1922 and 1942 in fascist Italy. Both Classical and modernizing tendencies were present before and during the Mussolini dictatorship. Italian architects working in the Classical tradition emphasized their continuity with the native tradition stretching back millennia; those embracing the Modern Movement promoted its universality based on industrial production and a new visual language of abstraction, which they characterized as representing progress.

Main Building, new campus for the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, 1932-35, by Marcello Piacentini. This building tries to unite symmetrical Classical composition with modernist abstraction and absence of ornament in the same way as Paul Cret’s Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, DC, of the same time. This attempted synthesis, the closest thing to an official style under fascism in Italy, was an international phenomenon embraced by societies of diverse political character, but it rarely produced buildings of the highest quality. (Author photo)

Mussolini clearly saw the propaganda value of both positions; he supported both traditional and Modernist architecture for state commissions, refusing to embrace either as an official style, something that both groups lobbied intensively for. The dictator preferred to play the two camps off against one another, and, in the end, the closest thing to an official fascist style was the attempt by Marcello Piacentini and his allies to synthesize both. This compromise failed, producing a “worst of both worlds” scenario: all the stiff formalism of academic Classical planning coupled with the cold abstraction of unornamented Modernism. The humanistic and innovative designs of traditionalists like Gustavo Giovannoni, Innocenzo Sabattini and Armando Brasini or the undeniably provocative modernist work of Giuseppe Terragni and Adalberto Libera stand in sharp contrast to those sterile hybrids.

While the positions of the stylistic debate may have been sharply drawn, there was no political divide among Italian architects of the period because all architects had to be fascist party members if they wished to work at all. Post-war critics like Bruno Zevi tried to paint the modernists as anti-fascist at heart and the traditionalists as genuinely committed to the regime, but this is simply false. A classicist like Brasini indiscriminately designed projects in the same style for the king of Italy, the Pope, Mussolini and the Soviets — a political diversity or naiveté that got him into serious trouble with Il Duce.

The most ardent supporter of the fascist cause among the architects was the modernist Terragni, who designed the fascist party headquarters in Como, where his brother was the mayor. He remained fiercely loyal to Mussolini until the end. As the modernist Edoardo Persico wrote after the war, the only thing that separated the modernists from the traditionalists was style.

Fascist Party Headquarters, Como, Italy, 1932-36, by Giuseppe Terragni. An icon of the Modern Movement in architecture, the building, in the mind of its designer, perfectly expressed the values of the political movement it represented. The attempt by later critics to deny the political content of such designs, while attributing fascist values only to traditional work, is contrary to the political realities of the time. Traditionalists and modernists alike sought official sanction for their work; the two groups were separated only by their different views on architectural style. (Author photo)

The American experience in the same period includes the Classicism of the Roosevelt era, exhibiting a spectrum ranging from the formality of the Federal Triangle in Washington to the Piacentini-like hybrid of WPA-Moderne to jazzy Art Deco. Indeed, the official architecture of the countries that defeated fascism was, for the most part, indistinguishable from that employed by the enemy. Nothing much has changed today, when international Modernism of the deconstructivist variety appears everywhere from Los Angeles to Paris to Beijing, rendering meaningless any claim that it represents a political program other than perhaps globalization.

Roger Lewis, in a Washington Post column on May 19, attacked Classical architecture from a different angle, writing that “Classicism in America was an 18th- and 19th-century European import, embraced here because Americans admired and emulated European culture and architecture.” Lewis asserts that the resulting “one size fits all” formulaic style was unable to respond to modern life and technologies, in contrast with diverse and adaptable Modernism.

Like the political argument, this one also shows an astonishing ignorance of history. Americans did not import European culture and architecture because, unless they were brought to these shores as slaves or were members of indigenous populations, they were Europeans who brought their culture with them, adapting it in response to the conditions and requirements of the New World. The actual import was Modernism, an entirely European invention that was first embraced in this country by corporate and institutional elites and imposed on a flourishing traditional architectural culture in the 1930s and 1940s. That imposition, often enforced by repressive means, continues today. And anyone with eyes in his or her head can see which style has become formulaic and which one continues to offer variety and visual interest, whether along the streets of Washington, DC, or elsewhere.

In the end, architecture cannot be judged by its supposed non-architectural messages alone. Of course, it does carry messages, and we cannot avoid making associations, including political ones, though these usually have little relationship to what we can actually see in the forms themselves.

When a Classical column is denounced as a symbol of imperial rule or importation from abroad or a glass curtain wall is seen as a metaphor for political transparency and freedom, we should be skeptical. We cannot detach the forms we see from our individual or collective memories, but we can be more critical about such superficial associations and the inevitable contradictions that flow from them. We must refrain from labeling any style as “fascist” or “democratic” or “American.” Doing so only sows confusion.

