Stoa Magazine: Volume 1 by stoa_magazine_nd

UNIVERSITY of NOTRE DAME SCHOOL of ARCHITECTURE

Volume 01

Student Magazine

Spring 2021

The Stoa Magazine team is especially grateful to the Notre Dame School of Architecture for its generous financial support of this inaugural issue’s publication. We would like to thank Dean Polyzoides and the rest of the administration for enabling us to distribute physical copies of Stoa Vol. I, and for the school’s continuous encouragement of Team Stoa’s mission to produce a provocative and elegant magazine.

UNIVERSITY of NOTRE DAME SCHOOL of ARCHITECTURE

Volume 01

Student Magazine

Spring 2021

Order From Chaos Editors’ Note

We have chosen “Order” as the theme and keyword of the inaugural issue of Stoa Magazine, Spring 2021.

Angelica Ketcham and Sam Zhuang Co-Founders and Executive Editors

A retrospective on the past year at the Notre Dame School of Architecture brings adjective after adjective to mind: surreal, and unsettling, even harrowing perhaps, but also triumphant, creative, and inspiring. An overcoming of odds. A rethinking of decades-old traditions. Ordinary, though? Organized? Ordered? No, we would not think at first of order.

May 2021

From the cancellation of the year-long third-year Rome study abroad program to the makeshift home studios in student basements—from the masked campus return to the six-foot distance between professors and students during desk crits— disruption of the established order was visible everywhere. In the midst of a seemingly chaotic environment, we saw people pining for stability to bring some sense of normalcy back to their lives. Instead of clinging to the rules and strategies of a program no longer compatible with the global situation, we saw professors, administrators, and most of all students resourcefully creating a new sense of order wherever they could. Beyond this reworking of the post-virus architectural world, though, the idea of order has many other relevant connotations, be they classical, organizational, societal, or personal. What does order mean to us? The huge graphite drawings depicting the classical orders that hang in the first-year graduate studio? The all-too-familiar takeout order to stay alive during a deadline? Chronological, social, and spatial order? The way we organize our desks in studio? The schedule we follow throughout the day? The sequence from analysis to precedent to design as we complete a project? In this inaugural issue of Stoa Magazine, we recognize the classical orders that were once established to create harmony, beauty, and strength. We draw links among sources to understand the polychromy of the Greek Doric and Ionic orders. We reflect on the special winter courses the university developed this semester that helped to establish a new routine iv

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for the students at home, one of which investigated how the racist policies in the US housing system have established an oppressive social order that still perpetuates. We observe the legacies of this order in the built environment around our campus. To understand order is to understand the relationship between various elements: The structural order of on-site brick building, and how each element intertwines with its neighbors; The hierarchical order of universe, nature, and humankind captured by the Sublime; The chronological order of the evolving uses of the term “Stoa.” We opened up conversations on ideas of marginal classicism and kindness in architecture that can bridge the gap between the classical orders and a more practical, universal design tradition. We explored the metamorphosis of orders over time, linking the past and future with overarching design and social values. Order, to us, has a myriad of contexts and implications from the personal to the global, with the power to arrange, orient, and unite. As campus vaccinations pick up, anxiety wanes, and the next year of Rome students tentatively plans to go abroad, we look forward to a rewriting of the old order with new values and priorities.

Stoa Magazine

Stoa—the student-led, student-designed, and student-edited magazine of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture— serves as a platform for showcasing student experiences, design research, and writing. By bringing the unique Notre Dame student perspective to broad architectural themes, Stoa acts as a catalyst for mindful exposition and theory for contributors and readers alike. Above all, the magazine cultivates a community for intellectual growth by connecting students, alumni, and faculty, as well as fostering a dialogue with the wider academic and architectural world.

Stoa Magazine

The Garden

Beyond the School of Architecture

The Garden is a place where the variety of the greater natural world is sampled and carefully arranged to be studied and enjoyed. In this section, we seek to welcome you into the magazine with a diverse selection of architecture related news in the broader Notre Dame community, academia, and various fields of practice. Les Ateliers

Studio and Class

The French word for an artist’s studio or workshop, l’atelier, is now a symbol of the respect to artisanship, the spirit of group production, and the pursuit of high-quality products in the modern design world. To convey the ambiance of the ateliers, we aim to not only present the thoughtful work produced in studios and classes, but also capture the nurturing, collaborative, and diligent dynamic in our studio spaces. Le Salon

Interview and Discussion

Le Salon is the place for a cup of tea and lively interaction with people: lectures, interviews, conversations, discussions, and panels with guests, alumni, peers, and neighbors. Meetings occur for the pure joy of sharing thoughts, and intellectual discussions encourage genuine curiosity. Le Poché

Refined, Structural Writing and Research

Poché in architectural plans and sections refers to the solid space between walls, that structural yet often invisible part that is crucial for understanding of architectural composition. Le Poché aims to unfold how the solid plans of the architectures and spaces are laid out through design research, continuous contemplation, and intensive studies. Il Bosco

Raw, Lively Expressions

The Italian word for the woods, the Bosco is often the most mysterious and wild part of the Italian villa typology. It is raw, it is often unrefined, but it is full of fresh air, excitement, and energy. Here, we encourage impulsive expression in response to various inspirations. It is where new ideas keep spurring out like green leaves in the spring.

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This issue of Stoa takes elements from the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, and composes them as visual highlights throughout the various sections. The original measured drawings come from Antiquities of Athens by James Stuart and Nicolas Revett. We hope these elements guide you through the writings and images in this magazine, just as they guide one through the theatre of life in the built environment. By digitizing the engravings and incorporating them into our visual design with a youthful twist, we wish to share with you our passion for artisanal quality and the infinite possibility of architectural details. Text by Xinyuan Sam Zhuang Digitized by Kalina Jasiak and Sharon Yehnert

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Contents The Garden A Class Undivided: Moving Towards Understanding Housing Inequality The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art Prospective Student Q&A Villa Mergè Restoration Competition Planting Change with Ecosia

2 4 6 12 16

Les Ateliers Design of an American Consulate in Hyderabad, India, Spring 2019 Third-Year Rome Studio, Fall 2019-Spring 2020 Sophomore Studio, Fall 2020 First-Year Graduate Studio, Fall 2020 Selected Student Theses, Spring 2020

20 32 40 46 52

Le Salon Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie Blending Past and Future with Luca Guerini Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor A Conversation with Alum Christopher Fagan The Architecture of Kindness with Nathaniel Walker

82 102 110 130 134

Le Poché Etymology of Stoa Living Tradition in the Pacific: a Student Research Proposal Selected Writing from Foundations and Theory Visualizing the Acropolis in Eleusis Selected Writing from History of Rome: From Antiquity to the Present Sublime Impossibility: Boullée’s Cenotaph Building Brick Culture in the American Plains

144 150 155 158 170 173 176

Il Bosco Sketching the University of Notre Dame Architectural Photography: to Look with the Architect’s Eye Architecture in Film “Coffee, please!”

182 194 210 218

Acknowledgments

220

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The Garden A Class Undivided: Moving Towards Understanding Housing Inequality The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art Prospective Student Q&A Villa Mergè Restoration Competition Planting Change with Ecosia

Stoa Magazine

A Class Undivided: A pressing need for social justice in housing has gained awareness over the past year, but acknowledgment is only the first step towards change. Professor Marianne Cusato took a combined approach with her winter session course— American Housing & Social Justice: The History of Housing Segregation & Future of Equitable Cities—with which she not only educated, but created a call to action. Her process informed students on the history, legacy, and future solutions for de jure segregation through readings, videos, lectures, and fantastic discussion in both a whole class and small group format.

Moving Towards Understanding Housing Inequality

This course was essential to my learning experience as an undergraduate and as a person. The topics covered in the course ranged from gentrification to discriminatory zoning and everything in between, revealing the scope of the massive injustices that have been committed against minority communities across the US. The pre-work included reading a book titled The Color of Law, which illustrated this point perfectly by pointing out an example of racial discrimination in San Francisco. The book stated that if a perceivably progressive place can be impacted by housing

Professor Cusato emphasized that she wanted those taking the course to be able to recognize and address the issues that are “hiding in plain sight,” and to be able to decipher the language that has been created to

by Travis Frame

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segregation, it can and did happen everywhere. This course put under-discussed topics into perspective by the other aspect of the pre-work, in which every student had to research how housing discrimination affected the area where they were from. Right from the start, everything we learned felt more close to home, literally, and helped us to realize the immense relevance of the topics being discussed.

dismiss the realities of housing inequality and the damage that it has done. Her hope was that the class would serve as an introduction to a subject that many are not as familiar with as they should be. Professor Cusato gave an outline showing how the past, present, and future would be discussed, because all of the parts of the history of the US housing system overlap. It is impossible, she said, to truly address the subject matter without covering these various time periods. She preferred the course to be “an inch deep but a mile wide,” with the hope that students would delve deeper into the subjects in order to educate themselves further.

addressed the faults in the “Broken Windows Theory,” and how it is far more important to focus on improving a sense of place than increasing police presence as a solution to crime rates. The class united business majors, architecture majors, science majors, and real estate minors in the common goal of learning how to address social concerns. It is likely that everyone had a slightly different experience with the course and will bring different aspects from it into their future learning and into their career. I talked with multiple people after the final presentations and got universally positive feedback about the class and how much it taught them about the world. Professor Cusato mentioned her love for teaching the course as well, jokingly saying this was the first course she remembered

“I enrolled in Professor Cusato's U.S. Housing and Social Justice Winter Course to explore the intersection between real estate, architecture, and social injustices with students from various majors, each bringing a unique perspective. This course provides students the opportunity to understand the evolution of housing segregation that contributes to our current housing crisis, which allowed me to also understand the systemic nature of housing segregation in history and in my own community. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Professor Cusato's lectures and her personal experiences with the subject matter, which complimented engaging conversations with the other students in the class that furthered my education about U.S. Housing and what needs to be done to move forward.” —Mollie Carr Class of 2022, Finance Major, Real Estate Minor

where she’d never seen anyone asleep. This was not just because the unique structure of the winter session enabled architecture majors in the class to actually get full nights of sleep, but also because everyone taking the course really did care. I have never taken a course where there has been as much constant participation in all forms, and it made the class a special experience.

The Garden

As a winter course, the class was quick and dense but never lost its appeal, and this worked with the call-to-action aspect of the subject matter. The readings and videos were as varied as they were interesting. They provided excellent examples of personal stories, while also including ones that exemplified specific details and statistics, collectively presenting the full picture of the impact of housing segregation. The outside-of-class work made a lasting impression and immediately contributed to the lectures and resulted in fruitful discussions. We talked about all types of issues that affect so many, such as redlining and white flight, in the context of a wide array of places. Portland and Chicago, for example, provided excellent examples of the horrors of housing dsicrimination on modern cities. One of my favorite readings, Palaces for People by Erik Klineberg,

The impact of housing segregation is immense and should be a top priority. This class shows that there are so many people from so many varied backgrounds that want to be a force for change, and the next step is action. I know that those who took this course didn’t take it just to learn what’s wrong, but also what they can do in their careers in architecture, business, and science to address social justice in housing.

“I thought U.S. Housing & Social Justice was an eye-opening and life-changing course. It efficiently brings subconscious segregation to the forefront of the mind while empowering us to make a change with solutions we learned and created in class. I would take this course again in a heartbeat, and I encourage everyone to educate themselves on housing injustice in America.” —Jacob Calpey Class of 2022, Science-Business, Real Estate Minor

“While we covered many serious and weighty topics, I really enjoyed US Housing and Social Justice with Professor Cusato. In just three weeks I was able to explore many of the inequities that Black Americans face and how these discriminatory practices actually hurt all Americans in the process, even those that racist policies intended to privilege. I hope that this elective shifts into a mandatory element of each Notre Dame students’ education. With this course under my belt, I hope to do my part to reverse housing inequities and begin to address the racist past of the country.” —Danny Kilrea Class of 2022, Finance Major, Real Estate Minor

Stoa Magazine

The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art A New Cultural Hub on the South Campus By Connor Tinson The University of Notre Dame has had an art collection since 1875, making it one of the oldest collections in the country. Its location has evolved over time: from the Main Building, to Bond Hall (which at the time was the University Library), to O’Shaughnessy, and finally into the Snite Museum of Art. It only makes sense that the collection, as it continues growing, will also continue to relocate. Currently, the Snite has about 30,000 works in its collection, but only three to five percent of the works are able to be shown at a time. With the donations of the Murphy and Raclin families, there is now a plan to start construction of a new building on the South side of campus. Until the second phase is completed, the museum will operate at both the Snite and Raclin Murphy locations. Currently, the Snite Museum is utilized by different courses, including the mandatory Moreau First Year Experience—which spends one of its weekly classes analyzing art in the building—and Professor David Lewis’ Alternative Modernity class. However, unless students have a particularly strong tie to or interest in art, they do not visit often. The location of the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art is significant due to its proximity to Eddy Street and the rest of South Bend, which will allow for more students, local

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school children, and the general public to visit the University’s art collection. Another aspect of the new location will be the evolution of the new fine arts district consisting of the Debartolo Performing Arts Center, the Walsh Family Hall of Architecture, the Raclin Murphy Museum, and a future arts building. A corner of the Sculpture Park, between the Walsh Family Hall of Architecture and Eddy Street, will be allotted to the museum. The New York firm Robert A. M. Stern Architects has been working with Michael Van Valkenburg—the sculpture park’s designer and one of the most well-known landscape architects in the United States—to incorporate the park into the design of the museum by connecting it to the parking lot with a sculptural walkway. The landscaping will be different from the Irish Green across the street, which is a more formal area with walkways intersecting through the grass. The Sculpture Park is naturally hilly, with wild grass and native trees among the sculptures. The placement of sculpture in the landscape will be continued all around the museum, better integrating the museum into the sculpture park. The new Raclin Murphy Museum will follow in the footsteps of Bond Hall and Walsh Family Hall by deviating from the dominant architectural styles

The Garden

of the campus and bringing in a more classical language. Architect Melissa DelVecchio of Robert A. M. Stern explained the new museum and its location as bringing new attention to the importance of the arts in a Notre Dame Education, “bringing a new sense of place for the arts as a district.” The main entry, set within an arched portico supported with large columns, takes inspiration from the main entrance space of the Hall of Casts at the architecture building, the Bowdoin College Art Museum, and the Morgan Library. In order to protect the light-sensitive art inside and maximize space for hanging, the building has few windows, which poses a unique design challenge. The main source of natural light comes from the central atrium space, where a large skylight floods sunlight into the center lobby, bringing relief from the gallery space and allowing for interconnectedness between all the galleries and floors.

Within the museum, there will also be a chapel as a space for quiet contemplation of the important religious art there, as well as the occasional mass. Another distinctive feature will be Ivan’s, a coffee shop named after the famous sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, who taught at Notre Dame. The café will sit right off the atrium with a view over the sculpture park and the lower-level galleries. The upcoming Raclin Murphy Art Museum will draw more students towards art galleries and will add to the Notre Dame mission of a well-rounded education. Classes across every school will be able to take advantage of the teaching galleries and an object study room, where professors can request different pieces for analysis with their classes. In addition, the School of Architecture will be able to use the large collection to teach students about specific lessons and topics more thoroughly. Left: Section Perspective Above: Front Elevation, Elevation Iterations

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Prospective Student

& Q A

Liana Secondino

A senior at New Rochelle High School in New York.

Chris Ebner

A fifth-year architecture student with a Furniture Design concentration.

Jake Gillespie

A 2020 alumnus of the School of Architecture who currently works at Via Chicago.

Douha Morchid

A fifth-year architecture student with an Architectural Practice and Enterprise concentration.

Sam Zhuang

A fifth-year architecture student with a supplementary major in Italian.

Liana Secondino, a prospective student at the School of Architecture, asked three current students and an alum about the school and their experiences in the program. *Due to the prolonged winter break as a result of Covid, the university offered a variety of courses so that students could fulfill credit requirements if desired.

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Prospective Student Q&A

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How does Notre Dame’s School of Architecture differ from other architectural programs? And, what are some of the most notable projects students engage in? (Or what aspects of studying architecture at Notre Dame appeal to you the most?)

Notre Dame emphasizes classical architecture, which distinguishes it from other architecture schools. You start out learning global classical architecture and later branch out into different design applications. For instance, I traveled to New Zealand for three months, documenting indigenous architecture and researching the influence of European colonization on the development of Maori construction. Two years later in India, my studio class and I worked with the Indian government on a $2 trillion development project on the east coast of Mumbai.

The design team, along with other Notre Dame International students and alumni, and members of the Mumbai Port Trust, on the final day in Mumbai.

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Prospective Student Q&A

Notre Dame’s architecture program is relatively counter-cultural compared to most architecture programs in the US, as it arguably places the largest emphasis on classical design out of any school I’ve heard of, as well as on traditional urbanism. After all, it’s the only architecture program in the country that offers a full year of study in Rome! ND also emphasizes freehand drawing and drafting, so students learn the basics before starting on computers during fourth year. Up through students’ third year, all projects are designed according to classical design principles, but after that students are allowed, and encouraged, to try different design approaches.

What is an average class day like? Are classes more project-oriented or lecture/ discussion-oriented?

Students have two or three lecture-style courses each semester in addition to their design studio course in subjects like history, building technology, and structures, whereas the design studio is hands-on. Studio meets every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 1:15-5:00 each semester, from your second through fifth years. You get your own desk in a large studio space next to every other architecture major in your class. Students design three or four projects per semester in their Second Year, then fewer as they get older, so that by Fifth Year there is just one project per semester.

While the architecture program at ND, like most architecture programs, centers around studio projects, there is plenty of room to customize your own experience. Beginning sophomore year, we have one six-credit studio class and between one and three additional mandatory architecture classes every semester. A bonus of studying architecture at a research university such as ND is that you have resources and opportunities to study subjects outside the architecture realm. As for architecture classes, most lower-level classes are lecture-based, while fourth and fifth-year electives are steeped in discussions and essay explorations. Many of my classmates have minors and concentrations in areas such as classics, math, real estate, sustainability, poverty studies, and theology. I have a second major in Italian Studies, so I have a lot of fun discussion and essay-based classes.

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Prospective Student Q&A

Does studying architecture include aspects such as housing discrimination and working closely with social injustices?