Architects should design buildings and cities the way they think they should be and stop justifying or criticizing design decisions by making historically indefensible political associations, whether from the right or the left.

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Triangle Tower, Paris. Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron’s 40-story, 590-ft. mixed-use tower was approved by the city council and praised by Mayor Bertrand Delanoë as “emblematic of Paris’s aura and dynamism.” Photo courtesy of Curbed.com

A decade ago, the last place anyone wanted to be was in a skyscraper. The whole world had watched the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New York, and it seemed that the romance of the tall building had been erased by the trauma of that event and fear of future terrorist attacks. Then, as these anxieties began to fade, proposals for new towers appeared, only to be slowed down by the global economic crisis.

The Santiago Calatrava-designed “Spire” on the Chicago lakefront was placed on what is likely permanent hold, and around the world completed towers, like the Burj-Kalifa in Dubai, stood empty. But this proved a temporary setback, as construction nears completion of Richard Rogers’s “Shard” in London (billed as the tallest building in Europe) and pressures mount to relax limitations of building height in historic cities that, unlike London, had retained their more modest vertical scale.

The 39-story Intesa San Paolo Headquarters Building, Torino, designed by Renzo Piano Workshop, precisely matches the height of the city’s landmark 548-ft.-tall Mole Antonelliana, completed in 1889, though the new tower is considerably less interesting visually. Piano said opponents were “afraid of the future” — and who can blame them? Photo courtesy of Modulo.net

Skyscrapers were banned from the center of Paris following the completion of the hideous Tour Montparnasse in the early 1960s, but now President Sarkozy and Mayor Delanoë are pushing for a new generation of towers — no longer restricted to skyscraper zoos like La Défense and Paris Rive Gauche, but now within the center itself, within view of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre.

Citizens in Paris; Washington,­­­­_­ DC, and now Rome are rising in protest to fight what seem to be the implacable forces of global real estate speculation and to preserve these historic cities from new construction that is not only unsustainable and unnecessary, but would permanently alter their architectural identity and character.

The arrogance of the pro-skyscraper lobby is typified by a remark by star architect Renzo Piano, when asked what he would say to critics of his 39-story glassy Intesa San Paolo tower in Torino, now under construction and set to alter permanently the skyline of that elegant classical city. Piano said simply, “They are afraid of the future.” So the future is synonymous with skyscrapers, the power of leading financial institutions and, without doubt, the whims of Renzo Piano.

Eurosky Tower, EUR, Rome. The tower, now nearing completion, rises near EUR south of the center. Planned in the 1930s for a world's fair in 1942 that never opened, the area has become the modern “business park” of Rome. The tower, planned together with an adjacent office building, includes 30 floors of apartments and is topped by two “floating” planes: one angled for photovoltaic cells and the other horizontal for a helicopter landing pad. Photo courtesy of archiwatch.wordpress.com

Not to be outdone by London or Paris, the mayor of Rome appointed a Commission on Skyscrapers this past fall. Members of the commission include architects Daniel Liebskind and Massimiliano Fuksas. Neither of these architects has realized a skyscraper of his own, so their purported expertise is entirely based on their status as “starchitects.” The commission was given the task of identifying sites for new tall buildings in Rome’s suburbs, recognizing that large swaths of the dreary Modernist fringe of Rome need to be rebuilt because structures are literally falling down. Its recommendation: tear down the failing 1970s high-rise buildings and replace them with new ones using the same urban planning ideas and building typologies that failed before, only now with a gloss of “sustainable” features and the stylish clichés of deconstructivist design.

But new towers in Rome did not wait for the findings of the commission. The 28-story Eurosky tower, designed by Franco Purini and Laura Thermes, is now nearing completion in EUR south of the center. The Eurosky is replete with what Stephen Mouzon calls “gizmo green” —  features that purport to reduce energy consumption and recycle waste, while ignoring the structure’s impact on public space, traffic and transportation systems, as well as the costs of future maintenance. The imminent completion of this structure must be particularly irritating to Piano, whose project of a few years ago for two towers nearby had to be reduced in height at the insistence of the mayor, back when his honor still thought Modernist towers were not the right solution for Rome.

The proponents of tall buildings typically point out that skyscrapers are justified because they will be more energy efficient than older buildings. These claims have been called into serious question by Michelle Addington, an architecture and engineering professor at Yale, who, examining the data gleaned from post-occupancy studies, finds that claims for reduced energy consumption and overall sustainability of recent skyscrapers are grossly overstated. The actual performance of buildings like Foster’s “Gherkin” in London has been far less impressive than the hype would have us believe.