Architecture is super complex and there’s a huge learning curve to surpass before you can design anything practical, so the first three years are spent honing design skills. By Fourth Year, projects start to target issues larger than just the immediate design requirements themselves. I’ve seen projects about supportive housing for ex-convicts, urban design proposals to prepare communities for the threats posed by climate change, and some affordable housing projects. Second semester of Fourth Year is always a non-Western studio, where sites range from China to Native American reservations, to Morocco, to Peru, to Japan. Lots of studios in later years are site-specific, but the professor lets you pursue whatever type of project you want within that location. Students also do a thesis project during their final semester, the subject of which is completely theirs to decide.

During my fourth year, we did a Georgetown social housing project, and I am seeing a lot of effort currently being made to expand social justice learning in the school. For example, this past winter session* SoA offered a class with Professor Marianne Cusato to teach housing and social justice from both architecture design and real estate perspectives, which provided great exposure to systemic social problems in design. We are also having our first Design Charrette this January to address South Bend’s urban conditions. The New Urbanism studies, paired with Catholic social teaching, prepares you well for thinking about social justice issues and to prioritize tradition, user needs, and selflessness over personal authorship.

What are the internship opportunities or job opportunities offered?

Though the pandemic presents challenges to the job search, there have been many different opportunities offered to students regarding summer internships. Typically, most students work at architecture firms, but this year many sought other architecture-related fields, such as construction, real estate, historical preservation, and research. In an internship, students can engage in live projects, contribute to design teams, sit in on client meetings, and learn from co-workers, in addition to completing various other office tasks. These tasks include drawing up sketches in CAD or Revit, organizing sheet layouts for projects, or picking up redlines to get a project to the next stage of development.

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Prospective Student Q&A

The School of Architecture works with the Center of Career Development to prepare an annual career fair for architecture students only. This is an event where firms come on campus to meet the students and offer interviews for qualified candidates looking for internships or full-time jobs. The school prepares students for these events and assists with resumes and portfolios. Even if you’re a freshman, it is highly beneficial to attend this fair as you will be able to network for future years, if not land a summer position!

What are some of your best experiences as an architecture student at Notre Dame? Do you participate in a lot of outside classroom activities? Or do you minor in anything?

My favorite memories come from the shared experience of traveling around the world with some of my best friends. From New Zealand to Italy to India, my classmates and I have been able to visit and study so many incredible places, cultures, and lifestyles. The entire year in Rome was unforgettable and has been a highlight of my college experience. Walking around a city to soak in architectural lessons was an excellent way to learn and has been formative in the way Notre Dame architecture students view design problems.

The design team presenting the final masterplan proposal to the Mumbai Port Trust.

All studio-related travel is fantastic. There is a lot to learn from being on-site as it offers an immersive experience and allows a thorough understanding of the place. Travel opens one’s eyes not only to the architectural characteristics of a specific city but also its culture, lifestyle, and the diversity. Through Notre Dame, I had the chance to visit different regions of Italy, Paris, and Mumbai, as well as a couple of US cities. These studio trips can certainly be a whirlwind, but they are opportunities for growth and obtaining knowledge, and add enormous value to the experience of being an architecture student at ND.

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Villa Mergè Restoration Competition Rome Villa Competition 2019 By Jessica Most During the 2019 Spring semester in Rome, students from the current fifth-year class participated in the Concorso di idee per la Valorizzazione e il Restauro di Villa Mergè e del suo parco, a design competition held by the L’Associazione Dimore Storiche Italiane. The objective was to redesign the historically protected Villa Mergè, located in Frascati, Italy. Its surrounding grounds were to be transformed into a means of stimulating a profit for the site, which was supported by a supplementary economic plan, also to be designed by students. Under the advisory of the Rome Studio Staff, Ettore Mazzola, Selena Anders, Jonathan Weatherill, and Fr. Richard Bullene, Three teams of students from the university each produced three plates to illustrate their proposal to accommodate both profit stimulation and maintenance of a private residence for the existing

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family. The real-world application of concepts that are not usually prioritized in studio curriculum was challenging, such as feasibility, supportive business plans, client requests, and historical preservation criteria. Incorporating historical preservation into the design opened a new way of thinking about context, existing thematics, and funding of such a project, ultimately leading students to draw on all the information learned throughout their third year in Rome to produce a relevant project. In the country-wide competition, all the teams from the University of Notre Dame’s Architecture program were recognized for project realism, feasibility, and appropriate treatment of the site’s historical character. Combining a new design proposal with the need for site preservation was not easy and the need to approach the site with both originality and

Rome Villa Competition

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respect for what was already there was an interesting aspect, as recognized by participating students. Despite the competition’s unique requirements, the student’s classical design training and meticulous watercolor plates were well received and were noted for their respectful depictions of the future of Villa Mergè. At the end of the competition, the three teams of students from the University of Notre Dame Architecture program placed in the top five and received honors. First Place went to: Nicholas Oddo, Michael Parks, Esteban Salazar, and Philip Spence, with their design plan guiding the future plannings of Villa Mergè. Second Place went to: Mark Burger, Macartan Commers, Benedict Cook, and Peter Klein. And a fourth place standing (Honorable Mention) went to: Jessica Most, James Pescio, and Mary Rzepczynski.

Participants such as Mark Burger and Macartan Commers appreciated the change in pace a competition project brought to studio work:

“I enjoyed working on something that was not just a studio project but actually something real. I learned a lot about working in teams on architecture projects, and it truly took all of us to come up with the design that we did. In addition, it was a great experience to see what students from other schools would come up with and how everyone’s designs compared.”

Opposite: First-place project by Nick Oddo, Michael Parks, Esteban Salazar, Philip Spence

Mark Burger

“Although we really enjoy our studio projects, I think many will agree that they often lack the realistic characteristics of actual design practice. This competition showed that paying attention to the needs of a client and the sourcing of finance for a project are of utmost importance in the professional realm.” Macartan Commers

Stoa Magazine

Rome Villa Competition

The experience with Villa Mergè has also inspired students to pursue other architecture-related competitions:

“I have participated in the Harold E. Eisenberg Foundation (HEEF) Real Estate Challenge, which lets a team of students from various disciplines and universities compete for the best development proposal for a piece of land in the Chicagoland area. It focuses more on the financial feasibility and market analysis of a project, with site design as a more secondary component; the main architecture-specific component was master planning and building massing/programming.” Macartan Commers

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Below: Second-place project by Mark Burger, Macartan Commers, Ben Cook, Peter Klein

Rome Villa Competition

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Lastly, the participating students welcomed this chance to step outside of the usual studio cycle and want to support other students in pursuing design competitions and the like:

“I would definitely encourage other students to take part in a competition if given the opportunity. It was very exciting to have our project judged on a national level. In a typical studio project, many of our classmates have similar approaches to design, because we’re all taught using the same philosophies from the same professors, so it is fascinating to compare our work with the work to those taught in other schools.” Benedict Cook

Below: Fourth-place (Honorable Mention) project by Jessica Most, James Pescio, Mary Rzepczynski

To learn more: https://bandoadsi.ideatre60.it/ Stoa Magazine

Planting Change with Ecosia By Dave DeBacker Summertime in Malawi is the perfect environment for planting White Thorn trees. As they grow, they prevent erosion, remove carbon dioxide from the air, and protect the rivers that rural communities depend on for survival. Right now, trees like this are growing across formerly deforested hillsides and reclaiming desertified land around the world. This green rebirth is no accident; it is actually the result of my last research paper. And my room-mate’s psychology homework. And the countless other internet searches performed through Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees—so far more than 120 million—in biodiversity hotspots like Brazil, Ethiopia, Australia, and Indonesia. Ecosia is committed to a better world and a better internet. Like any search engine, Ecosia makes money from displaying ads alongside its normal results with 45 searches generating enough revenue to plant a tree. What separates Ecosia from other companies is not only its environmental impact but also its integrity. Ecosia dedicates every single cent of its surplus income to tree projects and green investments worldwide. Because it runs completely on renewables and plants trees, Ecosia is truly carbon negative. On average, every search can remove up to a kilogram of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These incredible claims are almost beyond belief; however, Ecosia has been a certified B Corporation since 2014, meaning it has a high degree of financial and social transparency as well as a verified positive impact on its employees, customers, community, and the environment. They do not sell user data, store searches, or use any external tracking tools—Ecosia is interested in trees, not your search history. The University of Notre Dame’s core curriculum exposes students to diverse ways of thinking and encourages different approaches to analyzing, understanding, and communicating with the world. Likewise, the School of Architecture promotes a holistic view of the field; classes covering traditional urbanism, conservation, and architectural history form the basis of a full and well-rounded grasp of architecture. This forward-thinking approach to educating future leaders and architects must be tied more

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closely to sustainability as a philosophy and lifestyle, rather than just a class. The minor in sustainability encourages architecture students to pursue a capstone project that enhances their theses, but it can also be used to explore areas not strictly encapsulated by the bounds of architecture and city planning. Architecture students pursuing the minor have the opportunity to research topics like food insecurity, regenerative forestry, and nature-based school curricula, broadening their studies with creative and multidisciplinary solutions. Now more than ever, young people are engaging in environmental advocacy, especially online. Unfortunately, the demanding life of a student makes it so we can’t all be full-time climate activists. Whether it’s studying for an architectural history exam or searching for precedents, making a difference in the world is readily accessible with Ecosia. Incorporating sustainability and eco-mindedness into students’ everyday lives helps them realize their potential for effecting change. Additionally, it upholds and perpetuates the ideals of the School of Architecture as well as the University at large. The Notre Dame community is known for making a difference. The state of our planet is the most pressing existential threat of our time; taking a simple and powerful stand against global warming sends a message to the world about who we are as a community and the power of bold action in the fight against climate change. As a School of Architecture, we can plant an incredible number of trees. It is time to be motivated not only by the threat of climate change but also by a duty to act against it. It's time for the Notre Dame community to make a greater environmental impact. A single tree in Malawi and 120 million more around the world is just the beginning. Together, with Ecosia, we can plant change one tree at a time.

Stoa Magazine

Les Ateliers Design of an American Consulate in Hyderabad, India, Spring 2019 Third-Year Rome Studio, Spring 2020 Sophomore Studio, Fall 2020 First-Year Graduate Studio, Fall 2020 Selected Student Theses, Spring 2020

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Design of an American Consulate in Hyderabad, India Spring 2019 This fourth-year design studio of nine students focused on designing a U.S. Consulate in a conservation-reservation district within the heart of Hyderabad, the capital and most populous city of the Indian state of Telangana. Hyderabad is the major urban center for all of south-central India. The project’s building houses various consulate programs, including consular offices, visa sections, citizen supports, and large spaces for interaction along with an exhibition space. The students were challenged to design using a new architectural language and building typology in an unfamiliar cultural setting. They were asked to use the experience gained from their prior academic year in Rome to understand the local architectural language of India and combine it with the fundamental principles of the classical language found in Western architecture. This studio project aimed to demonstrate the utmost sensitivity and respect to both the immediate physical context and the broader cultural context. This semester-long studio began in January of 2019 with a week of intensive comparative study between the architectural language of Indian and Western traditions and was followed by the design of an urban masterplan that the students developed together. Students collaborated with the US State Department’s Overseas Building Operations (OBO) throughout this project, which allowed them to understand prioritization and budgeting as an exercise in working with a client. Following the completion of the masterplan, the students were scheduled to visit the existing Hyderabad Consulate and the new consulate construction site during spring break. Unfortunately, due to inadequate funding, the trip did not happen. Despite the missed opportunity, under the supervision of Professor Krupali Krusche, with the help of Professor Jason Arnold, and in collaboration with the OBO, the design studio still completed the intended individual design projects that reflected their newfound grasp of classical language in an Indian context. Editor Chuxi Xiong

Group Aerial Perspective

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Group Master Plan

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BriAna Davison I was drawn to Professor Krupali’s studio because it was an opportunity to explore Indian architecture. This created a valuable juxtaposition after exclusively studying western classical architecture. I enjoyed the urban design phase of this project, in which our studio collaborated to redesign a new city center for Hyderabad following the urban-to-rural Transect Theory with a focus on better access to transit. Along the way, I learned about the local context, from mosques, to stepwells, to chowks. Although we could not travel, I felt that I had visited Hyderabad in person through the studio’s extensive research. For the individual design stage, we worked under supervision from the U.S. Department of State's Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) and Professor Jason Arnold to inform the design process of an American consulate. Our running joke

Diplomatic Elevation

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throughout this studio, "Oh, that's classified," came about from learning that much of the program for an American consulate includes classified information. As for my specific design, I put the emphasis on the elevations, as they were my big selling points. For the Diplomatic facade, my objective took influence from local precedents, such as the Mecca Masjid Mosque. Drawing from beautiful Mughal Indian architectural motifs, I incorporated jali screens, balconies, chhatris, and intricate arches. The simpler exterior of the Consular building represents the building's simpler interior function of quickly circulating visitors. This exterior elevation carries the same features of the Diplomatic elevation with refined ornamentation. I learned a new architectural language, with a distinct set of motifs. Rome taught us how to gather inspiration and use

local context to inform the design process, and that was implemented at the urban, plan, and detail scales. Through our various presentations, one of the objectives of this studio was to show OBO that American Consulates can adopt local vernacular characters and do not require modern architectural forms to be considered “American.” Our presentations to OBO’s architects provided traditional precedents for future government buildings. Professor Krupali has extensive knowledge of Indian architecture, so her guidance throughout this studio was crucial. I loved that she had us focus on the research phase, including creating an analytique comparing western and non-western architecture. Professor Krupali provided her expertise while also allowing each individual student’s design to shine.

Design of an American Consulate in Hyderabad, India

Les Ateliers

Site Plan

Consular Elevation

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MaryGrace Lewis I chose Professor Krupali’s India studio because I wanted to try something completely different. I wanted to have a greater understanding of how the School of Architecture’s traditional principles could be applied to other cultures, settings, and projects. Therefore, my favorite part of the studio project was the in-depth study and analysis of traditional Indian architecture that we all completed before any design work took place. We analyzed everything from arch construction to urban development in a short time period. My time in Rome laid a critical foundation for my approach to this project. For one, it gave us first-hand experience with using an American Consulate. This experience would become

Diplomatic Elevation

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critical for designing and simply understanding the complex nature of the layout of a Consular building. Rome was also critical in helping us understand how to create a highly-secure American Consulate within a dense urban context, primarily looking at palazzi as precedents. Throughout the semester, Professor Krusche held us to high standards. She cared deeply about this studio and would use personal stories of her experience in India as an additional means of teaching. Her care and excitement for this studio were what helped drive us. It was challenging, and I personally found myself very motivated by her approach. Some of the best things I learned from this project were not entirely specific to architecture

or design. I quickly learned how best to operate in a collaborative environment through the group project. For me, that meant understanding my own strengths and weaknesses, being honest about them with my group, and working together to delegate tasks in response to everyone’s unique abilities in order to work most efficiently. Another great skill I learned was how to work with a client. We worked with OBO weekly to understand what they were looking for, what would be reasonable on a federal budget, what their priorities were, and more. All in all, this studio helped me to understand what “traditional” means in a broader sense, and how unique traditional architecture is within each culture.

Design of an American Consulate in Hyderabad, India

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Third Floor Plan

Consular Elevation

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Victoria Cardozo I had the honor of being a part of Professor Krusche’s studio in the Spring of 2019. We explored the relationship between traditional Non-western and Western Architecture styles and applied what we learned to the design of a U.S. Consulate in Hyderabad, India. We spent the first half of the semester working as a group on a masterplan to account for the “embassy effect” which would bring further development to this new neighborhood. This project was the most challenging I had encountered for several reasons. First, the building program was immense, totaling to nearly 20,000 square meters. A

Diplomatic Elevation

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large part of the program was classified information and thus unavailable to us. Second, many of us struggled with the idea of putting a stylistically “American” building in a foreign country, which is typical of American embassies and consulates. Many of my classmates and I rejected this idea and designed buildings based on traditional Indian architectural precedents, specifically those in Hyderabad. Third, we were tasked with designing to comply with security restrictions set by the U.S. Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations. It was challenging to design for all of the restrictions in one semester’s time, but we worked tirelessly to observe as much as

we could. Lastly, working on a master plan with eight other passionate students was no easy task. However, after all of the charrettes, arguments, and compromises, we emerged with a master plan that we were all proud of. Despite all of these challenges, I learned so much working with Professor Krusche and my peers. We worked together to tackle the program and building organization, challenged ideas set forth by the OBO, spent hours learning about secure designs, and ultimately presented a cohesive and complete master plan.

Design of an American Consulate in Hyderabad, India

Les Ateliers

Site Plan

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Matthew Loumeau During the spring of my fourth year at the University of Notre Dame, I participated in a studio that proposed a new American Consulate in Hyderabad, India under the direction of Professor Krupali Krusche. While I was initially drawn to this studio because of an interest in traditional Indian building styles, it quickly became apparent that much of the studio would also be devoted to learning the intricacies and the various pitfalls of consulate design (including but not limited to developing a sequence of military check-points, designing within setbacks and terrain constraints to minimize the risk of terrorism, and also accounting

Consular Elevation

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for additional spaces deemed too “classified” to describe here in detail). This type of intense study would not have been possible had it not been for our regular consultation with representatives from the U.S. Department of Overseas Building Operations (OBO). It was an exciting challenge to balance the constraints of a student project with OBO’s very realistic expectations for security, sustainability, and design. What I most appreciated from our interactions with OBO, however, was the dialogue we were able to have during our

final reviews as we presented our individual consulate proposals. The OBO representatives had anticipated a more modern and recognizably American response to their design program, as presumably this sort of building could best represent the advancements of American technologies and values. When my classmates and I presented buildings that drew closely from local Indian precedents and building traditions, we argued that perhaps the distinctly American values our buildings should convey should be ones of respect for the culture and history of the places they inhabit.

Design of an American Consulate in Hyderabad, India

Les Ateliers

Site Plan

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Third-Year Rome Studio Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 The Rome Studies Program, founded in 1969 by former Chairman Frank Montana, requires all third-year architecture students to spend an academic year in Rome. This program allows students to study and explore traditional European urbanism and classical architecture. Students live a few blocks away from the Colosseum, in what they call “the Villa,” and take a variety of courses in the nearby Rome Global Gateway. Integral to the Rome Studies Program is the design studio, which serves to strengthen and apply the student’s understanding of the scale, design, and tradition of classical architecture, particularly in the historic setting of Rome. The fall semester studio, led by Professor Anders, Professor Weatherill, and Father Bullene, focused on an urban intervention in Piazza San Salvatore in Lauro. An urban space along Via dei Coronari and an ancient Roman road and pilgrimage route, the piazza is one of the areas affected by a demolition in 1939 that sought to reduce density in parts of the

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city. To improve the piazza, students first worked together in teams to analyze various sequences approaching the piazza and then created an urban intervention to replace an existing building. This team-generated design served as essential preparation for the individual project, in which each student used the typology of the palazzo to create a mixed-use building within the urban intervention they created with their groups. In the end, these interconnected projects helped students not only understand the urban layout and architectural styles of Rome, but it also taught them how to approach the task of introducing new development to a historic setting. The spring semester studio, led by Professor Weatherill, Father Bullene, and Professor Mazzola, centered on a villa and garden proposal for a museum of the historic cartography of Rome. The site sat on a plateau on the Celio Hill, overlooking the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill. For this project, students worked in groups to conduct a site analysis and then individually produced a graphical study of an existing villa and garden. This analytical

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work aided the development of a master plan for the site’s garden, in addition to the design of a villa intended to house various historic maps. These analytical and design projects helped students both understand and implement the popular typology of the Italian villa and garden.

In the spring of 2020, the School of Architecture was forced to suspend the Rome Studies Program for the first time in its fifty year history. At the end of February 2020 students were sent back to the United States, where they finished the semester remotely due to the increasing spread of COVID-19. While the sudden transition brought forth unexpected challenges, students were still able to achieve the School’s academic goals and present exceptional designs. Editor Naomi Hernandez

Left: Rome 2019-2020 Class Photo Above: Palentine, Natalie Pratt Right: Class Photo in Venice

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Bailey Jordan The curriculum in Rome taught me a lot about loosening up my drawing and rendering processes, even on final presentation drawings. Both the hand-drafting and watercolor courses required a certain level of expediency with drawing and painting, which greatly improved my ability to depict an image in a less formal manner. In terms of design projects conceived inside the city of Rome, I felt a great responsibility and intimidation. I became much more dependent on precedent at the historical, contextual, and typological levels and felt the need to commit solid research to what is and isn’t fitting for the areas. However, I did attempt to maintain some capacity of myself as a designer, implementing schemes and ideas I considered successful, even if they strayed from the norm of the city. The group projects in Rome were a really great taste of how cooperative the world of architectural design must be, but it wasn’t always easy. Pivoting from designing alone and on one’s own time and schedule to working collaboratively was a stark change that happened quickly. Groups worked well together in some moments, and clashed in others. It was difficult sometimes to meld different preferences of design, drafting, painting, layouts, and verbal presentations, as they varied drastically across my class. The group projects were crucial exercises in learning to combine many hands into a single, cohesive project.

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My favorite project in Rome was the mixed-used palazzo in Piazza San Salvatore in Lauro. I loved this project’s ability to articulate so many different scales and styles, and everyone in the class was able to make what they wanted. This project also gave us crucial experience in designing a multi-family housing project and involved an understanding of the palazzo typology. Professor Selena Anders gave our studio a tour around Rome to explore palazzi precedent buildings. She was so knowledgeable of every palazzo’s time period and usage. On this tour, I fell in love with the city, and understood why it is such an important experience for any student of architecture. The most challenging part about being in Rome is having to maintain the level of academic rigor expected of Notre Dame and the School of Architecture. This program isn’t a “freebie” year to explore Italy and Europe disguised as a year of college; it is just as rigorous as any other year in the School. However, the most amazing city in the world is right outside the studio windows, teasing you during deadline week. A word to the wise: Always order the house wine anywhere you go for a meal, no need to look at the list! My final suggestion for future students in Rome is to make the most of every day you can, because once you leave, you’ll always wish you could have just one more day.

Third-Year Rome Studio Les Ateliers

Left: Watercolor, Bailey Jordan Above: A Roman Palazzo, Bailey Jordan

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Luke Molinelli Studying in Rome truly revealed the effectiveness of Notre Dame’s curriculum, in which each class informs the other. The Architectural History and Graphics classes focused on the character, history, and circumstances of Rome’s buildings, and helped enlighten my decisions when designing for studio projects. I found sketching vignettes and perspectives particularly useful in my time abroad as it captures the experiential nature of a space, often more effectively than orthographic drawings. Sketching the existing surroundings of Rome gave me the skill and confidence to do the same in my studio work, and to present my design concepts more effectively. The defining project of my Rome experience was the villa and garden project, in which we developed a formal Italian garden with a museum of cartography on the grounds. The museum followed the villa typology, and the project involved visits to various gardens in and outside

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of Rome. Being in Professor Mazzola’s studio demanded a care and attention to detail which developed my skills in landscape architecture. Designing beautiful and pleasing landscapes was done through the organization of nature, and allowing natural elements like trees, shrubs and flowers to shape the space of the garden provided an opportunity for the application of lessons acquired in Rome. The villa portion of the design was done remotely due to the outbreak of the pandemic, but it presented an enjoyable challenge thanks to the strong foundation of the garden project. Continuing to design with my own garden in mind was rewarding. Even with the limitations of working at home with minimal drafting tools, I produced a villa I considered to be respectful and fitting for Rome. Studying and living in Rome showed me how advantageous traditional urban planning and vernacular architecture can be, both historically and presently. Our professors consistently highlighted

Third-Year Rome Studio Les Ateliers

Rome’s stability in its urban landscape and architectural vernacular—the city remained walkable and contained, and its mixed-use buildings created a consistent and practical urban fabric for its people. I took these observations into consideration as I sought to work harmoniously with my buildings’ surroundings to improve the existing urban conditions.

The day-to-day aspects of life in Rome became one of my favorite aspects of my time abroad: speaking Italian, running errands around the neighborhood, and rushing to get to different parts of the city for sketching and history classes. Leaving at the start of the pandemic was heartbreaking, and just one day to say goodbye to the city couldn’t possibly do the time I spent in Rome justice—it had become a home. Though I left it early and unexpectedly, it is comforting to know that when I return, Rome will stand as eternal as if I’d never left.

Above: Villa Garden Reception Perspective, Luke Molinelli Left: Villa Garden Site Perspective, Luke Molinelli

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Natalie Pratt In my studio projects completed in Rome, I attempted to create spaces with deep meaning and real beauty, inspiring the visitor to stop and contemplate. I would often go back and sketch on the location of our studio projects to capture the character of the site. Before Rome, I rarely used 3-dimensional sketches in my design process. However, the ease of going to site, imagining a design set among the structures, and setting these ideas onto paper quickly persuaded me of their value and made 3D concept sketches an integral part of the design process. My first individual design project in Rome was a palazzo set in the piazza along Via dei Coronari. There had been a design for the area in the 16th century to honor the relics in the church of San Salvatore in Lauro. However, one of the few elements fully-realized was the façade of the church depicting the Blessed Virgin seated on the House of Loreto. Palazzetto Loreto—my petite palazzo— dove into the symbolism once intended for the piazza, and was a wonderful adventure in the discovery of what makes Rome feel like Rome. Professor Anders was a wonderful fountain of knowledge, armed with a steady stream of reference books. On our walks through the city, she passed on her passion for the history and culture of Rome to all of us and let us explore anything which excited us. We quickly learned that designing should be fun and should make people open their eyes to a new world. Designing for a high purpose required that I give a full effort to create a work worthy to honor the heavenly Queen 38

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Mary, patroness of my school. Sketching and more sketching— this was an enormous part of my experience. We were required to sketch for all of our architecture courses, but there were still plenty of masterpieces still waiting to be captured. After hours spent studying the city in class, I would often go out after dinner with friends to sketch the city in the moonlight. I could probably count on two hands the number of places I went without my sketchbook; I wanted to capture the moments that I experienced. The trip to Rome was my first time in Europe, and I was so excited about the adventure of it all. How blessed am I to have called the Eternal City

home! I miss so much of our neighborhood there—the view of the Colosseum, Antica Roma and its espresso, the feel of the sanpietrini under my footsteps, the colorful madonella on our Villa, and other simple pleasures the city afforded us. I want to create places that make people wonder and dream about living passionately, in the same way Rome inspired me. So if you can go to Rome, go to Rome. Don’t waste a minute of it, and definitely do ride a Vespa.

Below: Aerial Perspective, Natalie Pratt Right: Analytique, Natalie Pratt

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Sophomore Studio Fall 2020

As part of the Notre Dame architecture curriculum, students complete a series of eight Design Studio courses. In the fall of their sophomore year, they begin this exploration into design. The Fall 2020 Sophomore studio was led by Professor Alessandro Pierattini and Professor Michael S. Mesko. This studio introduces students to the idea of the architectural language, focusing on the classical vocabulary of forms and its constructional, typological, aesthetic, and symbolic dimensions. The studio projects challenge students to apply their understanding of form and composition in designing a progression of incrementally more complex architectural programs, developing their skills in orthographic drawing, perspectival construction, and traditional rendering techniques. The first assignment, consisting of a series of sketchbook studies and a parallel of the canonical orders, served as a vehicle for introducing tectonic concepts to the students. It familiarized students with elements of the architectural language such as proportion and constructability. The second project gives students the opportunity to apply lessons from the previous assignment and combine them in a composed design program completed with watercolor rendering. Additionally, this project was students’ first opportunity to formally present their designs to a panel of guest critics. The studio concluded with a project to design a new Center for the Arts in South Bend, requiring resolution of a complex program in an existing, well-documented urban setting. This final assignment was a culmination of the skills learned during the semester, building upon the preceding projects and incorporating concepts like massing and harmony with the surrounding civic environment. The fall semester laid the groundwork for Architectural Design II, in which this exploration will continue with an introduction to strategies of urban design through increasingly complex buildings. Editor Dave DeBacker 40

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Sophomore Studio Les Ateliers

Solomon Duane Major: Architecture Minor: Musical Theatre Dorm: Dunne Professor: Mesko TA: William Marsh

It was a great semester. Despite the many challenges, Design Studio was definitely my favorite course. After I spent my freshman year refining artistic and rendering skills, I felt incredibly excited to finally dive into design. I gleaned so much from one of the first classes in which we analyzed the design process itself and watchedhumble ideas with simple partis slowly develop into complete and functional buildings. Given my special interests in other forms of artistic expression, I found learning how to design and create to be the most rewarding elements of the class. When I'm writing a musical theatre production or developing the plot structure for a film, I can translate the basic ideas of the architecture design process into my other interests. I'm definitely still struggling to nail down some of the classical architecture vocabulary, but after every pin-up I grow with confidence in handling the jargon. I've enjoyed getting to experiment with the orders, because just seeing them as a freshman in Architectural Writings is a whole lot different from incorporating them into a building. In our first building design project, a small arts center, I remember feeling overwhelmed as I tried figuring out how the orders would apply outside and within the building. Throughout the process, Professor Mesko was an outstanding resource. He assisted me through my design problems and provided excellent examples of precedent so I could see real-world applications of my design goals.

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Sophomore Studio

Madeline Hartman Major: Architecture Dorm: Ryan Hall Professor: Pierattini TA: James Lengen

This semester was very different from other studio classes I’ve taken, because I spent so much more time reworking a design before completing the final draft. I learned to not stay attached to my first vision of a room or building if it wasn’t panning out, and that I would waste less time if I let it go and start over—you can’t keep trying to force a design that just doesn’t work. Hopefully, next semester I will be better at studying precedent early on in my design process instead of starting from scratch with my own design and then trying to find precedent to justify it. I really enjoyed the assignments in studio. It’s a tough call, but I think the aedicule project might have been my favorite because it was just so exciting to be doing our first real design project and I learned so much so fast. I felt like I was very lucky in my first review. The jury was generally nice and complimentary, and they had really construstructive feedback on what could have improved my design. I did not realize how terrible the two-week COVID closure was for my experience of the class until I came back to studio and saw how wonderful and important it was to connect with the other people around me and receive inspiration and support from my classmates.

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Sophomore Studio

Major: Architecture Minor: Italian Dorm: McGlinn Hall Professor: Mesko TA: William Marsh

My favorite part of this course was the many resources that we had. While books and online materials were great resources for inspiration and basic protocol for projects, the most valuable advice always came from the community within the classroom. The main difference between previous studio classes and Design Studio was the time obligation. I spent more time in studio this past semester than I ever expected to. One thing that I learned about the design process in architecture is that it is heavily reliant on precedent; it is important to understand what worked in previous designs that could be applicable to your own. Of the three projects, my favorite was the aedicule because it was our first real design opportunity.

I found that I was able to put my best time and energy into this project since I was not yet burnt out by a very demanding semester. The biggest challenge I faced in studio this semester was the semester itself. Finding time for school, friends, and myself was very difficult. One aspect of studio that I hope will improve when the university goes back to normal is the work/life balance. It was all too easy to experience mental exhaustion this semester. I found that it was harder to remove myself from the stress of school when many of the things I used to turn to for relief weren’t as accessible anymore. Next semester, I will make an honest effort to manage my time better so that I do not face the same fatigue I experienced in the past.

Les Ateliers

Anselma Panic

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Sophomore Studio

Ben McCabe Major: Architecture Dorm: Duncan Professor: Mesko TA: William Marsh My favorite part of the class was how we learned the design process through incremental reviews. Throughout pinups and critiques, my biggest takeaway was utilizing precedent as a tool to translate the ideas from my head into a design. My instructors were incredibly helpful and constantly pushed me to tweak my designs to make them even better. Though we didn’t have casual desk critiques, the pinup system allowed a bit more privacy where my TA and professor could give more personal and in-depth responses to my questions. This feedback process was especially helpful in my favorite project, the art center. One of my biggest challenges with this project was trying to make a complete and coherent building for the first time. Going forward, I want to work on my designs more holistically, rather than on one view at a time. This way, I hope to not have to go back and make countless changes to my project. Throughout the semester, COVID was a constant source of worry. At the beginning of the school year, when the university was topping 70-100 cases per day, it was stressful, but I am thankful that we weren’t sent home. The two-week period when we had to draft from our residence halls was especially difficult. Staying on track became strenuous after hours of constructing volutes and fluting columns in my dorm room rather than in studio.

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Sophomore Studio Les Ateliers

Caroline Larocca Major: Architecture Minor: Sustainability Dorm: Welsh Family Hall Professor: Pierattini TA: Tyler Milam This semester was definitely an adjustment not only because of COVID complications, but also because it was our first exposure to the design process. I found that generally when designing, I got out what I put in; seeking out additional advice from instructors and peers, researching further precedents, problem-solving through trial and error, and going that extra mile are really what made a project successful. As a perfectionist, I found it hard to leave studio and not obsess over every detail. However, as we progressed through more projects, this part of the process became a little less overwhelming. I learned to manage my time more efficiently and became more familiar and comfortable with architectural terms and concepts and the overall design process. I also learned a lot from our reviews. Although it was difficult to receive criticism, it was so helpful to know what to change, avoid, or continue in the future. The studio environment (despite COVID restrictions) also provided me with unique learning experiences. It was so interesting that while we all had the same instructions, there was so much variability in the results. Walking around the studio to see others’ approaches, solutions to similar problems, and unique styles really helped me gain different perspectives on my own projects. Looking to the next semester, I am very excited to continue to refine my design process and explore new methods. I was consistently impressed by our class’s resiliency and amazing creations, so I can’t wait to see what we do next!

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First-Year Graduate Studio Fall 2020

Elements and Principles of Classical Architecture, the first studio design course for path A and B graduate students, is taught by Professor Duncan Stroik during the Fall Semester. It is a fast-paced course designed to instruct students in the tenets of classical architecture. Traversing through a systematic study of the three classical orders: the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian, the students begin by drawing each order according to Palladio at full scale with a one-foot diameter, then apply that order in a design project. All renderings are done by hand, fitting for a course exploring the historical edifices and treatises of the Western architectural tradition. The first project of the semester was to draw the Doric order in Charcoal, after which the students designed a Doric façade for a theater in downtown South Bend. After drafting the Ionic order, the students applied the Ionic order to the design of a concert hall lobby with a grand stair. As the goal of these design projects was to comprehend the order as documented and used historically, clarity and simplicity of design were emphasized along with inventiveness. After drafting the third and final order of the semester, the Corinthian, the students commenced the major design project of the semester, a new

Symphony Hall for Chicago. The Symphony Hall would employ all three of the orders to comprise a final synthesis project. Since the project was to combine classic Concert Hall tradition with Chicago’s architectural heritage, the class started with the study of architectural precedent, looking at Concert Halls such as the Vienna Musikverein, the Paris Opera House, and the Boston Symphony Hall. Special attention was given to acoustic design, internal layout, relation to the urban environs, and the use of the classical language. Next came a one-day esquisse. The students had 16 hours to design and draft an elevation, plan, section, and site plan for a 2-3 story Symphony Hall to seat 1500, replete with requisite dressing rooms, lobbies, offices, rehearsal spaces, circulation, and ingress/egress on a site in a residential neighborhood. Esquisse designs were fleshed out, refined, examined in perspective, and finally presented in watercolor renderings. A rigorous welcome to the Notre Dame brand of architectural education, the first semester graduate studio is a grammar course in architectural language, intended to help students further their goal of understanding the logic and rhetoric of architectural design. From this demanding course, students will reap the rewards in subsequent design work: a firm foundation in classical traditions for future architectural design work. Editor Anne Northrop

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First-Year Graduate Studio Fall 2020

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Symphony Hall for Chicago, Margaret Jones

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Margaret Jones Path B, M.Arch 2022

My undergrad program at Benedictine College was really similar to that of Notre Dame’s in that it didn’t rely on the use of computers, but instead started with the basics of hand drafting and watercolor rendering. When starting at Notre Dame, I was coming from an undergrad program in which I was used to having very long deadlines; however, the introductory graduate studio had very quick weekly deadlines. It was like a studio boot camp. Because I’m someone who struggles between getting lost in the details and needing to try all the possible options, the speed at which the studio moved forced me to get an idea down, stick with it, and make the necessary changes along the way. Professor Stroik didn’t hold our hands or spoon-feed us. While he was always available to respond to any questions, I very quickly learned that he was never going to just give me a solution. Instead, he would turn it on us and ask, “Well, what do you think?” This encouraged me to work through things on my own. I can honestly say that he made me work harder than any of the professors I’ve had in the past, and I am a better designer because of it. Duncan was very adamant about precedent. When starting the final project, we did a lot of research on the best symphony halls in the world and why they were the best. We analyzed their room proportions, their circulation, things like that. I studied the Leipzig Concert Hall, which was in Berlin. While it is no longer standing, there are a lot of historical documents of it that I was able to study. It had a very simple layout, which I found appropriate to employ on our small Chicago site, to keep my design in accordance with the urban scale. I also used McKim, Mead, and White’s Boston Symphony Hall, which is very well known for its acoustics.