A second claim made by skyscraper boosters — that they will relieve a housing shortage — is also false, because the primary occupants of the towers are denizens of corporate offices, guests at luxury hotels and very affluent apartment dwellers. The “Pyramide” tower in Paris, designed by Herzog and De Meuron, will house only corporate executives and well-financed business travelers and tourists. Indeed, the tremendous investment required to build and maintain the new generation of towers precludes any but the highest-income-producing occupancies. The idea that these new buildings will ease a housing shortage or rejuvenate urban centers is nonsense.

Opposition to the new towers is also rising. Citizen and international protest managed to prevent the construction of an obnoxious tower to house the Russian natural gas utility that was about to overwhelm the beauty of Saint Petersburg. UNESCO has declared that construction of new towers close to World Heritage Sites could provoke de-listing. This is now likely to be the fate of the historic waterfront of Liverpool, soon to be overshadowed by a row of high-rise towers just approved by the city fathers in the name of economic development and in disregard of UNESCO’s warning.

In Paris, the proposed new skyscrapers are vigorously opposed by citizens and international groups like SOS Paris, which are petitioning UNESCO to issue a similar warning: that the Banks of the Seine could well lose World Heritage Site status if construction of proposed towers proceeds. In Italy, a national campaign against skyscrapers is being led by Italia Nostra, the country’s leading preservation organization, but so far it has been no match for the real estate juggernaut. While these opponents have the proof of centuries of urban splendor in their favor, the pro-high-rise forces are formidable, now that governments everywhere are no longer interested in placing limits on the rapacious global marketplace but, rather, cashing in on it.

My colleague in the Notre Dame Rome Studies Program Ettore Maria Mazzola and Bologna-based traditional architect/planner Gabriele Tagliaventi like to point out the false economics of high-rise development ­– the latter describes skyscrapers as “the clearest symbol of the economic crisis and of the jungle capitalism that by now everyone agrees must be reformed” — but their opposition is primarily based on urbanism: Because skyscrapers represent intensive development on very small plots of land, they are dependent on external infrastructure to accommodate the thousands of people who enter and exit the buildings at rush hours, contributing to traffic congestion and pollution. They also pollute the landscape visually — dinosaurs in an architectural Jurassic Park, Tagliaventi calls them.

Both architects point out that the real future of our cities lies in transforming the suburban fringe into distinct “eco-quarters” — compact, sustainable and walkable neighborhoods well served by public transportation and capable of engendering loyalty, civic pride and community life. Such neighborhoods match the density of the skyscraper zones but with the advantage of genuinely sustainable construction and the creation of a humane and lovable urban environment.

So far, however, this appeal has fallen on deaf ears as the financial and political elite remain infatuated with the imagery of the new towers and the hoped-for returns on their investments. Whether those returns are realized remains to be seen, but the fate of our most valued historic centers hangs in the balance.

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The same debate we are having here in the U.S. about appropriate styles for new construction in historic settings is also raging across the Atlantic in Britain. While the terms of the debate are painfully familiar, the lines are drawn much more sharply there, and each of the main preservation organizations has taken a different position. In England, preservation organizations have a statutory responsibility for commenting on planning applications concerning “listed” buildings and can intervene to prevent demolitions or inappropriate alterations. (Listing is equivalent to being included in our National Register of Historic Places, although in the U.K. there are different grades with different criteria and requirements.)

New Hostry at Norwich Cathedral. Michael Hopkins Architects designed this modern insertion into the remaining medieval walls of the old hospitality wing of the ancient monastery adjacent to the cathedral. Surviving walls were retained, and the timber and glass structure is clearly "differentiated" from the historic fabric. Photo: Constructional Timber Manufacturers.

The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, or SPAB, was founded in 1877 by William Morris, and his Manifesto is still the foundation of the organization; new members are required to “sign” it. SPAB actively engages the planning process and is particularly interested in the early buildings of England, particularly cathedrals and churches.

Regarding new construction, it strongly supports the “differentiated” position, as the new facilities at Norwich Cathedral by Michael Hopkins demonstrate. There, a contrasting minimalist wood and glass structure was inserted into the footprint and wall fragments of a medieval wing of the monastic complex. The Prince of Wales, as many of you may have read, was drawn into the debate when he was asked to write a preface to a new book published by SPAB about proper care for old houses. The Prince wrote that often a new wing in the same style would be the most appropriate way to expand an old house and SPAB asked him to retract that statement, which he refused to do. SPAB then dropped his text entirely, and the Prince dropped SPAB from the organizations for which he is a patron. Architectural questions have high stakes in the U.K.