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We looked at trends in acoustics today, which consist of a lot of fancy panels suspended from different areas and often get pretty complicated. However, when looking at the historical precedents that worked well acoustically, we found that it usually comes down to room proportion. The proportion that worked the best was a double-cube, shoebox-shaped hall. These studies gave us a good footprint of where to start our symphony hall size and shape. We were very fortunate to get to do our final presentations in-person in the lecture hall auditorium while still being safely spread out under COVID-19 regulations. This was great because the critics were able to see both the final drawings and their development at each stage in the project, from the beginning esquisse down to the final perspectives and bay detail construction drawings. It was nice being able to present everything at once so that the reviewers were able to look at the final product and reference the developmental drawings and precedent at the same time. It made for really meaningful discussions and critiques. I learned that classical architecture has more complexities than I gave it credit for. For example, on a Corinthian project, for ease of drawing, I drew simple flat leaves on the capital instead of very ornamented Palladio-style leaves. I thought no one would notice, but Duncan quickly asked why I did that and then explained what that slight change would mean on a building. I saw that with classical architecture everything has a meaning and a purpose. There are no arbitrary decisions; you really do need to think through it all.

First-Year Graduate Studio Fall 2020

Les Ateliers

Front Elevation, Side Elevation

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Daniel Glasgow Path B, M.Arch 2022

I have a four-year undergraduate degree in architecture from the Catholic University of America. A classical program began at Catholic University while I was there. I loved it, so I thought whatever I do moving forward I have to do classical architecture. I worked for 2 years for a small residential firm in New York called Pop Architecture, but I knew I wanted to go back to school. Notre Dame was always my first choice for a master’s program. Something that I appreciated from Duncan’s studio was him giving us primary sources for architecture, which I hadn’t really encountered because I spent most of my undergraduate doing modernism. There wasn’t really this emphasis on architectural writing. You may look at an interesting modernist journal for some images and inspiration, but systematically studying something in writing and hearing someone articulate their philosophy is a new experience. It was very interesting to be able to study architecture through written treatises that give a very clear explanation of the principles. The first thing that Duncan did, which I really respected, was to draw the orders. We drew them all full scale. It was interesting to draw something full scale, because you can’t really cheat. You have to understand exactly what you are doing; you have to know all of the profiles and proportions. We were working off of Palladio, getting all the proportions

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and profiles from him. The finished drawings were about ten feet tall. It was very rewarding to finish. You feel like you can really understand the order. There is no interpolation where you say, “If you scale this up, how does that affect the experience?” Duncan made us do everything by hand. It changes the way you think. When you are drawing in a computer, you are drawing in this elusive model space, but when you are drawing by hand, you are already in a scale. My understanding of scale really improved this last semester because when you are working by hand, the end goal is very clear. I am really only working at a schematic design level right now. At the end I aim to produce an 1/8” scale drawing, so I know my goal is to achieve something that is resolved at this level of detail. If you are designing with that in mind the entire time, I think your efforts become much more focused. You don’t get distracted with unnecessary details, but rather work the whole drawing up together to the same level of resolution, which is really the goal of the schematic design. My later designs in classical studios and in Duncan Stroik’s studio are sort of unforgiving. You can’t make mistakes or have unresolved geometries and expect to be able to get away with it. The thing that really stands out with Duncan Stroik’s studio is that everything had to be good, everything had to be resolved, and everything had to make sense in its context, in its proportions, and in its scale.

First-Year Graduate Studio Fall 2020

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Selected Student Theses Caroline Colella The Immigration Station: Designing for Dignity at the U.S./Mexico Border Julian Murphy National World War II Museum Madeline Seago (née Fariman) “A Room of One’s Own” - Manhattan Home for Professional Women Moataz M. Bashir The New Great Library of Alexandria Darius Zacharakis Kim Dae-jung International Boarding School Metaya Argaw Tilahun A New Urban Quarter and an Architecture Academy in Gandor, Ethiopia

Editor Joan Ngai

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by Caroline Colella Located on a strip of the United States/Mexico Border in El Paso this thesis project is a proposal for the design of a twenty-first century Immigration Station. The unique program of the Station was developed through study of the only existing precedents for such a building type: Ellis and Angel Islands. The Station Complex comprises an Immigration Processing Center (Station Main Building) and an accompanying immigrant services campus intended to serve asylum seekers, migrants, and the greater El Paso community. In designing for these people, the proposal for the Immigration Station became a study on human-centered design with an emphasis on sequence and procession through space. The station design employs traditional design strategies. Additionally, the Station draws on classical and traditional aesthetic precedent from the unique heritage of civic architecture in the United States, Texas specifically, and that of Latin American civic and vernacular architectural traditions. I began thinking about my thesis project when I was a first year, and because I love my hometown so much, I always imagined I would complete a thesis that would’ve made Portsmouth, New Hampshire an even better place to live. Everything changed when I was interning in New York City and one Saturday morning, a friend invited me to visit Ellis Island. I was blown away by the grandeur of not only the building but also the welcome it represented as America’s gateway—thinking of my

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The Immigration Station: Designing for Dignity at the U.S./Mexico Border

own grandfather telling me stories of riding in a ship to dock in NYC. America’s rich and complex history of immigration during that period has always fascinated me, and even still today immigrants coming to America face insurmountable challenges on their journey. Gazing at Ellis Island, it made me think—what if we had a building like this today? Is it possible to use architecture to change the way we view and speak about immigration and serve as a call to a more holistic and compassionate bureaucracy? More importantly, could architecture be a key in changing the experience of immigration today for migrants fleeing to our nation? And ultimately, because a thesis is an idea and not a building, what role can architecture play in the promotion of human dignity? I believe architecture must be considered a catalyst for social change and a call for a better world. As Professor Mellor told me, “Caroline, you have to pick something that is going to get you out of bed and into studio every morning, even in February.” That is the same advice I would give to other students embarking on their thesis journey. You must believe that architecture can make a difference, so find out what difference you are going to make and, because you will never get an opportunity quite like this, use your thesis to fight for it! While every semester traditionally began in the Architecture Library, my thesis year began in Hesburgh Library. I spent the majority of the first

Welcome Facade

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Caroline Colella

semester researching the history of American Immigration and the current immigration crisis at our southern border because my thesis was about so much more than just architecture. Curious about the different implications of Catholic Social Teaching, I completed an in-depth study on the Theology of Migration, the principles from which would become the central driving force for my design. As a 21st century immigration station simply does not exist, coming up with a program to suit unique needs of migrants today was quite the challenge, but my early research made the discernment of a thoughtful program for my design proposal possible, as well as travel in support of my thesis. The Fagan Memorial Grant from the School of Architecture provided me the opportunity to document the site in El Paso, Texas. It was a surreal experience driving along our southern border, visiting migrant shelters, talking with community members, local priests, and immigrants willing to talk to me, grounded me making the project so much more real. El Paso was vibrant, the dessert colors were vivid, and the people who spoke in both English and Spanish were so joyful in their stories, as if all this hardship that surrounded them made them more joyful—I returned filled with hope and ready to work! A grant from the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture and the Provost’s office allowed me to travel to Chiapas, the most southern state of Mexico that borders Guatemala to complete field research in

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support of my thesis. My experience there allowed me to learn about the immigrant condition in Mexico and hear stories of successful and unsuccessful migrant aid from community health workers and even people who had family in the U.S. or had tried to immigrate themselves. This was my absolute favorite part of the project—getting to talk to people and hear their stories. One of the biggest challenges in immigration today is that migrants are coming by land and not water. The plateau, or the “island” as I like to call it, where the proposed Station is located, serves as a sort of safe haven sandwiched between two mountains in the middle of the desert. While you can see the city of El Paso beyond, gleaming of hope and civilization, the location offers a moment of rest and relief. In studying processional urban sequences of Latin America and ancient Egypt, I was able to apply that strategy through creating a terrace of places to wait. There is dignity in beautiful architecture that is worthy of the tremendous experience of immigrating to a new land, starting a new life, and experiencing space to,from, and on one’s journey. . Because I argue that the design proposal is one of the experiences for the immigrant, they must feel they have their space through the station: places for going, places for waiting, places for anticipation, and places for soaking it all in. It was important to me to tell the narrative of the sequence I had created in my design graphically through the site plan. It was also important that I combine and celebrate old and new identities both present in this instance of extreme transition. Taking cues from the Beaux

The TheImmigration ImmigrationStation: Station:Designing Designingfor forDignity Dignityat atthe theU.S./Mexico U.S./MexicoBorder Border

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Perspectives

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Caroline Colella

Arts, American civic tradition, and Latin vernacular, I was able to create a synthesis of ideas that felt monumental. As for developing the project, I loved working alongside my classmates the first three months of the semester when we were still at school. I was so inspired by all the different projects that were happening around me and the passion that was so tangible in our thesis studio. It was a great reminder that although everyone was on their own journey, I was not alone in my pursuit; we were trekking together. Even after the closure of school due to COVID-19, we would still have a group meeting on Zoom to start out each studio session. However, without the support of my thesis advisor via Zoom and my parents, none of it would have been possible.Working with Professor Nohelty was an incredible experience. I could not have asked for a more dedicated and motivated partner on the thesis journey. I am grateful for him pushing me to reach my potential, for somehow helping me center on what was important on any given day, and for supporting our studio through a global pandemic. It was my project, but it was truly collaborative; he was so smart, knowledgeable, compassionate, and encouraging from the first day to the last. He teaches by asking questions, therefore making each of his thesis students (and their projects) more thoughtful and curious in the process. Looking back, thesis had become such a huge part of my life that the end of it felt like losing a friend.

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I had always looked up to older students in our program in awe of all they were able to accomplish. It’s weird to think that our class’ turn has already come and gone. In the end, my final design proposal was a representation of all I had learned throughout architecture school—design sensibility, structure, building technology, sociology—but it was also the culmination of my Notre Dame undergraduate education as whole. I used the research skills I learned in writing and history courses, drew upon my experiences of service and leadership, and even used ideas of psychology from my Business classes to sell my project better. My thesis year was further propelled by hallway and office hour conversations, with SoA’s Greatest Hits that proved an invaluable companion to the studio journey. To all my professors who helped me along the way, thank you, thank you, thank you! I could not be more grateful to have ended my time in the School of Architecture in such a manner. There is beauty in dignity. There is beauty in tradition. And there is beauty in architectural accessibility. The human rights crisis at our southern border is where I chose to design this time, but the ideas I explored of identity, symbolism, and monumentality can be examined in any context. The thesis itself is the idea that architecture and dignity are intrinsically connected; one promotes the other. At the end of the day, the best and most difficult client any of us will ever have is the common good— so we might as well start working for it now!

The Immigration Station: Designing for Dignity at the U.S./Mexico Border

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National World War II Museum by Julian Murphy

Living in D.C. at the time, I was aware of the design competition for the National WWI Memorial at Pershing Park as it was going on. I was disheartened when the winning proposal was announced because I thought it fell far short of the site’s immense potential. At the same time, I had long been intrigued by the memorials of WWI, especially those produced by British architects in the immediate aftermath of the war. The combination of an important civic site with which I was closely familiar, a proposal that I perceived as having fallen short of its aims, and a theme that fascinated me seemed like a perfect opportunity to explore how one might begin to revivify great civic art and architecture in America. I think that for many people, the thesis as a broad, philosophical proposition undergirds their design process even before they do a “thesis project.” This was certainly true for me, but I also think the thesis statement and the design process are mutually reinforcing frameworks—the thesis statement is the origin of the design, but the design process helps you to extract and clarify whatever you’re trying to verbally express. So, although I wouldn’t say my thesis statement fundamentally changed through the course of the semester, the process of putting pencil to trace paper helped me to stake out a more precise philosophical position. As for precedent study, I spent some time in Europe during the summer before thesis examining the

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memorial architecture of WWI along the Western Front, much of which is criminally understudied in proportion to its merits. The last great outpouring of memorial architecture in the Classical tradition was produced in the wake of the war, and I was inspired by how the architects of these memorials adapted and reinterpreted Classical forms to befit the scale of the tragedy they memorialized. I was also trying to situate my building within the architectural condition of Washington, D.C., and in that regard, analyzing the work of Paul Cret was particularly useful. He is perhaps most well-known for some of his civic buildings in D.C., but he was also the architect of WWI memorials in both Europe and the US. Looking closely at those two modes of output by a single architect helped me to synthesize in a single building the totemic nature of the war memorial and the civic character of D.C. I had been developing my design and presentation by hand for the first half of the semester, but when I learned that we wouldn’t be returning to campus after spring break, I decided to produce my final drawings digitally. I was worried about access to paper, light tables, and scanners, and I also thought that digitally-produced graphics might have more visual clarity in a virtual presentation. I did most of my renderings in Photoshop, striving to reproduce the transparency and brilliance of watercolor. It was an odd semester, but I think the students and professors alike did an impressive job working nimbly and dealing with a unique set of challenges.

National World War II Museum

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Julian Murphy

View from 14th Street NW

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National World War II Museum

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Julian Murphy

View of Great Hall

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National World War II Museum

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“A Room of One’s Own” - Manhattan Home for Professional Women by Madeline Seago (née Fariman)

In the early twentieth century, thousands of women, including Sylvia Plath and Grace Kelly, were able to carve their niche in New York City while living in low-cost women’s boardinghouses. These storied institutions provided a modest “room of one’s own,” but also afforded residents the dignity and pride of living in a beautiful, classic New York apartment building. With a meticulously detailed exterior, a private garden, and sweeping roof terrace views, the Webster Apartments of West 34th Street is one of the last and best remaining examples of the boardinghouse type, but has an extensive waiting list despite its cramped rooms and few common spaces. This project proposes a new Webster, near the current building, but designed for the next era of women looking to find their place in the city. The project implements masonry construction, transom windows throughout, terrace gardens, and a temperature-moderating courtyard to create a sustainable building. The new Webster fills a gap on Ninth Avenue, contributing positively to the urban character of Hell’s Kitchen and bringing the women’s boardinghouse type into the present, and beyond. Madeline Fairman ’20 was awarded the 2020 President’s Medal from the Royal Institute for British Architects for her Spring 2020 thesis project, “The Webster Apartments - Manhattan’s Home for Professional Women.” This is the first time a Notre Dame student has been honored with this prestigious medal. Fairman also received a 2020 Stanford White Award from the ICAA in the category of Student Projects for the project, which was subsequently featured in Architectural Digest Pro. About a week before the thesis proposal packet was due, I had a long talk with my classmate (now husband) Andrew about switching my thesis to a new focus. I knew I wanted to further study the architecture of New York City after a summer of interning there with Ferguson and Shamamian Architects and Historical Concepts, and in the city I had stayed at the Webster Apartments, a nonprofit boarding house for women. Andrew suggested that I design a counterproposal to the Webster, which is currently looking to move out of a 1920s building. So, in my experience, the best advice for deciding on a thesis topic is to talk your ideas over with others

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until you can narrow them to a single subject. Then, define a manageable project by taking the one idea that you are truly passionate about all the way to its conclusion. My fifth year I was an RA in Pangborn Hall, which gave me a new appreciation for living in a community of women and new insight into how a community forms in a dormitory setting. The Webster offers a few social spaces, but they are undersized, outdated, and inconvenient. For instance, all 300 girls shared 6 tiny ‘beau parlors’ on the ground floor for receiving guests. The rooms at the Webster are still modest in my proposal, but floor common rooms and suites (rather than just singles) provide much-needed spaces for smaller communities within the Webster to develop. New York has plenty of student housing, but dedicated places where working women of all ages can gather do not exist anymore outside of the Webster, despite a storied past of women’s boarding houses. In contrast to the compartmentalized beau parlors, institutional cafeteria, and economized corridors, I borrowed the lounges, libraries, dining halls, and terraces from the great New York clubs, a change from the conventional boarding houses of the past. The apartment buildings of several New York architects, including J.E.R. Carpenter, Rosario Candela, and RAMSA were perfect precedent. McKim, Mead, and White’s monograph was another great source of inspiration. For historical context, I read the accounts of women who stayed in boarding houses like the Barbizon and young people who stayed in the neighboring Sloane House YMCA. Graphically, I looked to Hugh Ferris’ renderings and the drawings of Delano and Aldrich’s houses by Chester B. Price, as well as the warm and evocative perspectives done by Historical Concepts, where I now work. Other inspiration and help came from my wonderful professors. Professor Perez Hernandez was incredibly supportive before and throughout the semester. He was available at all times and recommended amazing precedent, from industrial kitchen layouts to excellent contemporary

“A Room of One’s Own” - Manhattan Home for Professional Women

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Madeline Fairman

Ground Floor Pool, Roof Ballroom

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“A Room of One’s Own” - Manhattan Home for Professional Women

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apartment plans. In particular, he helped me envision the courtyard as the heart of the building that serves every floor. When I was feeling discouraged, Professor Perez Hernandez provided me with encouragement and plentiful, thoughtful advice. I am so grateful for his support! In addition, I asked Professor Stamper for some advice at the beginning of the spring semester. His input about practical details and assemblies of tall buildings was so valuable moving forward. I am also grateful to Jennifer Parker for graciously allowing our class to bring books home to reference. Finally, the staff of the SOA reacted admirably to the challenge of the semester and I owe much to their efforts.

This project represents where I want to go with my passions—designing spaces for communities, making good urban fabric, and creating renderings that fulfill and maybe even expand a client’s vision. Thesis helped me learn how to reach out for help more effectively and where my own limitations are. As for what I want others to learn from my experience: don’t forget you can lean on classmates for support, while also lifting them up. It is the constant presence of friends that makes our time in school especially precious.

Finishing thesis from home was a jarring experience for everyone. I had a difficult time getting motivated after spring break, but talking through my reservations with Professor Perez Hernandez and Zooming with my classmates helped me out of the rut. I had been tempted to move my site across Hell’s Kitchen, which would have been a disaster, but Andrew convinced me to keep my master plan and just rework the building. The most memorable part of the process was emerging from my desk in my parents’ basement at 4 AM in early April with a new ground floor plan that finally worked. The huge time crunch (and tight Manhattan site of my project) forced me to be more focused after that. The morning of the final presentation, my parents and younger sister, Meredith, were watching from our living room; coming downstairs to their “well done” was more important than anything else. My family has been so supportive during my time at ND, from panicked phone calls freshman year when I couldn’t wrap my head around shadows, right up until the 2 AM cheese board my sister and I made every night the week that thesis was due. After the review, it was so disappointing not to be able to congratulate my classmates in person on all of their incredible work. Everyone in our class showed their determination, skill, and resiliency.

Main Floor Loggia

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Madeline Fairman

Residential Floor, Main Floor, Ground Floor

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“A Room of One’s Own” - Manhattan Home for Professional Women

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The New Great Library of Alexandria by Moataz M. Bashir

The thesis project is the apex of our Notre Dame career and this is why I truly believe it ought to be very personal to every student. I found it difficult not to return to my childhood, and where my first interests in architecture took root. My family hails from Alexandria, so I grew up on the corniche and in the midst of the melange of cultures and histories that call her home. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, completed in 2002 by Snøhetta, was the most significant building in my mind for its sheer size, but also the history to which it pays homage. I always saw a disconnect between the modern monstrosity we see and what we imagine to be one of the grandest and most awe-inspiring buildings of the ancient world. I knew I had to apply every lesson I learned to create a counter-proposal worthy of the name of The Great Library.

I decided that the best way to respect the history of the Library was to unearth what, however little, we knew about it. The heart of my project wasn’t the program, but rather the architectural language expressed, and then lost, in Ancient Alexandria: Eastern Hellenism, also known as the Alexandrian or the Hellenistic Baroque Style. I traveled back to Alexandria to conduct first-hand research, and immersed myself in books, images, drawings, museum extant pieces, Pompeiian frescoes, steles, and historical accounts. I think I always knew my thesis subconsciously, but it was Professor Perez-Hernandez who helped me synthesize what I was trying to interrogate: Alexandria’s lost bilingual architecture: Hellenistic and Egyptian, rigorous and evocative. I was overly ambitious with my initial design since I wanted to design the entire library complex, which was well over the square footage recommended, so I had to go through several revisions. I determined I would block out the masterplan of my entire site including landscaping, but focus on the Main Administrative body that acts as the grand lobby and circulation core and houses the Rare Book, Children, and Cartography Reading Rooms. It was not easy letting go of my initial vision, but I was adamant to complete facades for my entire complex, staying true to my thesis statement. In terms of advice I can give you, dear students, it is paramount to be passionate about your thesis; everyone can tell if you’re not, and it never bodes well. Be confident in your ideas, but always open to criticism. And never be too arrogant or timid to seek help from any member of our esteemed faculty— their critical eyes can make all the difference between a mediocre and an excellent thesis. In bocca al lupo!

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Moataz M. Bashir

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Kim Dae-jung International Boarding School by Darius Zacharakis There was no single reason I chose to explore traditional Korean architecture for my thesis, but I knew I wanted my project to be very personal to me. I am of Greek and Korean Heritage; and I certainly had more than ample opportunity to explore Greek Architecture throughout my time at Notre Dame. A lot of my classmates started thinking about and planning for Thesis as far back as Rome, but for me it wasn’t until the summer prior to 5th year, when my family took a trip to Korea. It provided me with a lot of inspiration. I made the very last minute decision to pursue a Korean Language and Culture Minor, meaning I was overloaded on credits and undoubtedly caused Caroline, our academic advisor, a lot of stress. When I saw the Korean Culture class syllabus, I realized I could incorporate it with my Architecture Thesis and the rest is history. During the course of the project, the statement itself was one of the hardest parts for me and the last thing I did during pre-design. I think it’s weird when you know what your project is and what you want it to accomplish or symbolize, but then have to put that in words. Professor Duany helped me set the wheels in motion for my thesis statement, and

Professor Younes helped me nail it down. It started with a very strong educational focus, one centered around kids and developing the community. In the end, it became much more about the architecture itself, but how I was using and manipulating the inherent connection to nature that Korean Traditional architecture has in order to provide people with a better experience. My favorite part of the project was discovering all the parallels between Korean Traditional Architecture and the Classical Style we study. There is a strong tectonic emphasis in Korean architecture because it uses traditional building materials and is meant to last hundreds of years with little upkeep. Then, realizing how similar the process is of making it your own. Everyone has their American Vignola and oftentimes it’s too easy to simply transpose those plates onto a floor plan and call it a day. The real challenge is thinking critically about applying the classical style and what innovations or new forms you can develop from your own mind. How do you solve new problems that your precedent never had to deal with? All these aspects apply when I design using Traditional Korean Architecture.

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Darius Zacharakis

Student Center

I think right after the review was the craziest cocktail of emotions that has ever hit me at once. There is the immediate relief of one of the heaviest loads of your life being lifted and the incredibly jarring moment of reflection when you realize such a huge chapter of your life is coming to an end. After that, your mind is racing over all the changes you would make to your design and also all the times you misspoke during your presentation. For me, that would be the lack of trees in my renderings and natural lighting in the school’s gym, as mentioned in my review. Both these comments really stuck with me mostly because, for my non-architecture friends, these were easy comments for them to poke fun or give me a hard time over. But the next day, I mostly just felt proud. You can step back and recognize that regardless of any small errors you wish you could correct, you have really accomplished a great feat.

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Kim Dae-jung International Boarding School

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A New Urban Quarter and an Architecture Academy in Gandor, Ethiopia by Metaya Argaw Tilahun

My thesis project was a culmination of all that I had learned and been exposed to during my time at Notre Dame. I was very much interested in the theories of interdisciplinary architecture education and how that can be further supported in an urban setting, so I designed my academy to be a part of the overall urban proposal for a new quarter in Gondar, Ethiopia. It was also very important to show in my design the idea of classical architecture in a different cultural context—to show that it is not just a style, but a philosophy which can be incorporated anywhere in the world. Before the thesis semester, the pre-design phase helped tremendously. You can hit the ground running and not feel like you are in a typical semester, where you might have to readjust to the start of the semester. It is also very important because you are the one deciding the scope of your project, which you would not have much time to do so once the semester has started. Having reviews right at the beginning also allowed me to have a good grasp on the site and scope of my project. During the semester, after not returning to campus due to the pandemic, one of the biggest challenges of remote learning was not having the comradery that one would have had in a normal studio setting,

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and being locked in with your work. I, along with some of my classmates, would have some social Zoom sessions to help us feel connected and take our minds off our projects for a short period of time. I was also fortunate enough to have been working on a computer model prior to the school shutting down, so it was relatively easy for me to set up a workspace in my apartment. Once I completed my project and after I finished the review, I felt great—like a great weight had been lifted off of me. At the same time, it was a bit sad. This was the end of an amazing experience and it did not feel like the conclusion that I had been imagining when I first started. There were no group photos, no hugs, and no congrats to your friends— no big celebration. The next day I was back working on the thesis book, which was due a week later. It felt more like when you had a review and still had finals. I distinctly remember Leon Krier jokingly asking if I had twenty people working for me to have produced so much work. Being recognized for the level of effort and passion you have put into your work is very satisfying, especially coming from someone that you admired.

A New Urban Quarter and an Architecture Academy in Gandor, Ethiopia

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Metaya Argaw Tilahun

Fasil Street Elevation

Plaza Mentewab Elevation

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A New Urban Quarter and an Architecture Academy in Gandor, Ethiopia

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie 82

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Karim Hamouié

is a Lebanese/British architect and associate at Mimar Hamouié. He received his diploma in architecture from the American University of Beirut in 2018 and has since been working under the guidance of his father Mohamad Hamouié.

At an early age, Karim inherited a fascination for traditional architecture by observing his father’s work and traveling to diverse and culturally rich locations with his family. He represents a new generation brought up with the understanding of progress and continuity within tradition. He has collaborated on a variety of project types including residential, sacred, mixed use, commercial, monument restoration, urban regeneration and urban development projects.

The works of Mimar Hamouié are a result of a sensitivity to history and local context, an understanding of typological planning and design, conservation and innovation within traditional building techniques and the preservation and adaptability of traditional craftsmanship. An image illustrating the restored khan as seen from the central courtyard. The existing restored portion is on the left and the new addition is on the right. Full project featured on page 90.

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie Stoa Magazine (SM): What inspired you to become an architect?

history courses with a few things specifically about Lebanon, but they were a lot more like watching National Geographic or the History Channel. I have a personal curiosity for history and I like to see what's going on in the world and learn about different cultures. We are very small in this universe, in this world.

Karim Hamouie (KH): My father is an architect and my mother is an interior architect, so I was brought up by two designers. My father noticed my interest early on in drawing and how I observed different spaces we went to, so he spoon fed me architecture and design from a very early age. It was I had a teacher who set up two interconnectsomething that was on my mind as long as I can ed theory and design courses which focused on remember. When I was very young, I liked drawing vernacular architecture around the world. I really cartoons and caricatures and he really promoted appreciated this course and what it was trying to that. Drawing caricatures is a very interesting way do, although the design exercises were rooted in of seeing the world, because you pick out things modernist ideas. The best way to approach susyou want to really express and you exaggerate them. tainability is by looking at what people who lived Also, we used to play games, like having drawing in these vernacular societies did, because they competitions where we’d draw any weird thing approached the environment as simply as possible. and see who did it better. I used to travel a lot with SM: What are some of my parents, and all of the the features of traditional ...regionalism isn’t bounded by traditional towns and cities Lebanese architecture? our contemporary borders. that we went to really left a stamp in my memory. When KH: To understand the I got a bit older, I liked to traditional, vernacular, and visit my father’s office and construction sites. So to classical architecture of Lebanon, we have to look at put it short, I wanted to be an architect for a very its geography. We have the coastal region, which is long time, and the environment I was in was very very tightly connected to the mountain range called helpful to achieve that. Mount Lebanon that runs north to south. Then we have a very deep and wide valley called the Beqaa SM: What was your architecture school experience valley, which is very lush and contains the temples in Lebanon like? of Baalbek. There’ also the Anti-Lebanon Mountain range, which also extends north to south, and KH: I went to the American University of Beirut, beyond that we have Syria. Consequently, we have which has a fantastic campus by the coast. There is the coastal and Mount Lebanon type and the Beqaa beautiful Lebanese classical architecture scattered valley type. The coastal and Mount Lebanon are among these fantastic landscapes, but the both highly ornamented sandstone and plaster, or architecture school was teaching us the complete exposed limestone construction. There is a whole opposite. The first two years were a breeze for me array of domestic typologies: the Domus type, Iwan in terms of the technical courses thanks to some type, court types, central hall types, etcetera. very good teachers. However, the design courses were very frustrating. I made a lot of B’s while my There is a whole set of building elements very peers made A’s, despite feeling extremely confident particular to Mount Lebanon. For example, in my work. Something just wasn't clicking. I central hall houses feature triple arches, which didn't ask my father for help at all during my first are very specific to the area. In the Beqaa valley, four years, but in my fifth year I decided to consult the architecture becomes very primitive and very him, because I really wanted to do something I felt natural. Loam is abundant because it’s such a fertile passionate about and that I saw as the way forward. geography, and it is used in a variety of ways: rammed That's when I finally started to see some success earth, mud brick, and sun dried brick. It's more of with my designs. a farm type of typology that you'd find around the Beqaa. Lebanon is a very small country, and that’s SM: Were there any classes about Lebanese why you have at most three types of traditional architecture? architecture, but if you look at a larger country like Italy, you'll find a whole array of traditional KH: For the first 3 years, we had world architecture styles. In the north you have wooden construction

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

SM: Would you share some travel experiences that have influenced you as a designer? KH: I am very fortunate to have travelled to a number of different places with my parents while I was young. Travel is very important–it allows you to create a library of experiences and visual references.

I think of the Mosque of Sanaa. When I think of very interesting bazaars, I think of the city of Fez in Morocco. This is the sort of approach which I think is very effective.

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in Lombardy, stone construction around Rome, brick construction in places like Sicily, and a very interesting type of construction in the Puglia region. I am speaking about a very small country where I can easily break it down into regions, but you look at larger countries and regionalism isn’t bounded by our contemporary borders.

SM: Your sketches on urban morphology are beautiful. Can you talk about how you produced these sketches, what you’re observing and looking at, and your process for drawing them? KH: I’ve been sketching for a very long time. For me, it's like a second language and it’s how I like to express myself. It’s also a very good tool for observation. When you are drawing something you are not just drawing it on a piece of paper, you are also imprinting it in your mind. It's a way of carving an idea into the library in your head. While drawing, you’re pinpointing things you might not have seen through observation alone. It’s the best tool for communicating an idea.

For example, right now we’re working on some urban scale projects on the Red Sea. In order to approach such a large scale project, I opened Google Earth and looked at the scales and dimensions of places I have experienced before. I've been to North SM: Can you talk a little bit Architecture and urbanism go Africa, Morocco, Egypt, about your experience with Andalusia, Italy, France, architectural design and hand in hand. You can’t have and Scotland. All of these urban design? a good urban plan and bad experiences create a library inside your mind. KH: It’s only been three architecture. Whenever you’re faced with years since I graduated, but something, you can sift I’m fortunate to be a part through this library and find so many things to take of some very large scale projects. When working out from your travels. on the urban scale, I like to scale things down to the architectural level. Architecture and urbanism SM: Our previous dean recommended that everyone go hand in hand. You can’t have a good urban plan have things he called “pocket buildings.” He would and bad architecture; it doesn’t make a successful always tell us that we needed to have twenty or so community or place. Town planning isn’t just about kept in your back pocket to whip out at any time, the buildings or the voids and negative space. There which is kind of what you’ve been describing. Do are so many other elements, and a good urban place you have one or two pocket buildings off the top of has to have both good planning on the macro-scale your head that you recommend people look into? and good architecture as the cherry on top. KH: When we’re designing, we have specific spatial qualities and architectural expressions we try to capture. My father and I approach design in a very region-specific way which ensures we are being sensitive to the site and the expressions around us. Let's say you're observing a piazza. You like the proportions, the approach, the composition of the space, the heights of the buildings that surround it, the entrance to it. These are all spatial qualities. The architectural expression ties it to the specific region that you’re working in. Off the top of my head, when I think of great landscapes, I think of the Alhambra in Granada. When I think of grand buildings with fantastic formal understanding,

SM: Many classes at Notre Dame discuss New Urbanism, especially its emphasis on walkability in the fight against urban sprawl. How do you think architects should approach this, and how do architects in Lebanon approach walkability in urbanism? KH: In the nineteenth century, fantastic cities were built in Europe, and during the mandate periods in Lebanon also. We have the downtown area of Beirut, which is a mandate community, and then we have Casablanca and Algiers. Towns that were constructed pre-modernism integrated the car so nicely, but now cities are very vehicle-centric. I think

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie now a lot of governments in the Middle East have been rethinking this, because they know something isn’t working. My father and I approach this by trying to integrate the car in a very interesting way that creates a space where people can leave their cars and enter a completely pedestrian, car free zone. Our region has completely gone with the modernist approach of city-making, and that’s why we don’t have many successful urban level projects in the Middle East. Hopefully that will change.

the urban fabric has been obliterated, so I wanted to rebuild it. I looked at the different typologies and the different land before I started planning. In Arab and Islamic cultures, urban clusters typically form around a market. The market really is the backbone of Arab-Islamic cities, so I focused on developing the buildings that were once tied to the market of Aleppo. I wanted to also create a pedestrian zone, so I rerouted the vehicle network to tunnel down into the ring road, added a bus terminal, and created underground parking. SM: How do you propose So, again, working from the younger generation the urban level, but also ...tradition is something that approaches traditional going into the architecture develops with us; it’s not architecture? just to show how it’s the architecture that makes something stationary in time. KH: My father told me up the urban divisions. I that tradition is the have a hotel here with a handing down of knowledge from generation to courtyard, and this is learning from the fondouk or generation. When you look at tradition from that caravansary typology you find in Aleppo and other scope, tradition is something that develops with parts of the Arab-Islamic world. What I have here us; it’s not something stationary in time. Humans is a Khan, which is a manufacturing or a workshop are so focused on the individual that we completely facility. Half of what you see hatched in solid black forget there are thousands of years we can learn is part of the Khan that was completely destroyed. I from. If our generation and the ones to come can wanted to bring it back, but I also wanted to make a understand that we need to learn from the past and distinction between what was destroyed and what’s that we need to learn from the people who have new. My goal was to use the same building material, experience, I think we’d be much more productive be respectful in terms of proportion and scale, and and much more capable of developing in a correct to create a harmonious space all while pleasing my manner. modernist teachers. That was my thesis project; that’s what kicked off practicing with my father. Karim’s Presentation: Now I’m going to move onto another project, which is a monument restoration in Tripoli. 2 This is a KH: For the past three years, I have worked on very historical mosque constructed in the Mamluk about twenty projects with my father, but I would Period of Lebanon. It’s been very badly neglected like to discuss four distinct projects with you: two and we were assigned to design the restoration. are in the Levant region of Syria and Lebanon, This is the mosque you see on the left, a sketch we and the other two are in the Eastern province of produced while visiting the area and surveying the Saudi Arabia. The first project, which was also my site. We basically fixed what has been destroyed, thesis, is in Aleppo. The second is the restoration and we’ve also very minimally fixed the functionof the Masjid Al Attar in Tripoli. It’s a monument, ality. This is the condition of the mosque from the so it requires a different approach. Next is an office interior. There was no formal definition, and usually building in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, in mosques you’d have a transitional approach to which is a new typology for the area. Finally, a the very pure, where one would perform prayer. mosque in the eastern province, which is nearly And in this mosque, because it was very poorly complete. planned, this space didn’t exist. We decided to 1 create a partition to define this space in the prayer Let’s start with Aleppo. From the very start of hall. The architectural character we used follows my university, Syria has been in a very devastating very strictly the Mamluk expression. We looked at and destructive civil war for many years. My a lot of Mamluk architecture details and basically father’s family is from Aleppo, so this project is tried to bring the mosque back to its golden age. All very personal to me. People from Aleppo believe of the brass work, all of the stone work, woodwork, it is the most historical city in Syria, so it also has flooring–it’s all part of the upgrade. Over here we’ve a very strong historical cultural identity. Much of

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

With this next project, I wanted to address the idea of the contemporary while learning from history, tradition, and vernacular architecture. This is an office building. 3 Office buildings are a new typology in the eastern province. We had to look at the type of architecture that was in the eastern province of Arabia, and we did a very extensive study on that. The photo on the right is a fantastic example of the type of architecture that’s located in this area. You can see the fenestrations are very small; because of climatic reasons, they don’t want to bring in too much sunlight. They have some shutters, some shading devices. You can see there’s a gallery on ground level for retail or whatever use that they had in the past, because these types of buildings were very integrated into the urban fabric so you’d have retail at the bottom, and the residence on the first floor or above.

location; with the contemporary demands for air conditioning, this is where all of those mechanical and electrical facilities would be stored. I think with this approach, we’ll reduce the amount of demand for air conditioning by a lot, learning from the vernacular typologies. And we’ll just have to wait until it’s finished to see how well it’s done.