Bond Street, London. ADAM Architecture, George Saumarez Smith, principal. This new building in central London houses an art gallery and offices and features sculpture on the facade by Alexander Stoddart. The new Classical building received an award from The Georgian Group. Photo: ADAM Architecture

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Georgian Group is consulted on thousands of planning applications affecting buildings and gardens from the Georgian period, roughly 1700-1837. The group supports restoration and sensitive additions to historic properties and embraces new construction in the Georgian style. Its annual awards program recognizes excellence in preservation, as well as the design of new structures in Georgian style or additions that continue the style of the original buildings. In 2011, it gave the Giles Worsley Award for a new building in a Georgian context to 33 Bond Street in London by ADAM Architecture and partner George Saumarez Smith.

English Heritage (EH) combines the public role of our National Trust for Historic Preservation with a strong statutory role in determining what properties should be listed and then advocating for their conservation. EH takes a stand in the middle between the two previous groups and recently published its Conservation Principles: Policies and Guidance for the Sustainable Management of the Historic Environment, a document that tries to achieve stylistic neutrality while appealing for new construction in sympathy with the massing, scale, materials and character-defining elements of historic neighbors. In particular, the principles state:

New Building at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, by John Simpson & Partners. The new building encloses the courtyard and joins adjacent 20th-century buildings, both traditional (by Reginald Blomfield and Raymond Erith) and modern. Photo: Steven Semes

“New work should aspire to a quality of design and execution which may be valued both now and in the future. This neither implies nor precludes working in traditional or new ways, but should respect the significance of a place in its setting.”

This neutral stance recognizes that pluralism is the hallmark of contemporary architecture and that access to a broad range of possible approaches makes the most appropriate intervention more likely. Despite this broad-minded policy statement, local decisions about particular proposals continue to be contested on stylistic grounds. With three important national conservation organizations holding such divergent views, it’s not surprising that the official review process gets complicated.

Adding to this national oversight are the local authorities, each of which has its own conservation officers and review boards, and here the range of responses is broader still. Practitioners tell me that everything depends on where your project is located and who your conservation officer is. Some areas and staff are known for their support of new traditional architecture and town planning, while others, more akin to the SPAB, insist on “differentiated” contrasting interventions.

New Building at Selwyn College, Cambridge, by Porphyrios Associates. The new building features classical arcades and, on the opposite side, gothic-inspired windows. Photo: Steven Semes

Traveling around the country, one finds plenty of evidence of this variety of approaches. In London itself, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has approved projects designed by Stanhope Gate Architects (Alireza Sagharchi, principal) for stylistically conforming additions to listed structures. Buildings by ADAM Architecture and other traditionalist firms have made inroads in the city’s architectural culture, though practitioners still cite many hurdles not faced by Modernist proposals.

Outside of London, the town center of Bath is a treasure of Georgian architecture, and recent new construction in the city has run the gamut from meticulous reproduction of historic designs to attempts at modern classicism to oppositional modernism. Local authorities and preservation organizations tend to favor a middle-of-the-road approach, calling for new buildings traditional in massing and scale but modern in materials and detail – in other words, “differentiated. . .and compatible,” as our Secretary’s Standards put it – and are frankly nervous about proposed new work in unambiguously traditional style. They have some reason for caution. The largest new classical project in the historic center, the Southgate shopping mall, despite the best of intentions, manages to be both monotonous and disorienting – something the historic Georgian buildings of Bath never are.

While there is a lot of aggressively Modernist new building at Oxford and Cambridge universities, new traditional work has also been allowed, again depending on who is in charge of the review process at the time. Oxford’s Magdalen College was gracefully expanded by Porphyrios Associates, whose new buildings manage to incorporate elements of the college’s Gothic and Classical heritage. A decade after their completion, the new buildings seem as if they have always been there.

To the north, Lady Margaret Hall, with original buildings by Sir Herbert Blomfield that were later expanded by Raymond Erith, has a new structure by John Simpson & Partners. Simpson’s building shows as clearly as anything I have seen how new Classical work, restrained and yet inventive, can “grow” its setting without direct imitation and without loss of character.

At Cambridge’s Downing College, a new Classical library and academic building by Quinlan Terry sensitively bring a sense of completion to the original early 19th-century quad by William Wilkins. Across town, Porphyrios Associates has just completed a new building at Selwyn College that gives greater definition to the existing, somewhat haphazard, layout and offers a subtle play of Classical and Gothic sensibilities in massing and detail. Despite the valuable lesson offered by these projects, the current conservation regimes in both cities appear to be hardening the line against new traditional work, stubbornly insisting on an unwanted and inappropriate “architecture of our time.”

The battle of styles will undoubtedly continue without resolution far into the future. The advantage the English situation has over ours in the U.S., in my view, is well-articulated and actively defended official positions with established organizations to lead the debate. Would this not be a good model for American discussion of these issues?

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