Le Salon

integrated a new mezzanine level and here you can see when you’d enter this is the sort of atmosphere that you’d be welcomed to.

This is the final project that I’d like to show you guys (Crafting a Mosque). 4 Here is a photo I took a while back, and we’re on the final stages of finishing the project. And here I want to show you the amount of craft that goes into these projects. It’s one thing to design a building and it’s another thing to promote the crafts that are available to us. I think it’s very important we don’t lose our craftsmanship and our craftsmen community. We work with some very incredible people.

This is the mosque plan. It’s on a very regular site, but the very distinct thing about mosque architecture is that when muslims pray, they direct themselves towards the Kabba in Mecca. So this is So, we’ve taken what we understand from the climatic why you see the shift in the plan. You have order and responsiveness of the area, and we’ve tried to apply disorder, but disorder should come from a place and it onto a new typology. The very narrow fenestraunlike modernists, here disorder has a meaning. So tions, and each of the facades reflects the direction. here you see the shift toward Mecca, and then the This is something that is a very contemporary building boundaries follow the site. You see this a lot idea–how you can respond in historical Arab-Islamic to the climate–and this cities, where the building You have order and disorder, is something that a lot of is very integrated into this contemporary architects are but disorder should come from cluster, and you have a shift, obsessed with: how each of a very meaningful shift. a place and unlike modernists, the facades responds to its Here are some sections, location. So, on the north we go into all of these here disorder has a meaning. facade, which is the one that different details, Isnic tiling faces the main road, we have from Turkey. We have very larger and more direct openings, onto the face of elaborate stone work, gypsum work, carpet work, the building, while on the west and eastern facades, brass work, woodwork, that we produce drawings we have deeper inset windows, allowing for more for. This is where the mihrab is, and this is the place shade, so you don't get that much sun in. where in Islam the sheihk, or the imam, leads the prayer. This is where he stands. This is the way the This is the back facade, and where we have most of mihrab is detailed. Have you guys been to anywhere our services, and not much light gets in. The way east, or middle east? we’ve planned the building was to have the core in the middle and then all of the workspace on the SM: peripheries overlooking the views. Also, the way (Sam)No but actually–oh, Travis has. that we treat each facade is climate-responsive, (Travis)No I haven’t I really want to. because we’ve learned from the vernacular and (William)I’ve been to Jerusalem. traditional architecture of the region. Here’s an axonometric on the left, and a view in the gallery KH: These are the sort of details you’ll find on the ground floor. The wind tower is a very in Istanbul, in Morocco, but the architectural particular architectural element in the eastern character varies from place to place. So, we go into province. We’ve integrated it here as the service all of these details; what you see on the left here is a

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie way of decorating an important doorway, a mihrab, which is what directs you in prayer. In English it’s called stalactites, and it’s a way of decorating a very particular axis point. What you see here are Isnic tiles from Turkey. The Isnic tiles are applied in the mihrab along the bottom of the walls in the main prayer area. So that’s the craft that goes into our architecture to promote the craftsmanship around the region. This is a photo of me a while back in Florence drawing the Duomo. Because there was a question about traveling and about why I became an architect, this is just to illustrate how I’ve been into this field for a very long time. [transition out of presentation] SM: The thoughts you shared are just so in sync with what the school is trying to teach us. I think this is going to make you happy, because we actually have one semester in fourth year studio that’s non-Western architecture, and most of the years we have something either in Morocco, or India. Middle Eastern architecture is a topic of our education as well. But we went only on the very surface of the tile decorations and how they vary so much in regions, and it’s nice to hear you talking about how you did all those. KH: Thank you very much, and that sounds great. I know your school is very strongly classicist, but I know that with Dean Stefanos, his view is... he’s spoken to my father on several occasions now, and what he’s trying to do I think is bring a world view of traditional architecture into the program, and I think that’s great. I think that’s fantastic. I think your education–like what I had, what my father gave me, what he spoon fed me–I think that’s the type of education that you guys are getting via this fantastic establishment.

Projects discussed in this interview are on the following pages. Interviewed by Xinyuan Sam Zhuang, William Marsh, and Travis Frame

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

Post-War Reconstruction in Historic Aleppo Aleppo, Syria The historic city of Aleppo was the backdrop of a devastating chapter in the Syrian civil war. Having family roots in the city, I dedicated my final year thesis at the American University of Beirut proposing a masterplan to re-stitch the wounds of the historic heart of the city. The proposal uses the destruction as an opportunity to mend the disruption caused by modern buildings that dominated the public space adjacent to the citadel by proposing buildings that respect the proportion, configuration, and character of the historic city, whilst retaining pre-existing land-usage and offering additional programs to revive and enrich the cultural and creative scene for a brighter future. The masterplan aims to create a pedestrian centric continuation of the existing bazaar by re-routing the vehicular network along the ring road to the underground freeing up the ground level. A public transport terminal, taxi drop-off and multistorey public parking is provided under the main piazza which acts as the transitional link between the vehicular network below and the pedestrian promenade on the ground level.

Below: The proposed masterplan that is informed by the historic urban fabric and stitches back what was lost.

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Opposite: Aerial view of the historic city of Aleppo showing the proposed Intervention meant to stitch back the destroyed urban fabric.

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An image illustrating the artist’s khan (workshop) and fondouk (hotel) along a side alley adjacent to existing traditional domestic buildings. (Aleppo continued)

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

Masjid Al Attar - Monument Restoration

Le Salon

Tripoli, Lebanon This Mamluk period mosque in the heart of the historic center of the coastal city of Tripoli had been left to decay and had become a forgotten gem off the main souq (market) spine. Our commission for the restoration included a survey of the mosque as well as a proposal to upgrade and restore the exterior, interior and all auxiliary service facilities of the monument to its formal glory. All the details would remain true to its Mamluk period character.

The floor plan of the mosque, showing the new internal partitioning.

An onsite sketch of the dome and minaret of the mosque as seen from a surrounding rooftop.

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

An image of the existing interior in its neglected state.

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

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The proposed upgrade of the interior looking towards the Qibla wall.

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

Lessons from the Vernacular Applied Applied to to aa Contemporary Contemporary Typology Typology Eastern Province, KSA

When dealing with new typologies such as office buildings, the general trend in today’s building culture is to go high-tech with the reliance on advanced structural systems, curtain wall skins, and active mechanical systems. The main advertisement for this approach is a false perception of sustainability. Even if the claims are true, that these buildings are carbon neutral or carbon negative, the whole approach to this form of sustainability is inefficiently complicated, uneconomical, and the steel and glass construction type that is so widely used is unsustainable at the very core of its nature, especially in the hot climate of the Arabian Peninsula. The office building we have designed, and that is currently under construction, was an opportunity to apply the vernacular principals of design in the region to a contemporary typology. Our proposal utilizes the passive climate responsive systems and the architectural character of the traditional buildings of the Gulf region in a contemporary yet familiar manner.

An image illustrating the office building as seen driving along the wide boulevard to its north.

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The view from the interior of the ground floor gallery along the north façade of the building.

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

South Facade The south façade of the building features minimal fenestrations.

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North Facade The north façade of the building is also the façade facing the main boulevard that extends to the coast of the Gulf.

Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

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West Facade

Plan

The west façade features deeper inset windows providing shade to the office spaces that run along this face of the building, whilst retaining large openings for a generous view towards the Gulf.

A typical office floor plan.

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Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

Crafting a Mosque Eastern Province, KSA This mosque located in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia is in its final stages of interior finishes. In the Islamic world, wealthy patrons usually commission the construction of local mosques as a way of giving back to the community, providing a space for spiritual transcendence. Whenever given the opportunity, our work integrates as much local and regional crafts as possible in a well curated manner to promote and keep the community of craftsmen alive.

The floorplan of the mosque featuring the flooring pattern in the auxiliary spaces and central courtyard.

A section in the main prayer space looking towards the Mihrab and the Qibla wall.

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A detail drawing elevation and reflected plan of the muqarnas (stalactite) detail that will be carved into the mihrab of the central prayer space.

Tradition: A Dynamic Process with Karim Hamouie

Le Salon

A detail drawing for the custom carpet design that will be laid out onto the floor of the prayer halls.

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with Luca Guerini

Blending Past and Future

Blending Past and Future with Luca Guerini

Le Salon

Luca Guerini

is an Italian freelance architect based in his hometown of Bergamo. He received his bachelor’s degree in Environmental Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Milan and his master’s degree and licensure from the IUAV School of Architecture in Venice. During his education, Luca joined workshops in Rome, Athens, and Berlin, and completed theses on Roman Forums, digital reconstruction, and archeological heritage. He specializes in historical architecture, restoration, and museography, and has extensive experience in digital reconstruction, rendering, and modelling.

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Blending Past and Future with Luca Guerini

Stoa Magazine (SM): Tell us about your early interest in architecture. Where did you grow up, and what was your education like? Luca Guerini (LG): I've lived almost my whole life in Bergamo, a beautiful city close to the Alps in northern Italy, which in many ways looks like a Tuscan city. Bergamo gave me a lot. The mountains remind me of cathedrals and the valleys nestled between them are like city streets. As a child, I devoured books that talked about the wonders of the world, and I've never considered pursuing any other profession. I had a very modernist education in university; the influence of the Modern Movement is still omnipresent here in Italy, but this did not thwart me. On the contrary, I learned the value of synthesis and how to characterize space regardless of decor. However, many professors and the press have a hostile attitude toward other architectural languages. This flaw is compensated by the surrounding cultural heritage; the buildings of the past were my best teachers. SM: What does architecture and design mean to you?

by the star-system of international design. In Venice, even though modernism’s influence is very strong, the ancient remains an irrefutable magical presence. I also carried out a series of workshops on archaeology and museography. The conservation of historical artifacts is very important, and the study of ancient architecture offers new suggestions and solutions for projects. In this way, ancient and new architecture come together in a historical continuity. The 19th century pensionnaire architects of the Academy of France, who trained in Rome and concluded their studies with the beautiful Envois (reports of their time in Rome), really inspired me. My favorite architect, Borromini, despite finding inspiration in Villa Adriana and venerating Michelangelo's architecture, said that his job "was not that of a copyist, but of inventing new things." Past and future are not two opposite terms; in many cases they merge and blend into one another. SM: You make beautiful representations with digital modeling and rendering as well as hand drawing. What are the benefits and drawbacks of analog

LG: I would dare to use the same words of my friend, professor Bruno Vaerini, who’s also from Bergamo. He says that our profession is like faith; you must be willing to sacrifice something as a disciple of beauty and protect it. Studying and sharing your work gives you satisfaction and allows you to see the world with different eyes, but like any faith, it's also a source of suffering and dissatisfaction, especially if you are a sensitive type like me. SM: Tell us about your studies during the master’s programs Architecture for the New and the Ancient and Architecture and Museum Design for Archaeology. LG: The program Architecture for the New and the Ancient that I did at the University I.U.A.V. in Venice was a normal master’s degree course in Architecture that included design workshops and architectural restoration exams. They're often considered separate disciplines, but I consider this a serious flaw, especially in Italy. This mentality is a consequence of modernism, which considers the new in opposition to the ancient. This is one of the reasons why I decided not to finish my studies in Milan, where the culture is influenced 104

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3D analysis and reconstruction of Carpaccio's Tower in Disputa di Santo Stefano

Blending Past and Future with Luca Guerini

Le Salon Stoa Magazine

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Blending Past and Future with Luca Guerini

versus digital techniques? How do you integrate these technologies and methods into your practice? LG: Hand drawing remains essential for thinking and is an important role in the design process, so much so that I distrust architects who do not consider it fundamental. I also consider modeling important in the creative process. Modeling systems are often passed off as mere tools for the final presentation, but it can also be a dynamic archive of the entire design process, because the project takes shape around it nowadays. This is missing in traditional physical maquettes. I consider the 3D model a tool more than an objective, so it is often a support for final hand-drawings in my projects. Deciding whether a final paper is done digitally or by hand depends on what you want to communicate with the project.

The conservation of historical artifacts is very important, and the study of ancient architecture offers new suggestions and solutions for projects. In this way, ancient and new architecture come together in a historical continuity.

SM: Tell us about how you analyze the different classical orders and your knowledge of them. LG: I continue to research formal analyses, especially from paintings of Renaissance architecture. I'm also interested in the complexity we can build from a fragment of classical architecture. This is the case of my master’s thesis (next page), where I carried out the complete reconstruction of an unrealized church by Raphael for the competition of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, starting from only a single sketch. An architect must use their expertise and imagination to reconstruct what is now a ruin. I learned about the architectural orders like anyone else, by studying them, and if you love history, it's natural to fall in love with them. If there's one thing that I have learned, it's that poetry occurs when these rules are broken. It's not as obvious a statement as it seems. The most interesting architects are those who transgress the rules of composition while maintaining deep coherence. Having this ability is only possible with a mastery of the classical language. Those who believe they can do anything, without knowing the history of those who preceded us, are only pursuing a selfish vanity. In the eyes of an orthodox classicist, Giulio Romano's Palazzo Te is a monstrosity. But in truth, Romano intended to give a story, a coherent and clear poem. In a masterpiece like Palazzo Te, there is a whole world.

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Workshop Accademia Adrianea - New Via dei Fori Imperiali and Museum 'Roma Psichica.' Opposite: Masters Thesis: the complete reconstruction of an unrealized church by Raphael.

Blending Past and Future with Luca Guerini

Le Salon Stoa Magazine

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Blending Past and Future with Luca Guerini

SM: What advice would you give to current architecture students? LG: On the one hand, I recommend following your passion, because you can fail by pursuing it just as you can also fail by making career compromises. You must be willing to face adversities, especially the economic ones. Also be prepared to not see many of your dreams realized, and to work with people who have different enthusiasms and philosophies. The relationships between people and practical difficulties are an inexhaustible source of frustration and conflict. My advice is to be prepared for this. SM: In your own practice thus far, what are some unexpected challenges that you have had to overcome? LG: Universities often don't deal with the economic topics that an architect must face. In the real world, economic availability is always, unfortunately, the starting point of every architectural project. The choice of materials depends primarily on this. It's okay to be experimental if the type of research requires it, but we must not lose touch with reality and rationality. SM: What did your various workshops and experience with practicing architects teach you about the real-world practice of architecture outside the classroom? LG: University workshops are a great way to challenge yourself, compare different opinions with your peers, and measure your own competence. Learning how to manage complexity is the most important thing workshops can teach. I think that’s the main characteristic of a good architect. In regards to the hard-skills, I had to learn a lot on my own. I believe personal study remains fundamental, and there’s no better way of learning than drawing by hand or visiting beautiful architecture.

Interviewed by Brian Bermudez

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The most interesting architects are those who transgress the rules of composition while maintaining deep coherence.

Blending Past and Future with Luca Guerini

Le Salon

Workshop Accademia Adrianea - New Via dei Fori Imperiali and Museum 'Roma Psichica' (with ruin version)

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Marginal Classicism

with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor 110

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Irish Chapel Competition entry for a funerary chapel at Glasnevin, Dublin Stoa Magazine

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Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor

Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor

are founding partners of the London-based firm Smith & Taylor Architects. They were recently awarded the RIBA Traditional Architecture Group’s inaugural Traditional Architecture Award 2020, given in recognition of their teaching work at Kingston School of Art. For the past ten years, their design studio has been part of the only degree course in Europe to teach the principles and application of the classical language of architecture. Timothy and Jonathan additionally teach at the Engelsberg Summer School in Classical Architecture and are the William H Harrison visiting critics in Classical and Traditional Architecture this spring at the University of Miami. In 2016, their practice was featured in the Architecture Foundation’s publication New Architects 3, a survey of the UK’s best emerging practices formed in the past decade. They believe that “it is possible to have a creative modern architecture with traditional virtues, a respect for history and freedom from cant; at once recognizable and unfamiliar.” Balance, proportion, character, intrigue and wit are common themes across their projects. In March, Timothy and Jonathan presented their notion of “Marginal Classicism” to Students for Classical Architecture at Notre Dame.

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Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor

Le Salon

Irish Chapel Ground Plan

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Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor

Irish Chapel Lobby Perspective

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Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor

My other friends’ parents’ offices were these sort of fairly dull spaces with just a typewriter or a computer and some files, but my mum’s office was full of models and big drawings and material samples.

Timothy Smith (TS): I think I decided on it quite early on in my high school career. I enjoyed art and design and making things, and my parents had done work to their houses, so I’d seen extensions being built. I played saxophone at school because it looked very glamorous in films, and the architecture profession sounded quite glamorous, so probably that’s where I first got the idea. I studied physics and math at school because that’s what they told me I had to do to become an architect, and it really put me off, so I moved back towards art and design and went to art school for a year, where I learned a lot more about architecture and began to look at individual architects and read architecture magazines. I went to speak to the local architecture schools, and it turned out they weren’t very interested in maths and physics; they were a lot more interested in my art portfolio. That gave me the confidence to return to the profession as something I might want to study and be able to do, and I never looked back.

Le Salon

Stoa Magazine (SM): First, tell us why you both decided to study architecture and what your educations were like.

Jonathan Taylor (JT): I did architecture really because my mother worked for a firm of architects. She wasn’t an architect, but she was their office manager, and I thought it seemed like a really cool place. My other friends’ parents’ offices were these sort of fairly dull spaces with just a typewriter or a computer and some files, but my mum’s office was full of models and big drawings and material samples. I also knew that the architects used to go out of the office a lot to visit sites, so I thought this seemed like a very exciting thing to do. That was the initial motivation, and then I started to read architecture magazines. I used to borrow them from my mum’s office’s library and I got interested in the subject as a topic in itself. SM: What was studying architecture in an art school environment like? Do you think you had a little more creative freedom? TS: Not necessarily. It depends on how you define creative freedom and it depends on the individual course. Interestingly, Jonathan and I met just before our very first lecture on the very first day of first year. There were two architecture schools in Edinburgh at the time: the art college and the University of Edinburgh. The University ran what I suspect they would consider to be a more creative course—very avant-garde. The art school, however, had relatively straightforward briefs for buildings. In a way it was quite pedestrian, but in some ways it was a very open education. That was the environment I wanted to be in. I’ve always really enjoyed having the constraints that architecture operates within—I find that more creative than not having any constraints at all—and the school had the sort of buildings I wanted to be studying in, the kind of artistic heritage I wanted to be a part of, and the kind of people I wanted to hang around with. I would much rather hang around with the painters and sculptors and graphic designers than planners or anthropologists or whoever else that might have been.

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Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor

Santa Cruz de la Palma Museum and public square, competition 2020 Axonometric Courtyard

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Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor

Le Salon

JT: Certainly my impression of the University at the time was that, as Tim says, they would have been considered to be very creative, but that all of their projects looked identical. They were all more or less a kind of Daniel Libeskind-y, Zaha Hadid-y type of thing. That's probably a gross oversimplification, but that was certainly my impression looking in from the outside at the time, whereas our art school projects were all very different from each other. TS: There were no columns or pitched roofs, though. One of our friends got in lots of trouble for trying to design a building with a pitched roof. Looking back now, perhaps it wasn’t quite as open as we thought at the time. I wasn’t trying to do columns, though, so it didn’t matter. JT: Certainly being at an art college was great, principally for the people you met who were doing other disciplines. I learned quite a lot about film and sculpture and painting from friends in those disciplines. You could just drop into their studios if you were bored or stuck, or wander off to the film suites and see what people were editing or drop in on illustration. It was quite a rich environment. TS: And we used their facilities didn’t we? We blagged big bags of plaster off the sculpture students because they got subsidized plaster and we used the edit suites with our filmmaker friends because they could book the suites for us and show us how to use the software. It was quite a good kind of blackmarket in resources. SM: Which architects and ideas were you interested in while at school?

We tried to get to the ideological or philosophical reason why people thought they shouldn’t be doing that, and why what other people thought they should be doing was better. I think that’s where our interest in bridging the worlds that had been so contested in the ‘80s began.

TS: At school, classical and traditional architecture really didn’t leave the history lectures, and in studio we went back as far as Le Corbusier. Each year, there was an architect that was my favorite, and my projects were very based on me getting to know their work—people like early Herzog & de Meuron, Peter Zumthor, Caruso St John, and Peter Märkli. At the time, we really weren't wanting to be classical architects yet, but we were always up for a good argument, so in the pub we would always defend the likes of Quinlan Terry and Robert Adam; if they had been in the architectural press, then friends of ours would be saying, “This is ridiculous, they shouldn’t be allowed to do things like this!” I remember the general mood in school about Quinlan Terry's Richmond Riverside project, which was that it was “the most heinous thing,” and thinking, well why shouldn’t a classical architect design a building like this? I’m sure lots of people in Richmond love it and that seems to be the case. We tried to get to the ideological or philosophical reason why people thought they shouldn’t be doing that, and why what other people thought they should be doing was better. I think that’s where our interest in bridging the worlds that had been so contested in the ‘80s began. JT: I became aware of John Soane because of a first year tutor who told me I should look at his work. I knew a reasonable amount

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Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor about Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, partly because I had done a geography degree before I did my architecture degree; in my final two years, I looked at the architecture of empire, but when I went to study architecture I sort of parked it in that bracket in my mind which was of history and geography. It certainly wasn’t ever a conversation with my tutors where they would suggest to look at buildings of that age or that style for precedent. Despite the fact that we were in the middle of an UNESCO world heritage site in Edinburgh—which was full of the most glorious architecture—it was never really used as an instructional tool. We went to Paris to look at Corbusier. TS: You had a Greek Thomson book! JT: Oh yes! I can’t remember how I got onto him, but yes, I found out a little bit about Alexander Greek Thomson, a Victorian architect practicing in Glasgow with a very individual kind of language. SM: You’re giving a lecture on your notion of Marginal Classicism to Notre Dame students in March. Can you talk a little bit about this idea? TS: Marginal Classicism was originally the title of a year of teaching when we moved to a unit in the MArch course at Kingston. We were looking at the geographical margins of Europe in relation to Greece and Rome, and we were very interested in the architecture of Scandinavia: Asplund, Lewerentz, and various other more obscure architects who—as we found out more recently from going to Sweden each year for the INTBAU Englesberg course— made some phenomenal buildings from the early 20th century throughout Stockholm. We were interested in this because it was an architecture that was very attuned to its place and time; it was very avant-garde and modern in the architectural culture from which it arose, and also it seemed to include enough reference to local vernacular architecture to feel rooted in its place. We saw parallels in Lutyens’ work as well, where he was using different architectural styles and incorporating elements of vernacular— sort of a Surrey vernacular in his arts and crafts houses—but moving into classicism. It felt like a really exciting combination of the continuation of the classical tradition, its compositional principles and the rich rigor of that, but softened and sort of attenuated to its place. So that’s where it started. As people who didn’t have a classical education—we weren’t born classicists, we were learning ourselves—we were kind of more excited by buildings outside of the canon, sometimes by the slightly awkward buildings you would see somewhere in a treatise. Once your eyes get used to classical composition and the elements of orders, you can start to read them, and you can start to read the personalities of buildings. We found that it was easier to be excited by those types of buildings than it was by St. Peter’s, or by the canonical buildings you’re supposed to go and see in every city. It was the ones we noticed down side streets that felt more instructive for us really.

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Once your eyes get used to classical composition and the elements of orders, you can start to read them, and you can start to read the personalities of buildings.

Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor JT: Partly because we could never imagine building St. Peter’s. It would be ludicrous even if such a commission existed. So, I think it’s partly because the Scandinavian and more marginal stuff feels like a more realistic proposition, and it’s somehow more interesting to try to do a lot with quite limited means and be very specific about your deployment of the language. One of our friends who is not a classicist—he’s a very good architect interested in traditional architecture—has slightly criticized us. He said, “Guys, why do you call what you do marginal? To me that means it’s saying it’s not important and it’s less good. You should aim higher.” I suppose that’s not really the sense that we mean by marginal. We mean being on the edge of something, which actually can be a more interesting place to be than in the middle. We would see ourselves and the architecture we’re interested in as those classical buildings that are on the edge or slightly outside of the canon, where it interacts with contemporary culture in some way. Sometimes the edges are a more exciting place and that’s where the conversations are happening. The canon is the canon and it’s beautiful and great but it’s not changing—it’s there—whereas on the edge is where change and exciting conversations have the potential to happen.

Le Salon

We would see ourselves and the architecture we’re interested in as those classical buildings that are on the edge or slightly outside of the canon, where it interacts with contemporary culture in some way. Sometimes the edges are a more exciting place and that’s where the conversations are happening.

SM: You’re probably best known for your Teddington Folly project: a brick, temple-like house extension in West London; you’ve also worked on many competition entries for social housing and arts and commercial projects. Tell us about your design approach across these varied scales and typologies.

I suppose the thing that would link all the projects we do, built and unbuilt, is trying to develop a kind of character.

JT: Our built work is all very small scale, and then the competition work is obviously much freer. I suppose the thing that would link all the projects we do, built and unbuilt, is trying to develop a kind of character. Most of the buildings start out with a sketch— it might be an elevation, or quite often it’s a little perspective doodle, just a thing to start hanging ideas on. That is common to both small and large scale projects and is also common to all the typologies we deal with. We’re very interested in the plan and we put an awful lot of effort into trying to get them as elegant as we can make them, because it’s actually not an easy thing to make a plan really sing. We rely an awful lot on precedents from all sorts of eras and typologies. It’s usually something that one of us has seen that supports the kind of image we’re working towards, but then it gets very quickly into plan. TS: I think the first conversations are: here’s this building that I saw either yesterday or a few years ago that we’ve always had in our minds, and this feels like a good time to use it. We also consider context—looking at when we’re working with existing buildings. Those buildings have a character, even if they’re not interesting historic ones; they have some sort of character that you’re either trying to adapt or augment, and if it’s a project for a new building on an unbuilt site, then that site still has its nature. There’s a project on the website called Irish Chapel and the context was constrained by being in this pointed south end of a cemetery with a noisy railway line on one side. Our approach was

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Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor to turn the building inwards and not really allow it to look out— to have quite a severe character from the outside, but to have something very light and surprising on the inside. We made a lot of use of axes—the overlay of two different axes, which often the site gives you. Or, we try to find that friction, because it’s often in the ideal adapting itself to a non-ideal site that provokes the most interesting spaces and solutions. Palazzo Massimo or buildings where you have different axes reconciling themselves around a staircase in poche or something like that probably have inspired us far more than La Rotunda. JT: One of the driving images for the Santa Cruz de la Palma project, which we submitted for the Driehaus Competition, was from the city hall in Stockholm. You have an archway in the entrance looking down to a sloping courtyard, and then, underneath the other wing of the building that is raised up on columns, out towards the harbor. That was one of the things that we had in our minds. We also had an idea of this symmetrical building fronting a square. We then got into all sorts of trouble trying to resolve the orders around the central offset courtyard. It was sort of very, very complicated, and it’s actually still not perfect.

. . . it’s often in the ideal adapting itself to a non-ideal site that provokes the most interesting spaces and solutions. Palazzo Massimo or buildings where you have different axes reconciling themselves around a staircase in poche or something like that probably have inspired us far more than La Rotunda.

SM: Which have been your favorite projects? JT: Of the built ones, probably the Georgian Townhouse extension. We had really great clients; one of them collects architectural prints and has a strong interest in neoclassical architecture and in wine and opera. They had this beautiful, late Georgian townhouse which was very small and made planning very intricate. There was quite a lot going on in the section. It had a really tight outside garden in which we still managed to squeeze a small fountain. It felt in places quite serious and architectural with a capital A, but there was a lot of fun and light-heartedness to it as well. That was probably my favorite built one, although I do like the Teddington Folly one as well. TS: You get to know these buildings so well, and you conceive of the whole atmosphere and every space of them as you design them, so they feel like your offspring. Of the unbuilt ones, one was for a competition called A Beautiful House, which was on the edge of a lake. We’d dearly love to build it and to have the chance to think longer about it. Another, which was driven largely by tectonic concerns, is called Rus in Urbe, which is a double villa for a competition put on by the Greek Thomson Society to reinterpret Thomson’s famous double villa. We were very direct in using Thomsonian influences, but tectonically it was going to be an exploration of different types of concrete. If the cost is prohibitive to use stone in the way that it was used a hundred fifty years ago, then there are other ways of achieving a monolithic construction of wall surfaces and detail decorations. JT: Another quite fun one, which is built, were two cocktail bars we made for some days of events put on by the Architecture

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If the cost is prohibitive to use stone in the way that it was used a hundred fifty years ago, then there are other ways of achieving a monolithic construction of wall surfaces and detail decorations.

Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor

Le Salon

Georgian Townhouse Facade, Fountain, Interior

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Metamorphoses Bars Cocktail bars Queen’s House, Greenwich

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Foundation at the Queen’s House in Greenwich. I think it’s one of the first properly classical buildings in Britain designed by Inigo Jones, so quite a precious site, and it’s of course protected with every heritage designation you can think of. They were kind of an interpretation of some elements from Nicholas Hawksmoor’s St Alfege Church, which is just around the corner in Greenwich. TS: What was interesting was that they felt as monumental as Hawksmoor, but they were temporary and they were actually quite light due to the aerated concrete. The presence of them was really quite powerful, and I suppose it was the first time we really built anything of such an uncompromisingly classical nature, and of this particularly monumental type of classicism. I was slightly shocked myself at how expressive they were. It felt like, wow, this is the powerful stuff we thought it was, when you’re allowed to unleash it. JT: It’s funny, you do get projects which are pretty insignificant to everyone else, but unlock a particular way of thinking or something significant for you. SM: How does your teaching inform your practice, and vice versa? TM: It's through our teaching that we’ve taught ourselves. It's these conversations in pubs which we referred to earlier where we would justify other architects’ use of the classical language. They kind of gnawed away at us, and once we set up our own practice and were wondering what that practice was to do, all of a sudden even with the smallest project you need to decide what shape and size the window is. There was a lot of architecture around at the time that we admired, but we weren’t really sure where that architecture was heading; it was authored by architects ten, fifteen, twenty years older than us, so it didn’t really seem like it had much potential to start basing your practice career on. In teaching fifteen or twenty students every year, we could set projects based on what we wanted to learn ourselves, based on buildings and commissions we’d really love to get, based on field trips we wanted to go on, buildings we wanted to see, and books we wanted to read. We had interesting conversations like, “Why do you not want a column? We don’t insist that you have one by the way, but we do insist that you undertake these steps of analysis that we’re going to set for you: looking at the proportion, the taxis arrangement of precedents, and things like that. Whatever you come out with at the other end is up to you.” Interestingly, lots of students end up veering to a relatively safe, straightforward classicism, even the most critical. It's been a testing ground, or a sort of research ground for us. Teaching has taught us what we know about classical design. JT: And I think it’s really important to have tutors who are also running or working for practices. I think practitioners are maybe more up to date with what's going on in contemporary architecture culture, and they have the practical experience of building stuff—even people like us who haven't built very much at all. I think if you find construction

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Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor interesting, or if you think that tectonic and architectural construction has just as an important part to play in a work of architecture as what you might call the architectural idea—then you need to be taught by people who are building things. The critical thing is the way of thinking about the technical aspect and how that supports the architectural idea of the building, and I think people who aren't practicing perhaps lose some of that thinking because they’re not having to think about it all the time.

. . . we think that it’s really important for our students to situate what they’re doing as part of contemporary discourse. . .

TS: One other thing that’s been incredibly useful for us is the opportunity to meet people through our teaching. JT: Like you guys here. TS: Absolutely. JT: This wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t teaching, I don’t think. TS: Yeah, and those conversations are so valuable to us. We’re able to invite architects who we respect in for crits, and we’ve always tried to invite a classicist with a non-classicist—a sympathetic non-classicist—because we think that it's really important for our students to situate what they’re doing as part of contemporary discourse, whether they are the ardent classicists or the critical classicists. This is essential. We’re not interested in reviving a nostalgic architecture—although we are naturally nostalgic for times when buildings were designed and built in extremely satisfying ways. We’re part of the modern world and we want what we do to be seen as a solution to contemporary architectural problems. It means that we can meet and keep up with some fascinating people in London, in the UK, and overseas. Craig Hamilton has critted for us every year and has been incredibly supportive. Francis Terry has worked with us the last few years, as well as George Saumarez-Smith and Robert Adam. The conversations over lunch on those crit days, and the conversations over dinner in the evening when everyone’s tongue is loosened a little, are so incredibly valuable. It's led to us getting to know people like Michael Mesko in the US, who has been very generous, and it's led to the people we’ve met at Miami who very kindly invited us to teach there. That’s all come through our teaching, and we really hope our practice career catches up in terms of our profile and how people know of us. I feel like that can happen now that we’re able to speak with such interesting and generous people. SM: It seems like you guys are sort of bridging between the classical architecture world and the rest of contemporary architecture culture. TS: There are lots of non-classical architects out there who are very interested. They don’t think we shouldn’t be doing it and they’re not trying to close it down. They welcome the classical voice in the conversation.

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We’re not interested in reviving a nostalgic architecture—although we are naturally nostalgic for times when buildings were designed and built in extremely satisfying ways. We’re part of the modern world and we want what we do to be seen as a solution to contemporary architectural problems.

There are lots of non-classical architects out there who are very interested. They don’t think we shouldn’t be doing it and they’re not trying to close it down. They welcome the classical voice in the conversation.

Marginal Classicism with Timothy Smith and Jonathan Taylor

People are more interested in ethical shopping, ethical cooking, quality local ingredients, and that kind of thing. Hopefully, that is not a fashion.

SM: There’s an interest in history that’s quite popular within certain veins of contemporary architecture. Do you think this is just a trend, or is it here to stay?

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I suppose there’s nothing really wrong with fashion, except that the one thing we know about it is that it changes every season.

JT: The trend you’ve identified is something that we probably recognized at least fifteen or twenty years ago, and now it's sort of everywhere, and I think it will probably be around for a long time. My slight uneasiness is that some of it does just feel like fashion. I suppose there's nothing really wrong with fashion, except that the one thing we know about it is that it changes every season. I think that some very fashionable buildings which I’ve seen recently seem to be just a kind of artful composition, with not much substance behind it. Maybe that doesn’t matter, because you still have an attractive building and people are still going to think it's attractive. I think on the whole, it's probably a good thing, but I don’t think I’ve seen any great architecture in that idiom yet. TS: Several years ago, there was an exhibition at the RIBA in London called Three Classicists, which actually was quite key to our development as a practice, and which featured some drawings and buildings by Francis Terry, Ben Pentreath, and George Saumarez-Smith. There were some interesting essays in the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition; they all seemed to deal with this, and referred to some contemporary fashions, such as a renewed interest in craft, a revival of folk music in pop, and in clothing something slightly outside of throwaway, season-after-season fashion. People are more interested in ethical shopping, ethical cooking, quality local ingredients, and that kind of thing. Hopefully, that is not a fashion. It feels like a positive reaction to a bit of a dip in the culture of those things. Though with all of those things, they’re relatively cheap. Even an expensive suit is a lot cheaper than a house, and in architecture you're dealing with much bigger forces way outside of anything we can control: in the amount of money a developer is gonna spend on a house and the choice that a home buyer has in the market. So, it's not the same thing, but there’s an awareness of some of those issues which can only be a positive influence on architecture. JT: Yeah, and I suppose thinking of one of the current, let’s say, fashions in London architecture at the moment are these brick buildings—which is fine; London is a brick city. They have these sort of portrait, vertical format windows with brick, loosely speaking pilasters, and metal railings. That is very fashionable right now, and I think a lot of people are doing it because it's fashionable. One benefit though is that it's a lot like traditional buildings, which generally people really like and in fifty years time that stuff will look absolutely fine I think, whereas, lets say, something like the Glasgow Transport Museum—a sort of Zaha Hadid thing—the cladding is probably gonna be falling off it, and even if it’s not, it will still look like a real period piece. So, I suppose we may be fortunate at the moment that it seems the fashion is likely to have longevity.

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Le Salon

Teddington Folly Extension and refurbishment of a house Teddington, London

SM: Do you have any advice for students like us at Notre Dame who are studying traditional architecture and urbanism? JT: Well, first of all, you're really valuable because you’re learning things very few architecture students in the world learn. Almost no one is taught the orders. Maybe slightly more people are taught about traditional urbanism, but actually not that many. So, you guys are a really valuable commodity, and that’s encouraging. I think we’d also say—kind of the theme of this discussion really— don’t silo yourselves off. Engage with the modern world. Engage with your colleagues who are contemporary architects because you’ll both benefit from the exchange. If you don’t engage with people, you can’t change their minds. Tim and I tend to think that you get the best architecture out of having a very wide range of references. Someone like Craig Hamilton, who's an architect we really admire, has a really encyclopedic knowledge of architecture from about 500 BC to 1960, and his work is probably all the richer for it. TS: I haven’t asked him, but he probably knows his Corbusier as well. JT: I’m sure he does, yeah. Stoa Magazine

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A Beautiful House Competition entry for a new house

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TS: I think if you’re open, you know, classic modernism is amazing stuff! There’s good architecture of all stripes. I think it's far more valuable to be open to all of it, to recognize the bad— and to recognize the bad in classical! There are plenty of bad classical buildings around, contemporary ones or historical ones that have simply survived by fortune. I mean, it's worth thinking that a lot of the canon survives because it was really really good stuff at the time, built for powerful clients, and it's been loved and protected, and lots of stuff that was not quite as good has been actively demolished or fallen apart or unloved. Only the very good survives; it doesn’t mean that everything was amazing in 1500, or that everything was amazing in 1910. Be open, and you can enjoy it. Maybe there’s some professors you don’t mention this enjoyment to, but I really don’t think it's worth the division or divisiveness, and certainly not at this stage in your architectural career. JT: Try and have a broad range of friends. Don’t just be friends with architects. I’m really grateful for the friends we made at art college who are not architects. It exposes you to more things. You can see the things that they’re interested in and it's really valuable.

. . .don’t silo yourselves off. Engage with the modern world. Engage with your colleagues who are contemporary architects because you’ll both benefit from the exchange. If you don’t engage with people, you can’t change their minds.

TS: And also, you’re either actually quite young, or you're young as architects, so beware of signing up to a specific agenda. Throw yourselves enthusiastically into whatever it is you’re interested in and have passion for—and I hope and assume that much of that is classical and traditional architecture and history—but, who knows where your career will lead you, and who knows what twists and turns architectural discourse will take in the coming decades and what opportunities there will be. You know, when a fork in the road arrives, you can take one or the other route and you make the best decision you can whenever that fork presents itself. It doesn’t necessarily prevent you from hopping back a little bit later, but probably it will set you on a trajectory and other opportunities will open up. Hopefully, you keep taking the right fork and you have satisfying and nourishing careers, but none of that is stuff that you can work out now. Hopefully that’s a kind of a liberating thing. Take on everything that you find interesting, but don't put pressure on yourselves as to where you'll go or what you'll do. The classical architectural world is a small one, peopled by many historians and academics and relatively few practicing architects. The world of non-classical architecture is much much bigger, so many opportunities may be there, and if that's where you end up, you'll bring positivity to that area as a result of your education. And, if you're fortunate enough to practice and design buildings for yourself, then those buildings and your conversations around them will be far richer for having a broad range of sources to draw on.

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A Conversation with Alumnus Christopher Fagan

Christopher Fagan

is a registered Architect with NCARB certification and current licenses in New York, Illinois, Michigan, Connecticut, and Florida. A Notre Dame graduate, Christopher got his start constructing affordable homes for volunteer organizations. He carries that same dedication to service through his professional work, in each project and through his association with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and Institute for Classical Architecture and Art (ICAA). In 2019 Chris established his firm, Christopher Fagan Studio Architecture PLLC, which applies forward-thinking practice and technology towards the creation and preservation of durable, sustainable, and beautiful architecture rooted in Classical principles and local context.

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A Conversation with Alum Christopher Fagan

Chris Fagan (CF): Choosing architecture was kind of a practical decision, but it really came from the heart. I asked myself, “What am I good at, what do I feel called to do, and is there some kind of intersection there where I could build a career?” I had been into public service for a while and loved old buildings, which I felt had more soul and weight to them. I knew that Notre Dame offered a classical program, so I just followed what my gut was telling me.

Le Salon

Stoa Magazine (SM): Tell us about your career path. How do you structure your career? What path are you on?

After college, the first really great job I landed was in Chicago. It was a bigger firm and more focused on commercial work and mixed use developments. After a few years, I started to think seriously about licensure and felt that I needed to go to a smaller firm where I would get a wider range of experience. I wore a lot of hats at the smaller firm, and got my license there, but was laid off the day after passing my final exam. It kind of blindsided me; I had no idea what to make of it, because everything had seemed great and I was really proud of my work there. It was a humbling experience, and in moments like that, you realize that it’s also a business. You can’t really appreciate all the things going on behind the scenes and why decisions are being made, and you can’t take things too personally.

You can’t really appreciate all the things going on behind the scenes and why decisions are being made, and you can’t take things too personally.

So, I moved back to New York and started out at RAMSA. It was a really stimulating environment and I learned how to work at a much higher level of quality, because the consistency of the work there is a top priority. I already had my license when I started, and after a few years, I realized that in my position it could take me thirty years to use it there. I had a list of things I wanted to do, people I wanted to meet, connections I wanted to make, and I had an epiphany: I’m young, I’m relatively free, why not give starting my own practice a shot now? SM: What led you to pursue personal projects and competitions in tandem with your professional work?

CF: I want to have the ability to challenge myself and work on the types of projects that don’t come around yet as a sole practitioner, or even working at a firm. I want to put traditional design ideas to work and to serve modern society, especially people in need, and I feel like civic architecture and urban planning are really important ways to do that. Competitions are a way to carry that forward. It’s always good to have a foot in the bigger world, where maybe your ideas reach the right people and you can land a whole different type of project that you never would have imagined, or at least learn through the process of taking on those design challenges. SM: How do you incorporate writing in your artistic and professional pursuits? CF: I think writing is important for anybody to just be able to communicate. A lot of the time, architects are communicators–advocates for clients, advocates for communities, for social good, for health, safety, and public welfare—so communication skills are always going to pay off. When I was out there in the professional world, I started writing again because the day-to-day demands of work weren’t always the most challenging on a holistic level. I would go out and learn things. I would read, draw in information, and finally process everything that was crammed into my head during school. I would start out with a rhetorical question that would always lead into more of an essay, and I started the website as a way to put some of my writing out and articulate these thoughts.

I want to put traditional design ideas to work and to serve modern society, especially people in need, and I feel like civic architecture and urban planning are really important ways to do that. Stoa Magazine

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A Conversation with Alum Christopher Fagan

Nine Squared, Elevation and Plan

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A Conversation with Alum Christopher Fagan SM: You have a really interesting commitment to service. Do you see this as integrated with your commitment to traditional architecture?

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. . .architects are communicators–advocates for clients, advocates for communities, for social good, for health, safety, and public welfare—so communication skills are always going to pay off.

CF: I think you have to pick your battles, and I think there’s always a way that you can serve. If you’re involved in a preservation project, you’re doing something great for that community by helping preserve their history. Every good deed counts for something, and it can be small or it can be big. I like Jane Jacobs’s approach, where if you really want to make positive change, you shouldn’t try to just wipe the slate clean and draw something perfect, because things never work out as intended. You have to embrace the chaos of life and how complex things are. I tend to think that positive change comes through incremental changes where you give a sympathetic response to one issue and let other successes build upon that. You don’t revitalize a neighborhood by wiping the slate clean and building a perfect utopian city; you start by maybe restoring their local park or one stretch of row houses that were boarded up and dilapidated and inviting crime. If you can go block by block, it tends to be more enduring. I think everyone involved in traditional architecture has a real opportunity to engage in modern day issues; I don’t think there’s enough appreciation for what classical architecture can offer to the human experience: how it respects the human scale and how it can provide sustainability. It's locally responsive, it’s locally sourced, and it accommodates a diversity of cultural expressions in a way that many contemporary approaches really don’t. I think that anyone who really loves classical or traditional architecture should think about how they can articulate its value to the modern world beyond simple objective viewing. Interviewed by Ethan Scott

. . .if you really want to make positive change, you shouldn’t try to just wipe the slate clean and draw something perfect, because things never work out as intended.

ICAA Competition, Gateway to the Lake

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The Architecture of Kindness with Nathaniel Walker

Dr. Nathaniel Robert Walker

is an Associate Professor of Architectural History at the College of Charleston. He earned his Ph.D. at Brown University in the History of Art and Architecture. Nathaniel specializes in the history of public space such as squares and streets, and the ways in which architecture has been drafted into the social and political power systems that alternatively divide or unite people across the jagged, intersecting lines of race, gender, religion, and class. Many of his studies have focused on the relationships between architecture and the utopian dreams of progress and futurity that proliferated in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, film, advertising, and other media. He is inspired by the cross-cultural exchange in architectural aesthetics and believes that buildings and cities are most beautiful when they are built on a gentle human scale and informed by as many noble traditions and smart innovations as possible, as well as by the forms and systems of nature, such as flowers, snowflakes, and butterfly wings.

Stoa Magazine (SM): First, tell us about your background. How did you become interested in architectural and urban history? Dr. Nathaniel Robert Walker (NRW): My father was in the Air Force, so I grew up all over the place. I changed schools every year until the eighth grade, so I was exposed to a lot of different environments, including the Philippines where we lived for three years on an Air Force base. It was an automobile suburban environment, but because it was built primarily in the ‘50s, it was very dense, comparatively speaking. I could still get on my bicycle and go to school or to the shops and buy comic books and candy bars. I had a tremendous amount of experience engaging in human-scaled urban fabric as a kid—even though I was living in the 1980s— and not only that, but in an international, kind of cosmopolitan city. After the Philippines, we moved back to the United States to North Little Rock, Arkansas, a much more recently built automobile suburban landscape where I lost all of my autonomy. I couldn’t take my bicycle anywhere. Biking to a grocery store was arduous and dangerous with all the arterial roads and high speed cars. The only kid in my neighborhood that refused to give up biking was killed. At that time, I didn’t realize this was an urban design issue, but it made a huge impact on me. I also noticed immediately that racial divisions were different in Arkansas than they had been in the Philippines. In the Philippines, there was a lot of tension between the Americans and Filipinos because the Americans had really done the Filipinos wrong in the late 19th century. One hundred years later, there was still some frustration and anger—justifiably so—but there were also a lot of friendships and relationships

between Americans who were in the military; they were all part of the same military family, but when I got back to the United States, there was incredible racial tension in school between white kids and black kids, and it just did not seem normal to me. The automobile dependency, the lack of being able to walk anywhere, and the weird racial tensions— none of them seemed normal. I came to take suburbanism for granted until I went to Europe as a young undergraduate history student. When I was riding street cars in Germany and walking everywhere, I just felt so liberated. When I got back to the United States, I began to ask questions about how Nashville, which is where I was living as a student, had become such a sprawling and generally pretty ugly place to live. Most of my history professors said, “Well, you know, the United States is a young country, and the price of modernity is a life of cars. There are some upsides and downsides, but it is just the way it is.” Then, I started looking at photographs of Nashville from the 1920s and earlier, and it had a huge streetcar system—massive, one of the biggest in the country! Not only that, but downtown was full of gorgeous buildings, gone and replaced with parking lots or hideous concrete modernist buildings that had no engagement with the street and made you feel like an idiot for walking next to them. It was hostile and clearly deeply unhealthy. I got a little bit angry that Nashville had done this to itself. The uglier parts of the German cities I experienced tended to have been the bombed areas; it looked like Nashville had been bombed, but we did it to ourselves. We left behind a beautiful place full of streetcars that was very functional and healthy, although, even then, not everybody got to participate in that

The Architecture of Kindness with Nathaniel Walker beautiful city with those wonderful streetcars; there was a brutally violent system of racial exclusion, but the city was a much more beautiful place and much more ecologically and economically functional for those who were included. So I became interested in architectural history and urban history to ask how we could destroy our own cities and think we were doing something good; I am trying to figure out how we can reform and rebuild to make our cities more beautiful and more functional. That’s why I went into graduate studies, and ultimately is what led to the book I just published.

SM: You advocate for a conception of the classical that extends beyond ancient Greece and Rome to architectural traditions across the globe. What have you learned from your research into Classic Maya and Chinese Daoist architectural forms, among others?

pointing to Rome, or pointing to Paris, or pointing to London and to other European capitals that have a history of imperial exercises: the Italians going into Ethiopia, the French going into West Africa, you name it. Western European countries have had many imperial adventures that have caused lots of suffering. I realized that classicism had a future when I went to the ruins of Uxmal, the Mayan city in the Yucatan peninsula, not far from the very beautiful city of Campeche. I stepped inside of a ruined courtyard that was perfectly surrounded by columns and was perfectly symmetrical, and there were still the ruins of the doorway that ran right into this thing on a perfectly symmetrical axis. I thought, “Oh my gosh, I could be in Pompeii, I could be in Paris, I could be anywhere! This is universal!” You can trace connections between Asia and Europe and Africa, and people can argue and have argued that any classical architectural similarities you find there are

NRW: As a young graduate student, one of the first walls I hit was people who had been trained as modernist architects and who insisted that you cannot go back and do old stuff at all. It seemed kind of irrational, because at the same time, these architects are eating organically and locally grown heirloom tomatoes; it’s perfectly progressive to use 19th century farming techniques, but there’s somehow no way you can go back to 19th century architectural ingredients whatsoever: symmetries, ornaments, classical orders. So, I asked, “Why does progress require this one direction? If we are allowed to eat these ancient foods, why can’t we build in an old way if it is better?” They would insist that it was because it was contaminated by conservative politics. I came up against this kind of simplistic, ridiculous binary that old, classical architectures are white supremacist—which I understand because white supremacy was dominant in those days and it’s still around today—but somehow, modernist architecture was also progressive and liberating and interested in democracy. So I began to try to excavate this binary that had been encoded at architecture school, but it’s hard to argue by

I think architects in particular—unless they are only building tombs for the dead, all the time—need to be anthropologists first and antiquarians second, if at all.

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One of my favorite things to do in the world now is to go to an architectural environment that has little or no connections to Western building practices and make a list of all the similarities: the use of floral ornament here, a column with a capital and base there, perfect symmetry there, here, and everywhere—all the things that make classicism different from modernism are everywhere! Everywhere I go, whether it’s Korea, whether it’s Japan, whether it’s Ethiopia—basically, I realized that classicism is a huge thing, even much bigger than even most classicists know. That shouldn’t be a shock, because one of the fundamental values of classicism is humanism—the belief that human bodies and human minds are worthy of affection and worthy of respect, and that we are embedded in a natural world that is also worthy of affection and respect, and that we should learn from our own bodies and we should learn from the delight we take in the garden and in the forest, and build an architecture that speaks to ourselves on the same level. It’s the same everywhere. Everybody loves flowers.

SM: In an essay for the book Transformations in Classical Architecture, you wrote about the importance of looking at classicism from an anthropological, rather than antiquarian lens. Can you expand on this? NRW: Yeah, I got in a little trouble for that, so I have to be very clear so as to avoid angering both friends

and adversaries. I like antiquarians; I’m a historian. It’s not because I don’t think antiquarians are good or important. It’s about priority. Antiquarians specialize, first and foremost, in the past. They believe that the past is good and noble and full of great things, and that the present would be better if we study the past and we learn from the past. So, they collect the past and replicate the past in various ways, and they present it to the present for the sake of the present. But anthropologists—their main specialty is not the past; it’s people: people living today, people living in the past, and people living down the line. They study the past so that they can learn more about people, and serve people. I think architects in particular—unless they are only building tombs for the dead, all the time—need to be anthropologists first and antiquarians second, if at all. Human beings have capacities for incredibly wonderful, magnificent things and also horrible, depraved things. The past is littered with awful things, so we have to go to the past selectively to serve people in the present—to help people sustain themselves and be delighted and ennobled, and to do so in such a way that they don’t destroy the planet. That’s the goal. We need to study human brains and human hearts, and the past helps us do that, but we don’t study human brains and human hearts to learn about the past.

Le Salon

all part of a single cultural complex of domination, empire, and luxury—but you can’t say that about the Maya. In order to say that about the Maya, you have to involve extraterrestrials in your vision of imperial luxury trades; it doesn’t work. There I was, in this Mayan ruin, embedded in exactly the thing they said is hopelessly white supremacist. That is extremely disrespectful to the Maya, and I can only see that view as a direct offshoot of the very imperial cultures they claim to reject.

SM: You’ve also written about designers like Louis Sullivan, Owen Jones, and Julia Morgan— people who referred to a wide range of architectural traditions in their work. What do you think contemporary architects can learn from these kinds of designers? NRW: I often wonder what would have happened if the European avant-garde of the Bauhaus hadn’t somehow convinced the world that their vision of modernity was the only legitimate one. There was a completely different vision of modernity that had emerged—and was very powerful and beautiful,

The past is littered with awful things, so we have to go to the past selectively to serve people in the present—to help people sustain themselves and be delighted and ennobled, and to do so in such a way that they don’t destroy the planet. Stoa Magazine

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The Architecture of Kindness with Nathaniel Walker I think—and that’s the concept that you look all over the world and you take good ideas. I think that’s something architects today really need to know, especially classical architects: to be hungry for good ideas, to accept everything that’s a good idea. It doesn’t have to fit into a particular formula of values and practices and methods that people are taught in schools and that are considered integral to a particular tradition. The best architects are desperately hungry for good ideas and they look everywhere in their quest to find them, and when they find them they use them. The fact is we are social creatures. The idea that we can all pretend to be existing in some sort of vacuum where we’re all completely autonomous and we’re all geniuses and where magnificent ideas spring like Athena from our heads—it’s absurd. Even the language we use was formed by millions of people over thousands of years. Stanford White, considered a hero by even the most conservative classicist, was constantly looking at Chinese things. He was constantly looking at northern Indian Mughal forms, and if you look at his architecture carefully, you will see it everywhere. He doesn’t advertise it. He doesn’t talk about it. He just does it. H.H. Richardson was the same. Julia Morgan was the same. If you look at Julia Morgan’s architecture, you will find Islamic ideas fused with gothic things, fused with Japanese things.

There are people who worry that this basically just becomes a way of saying, “I took a little bit from the Japanese there, and I took a little bit from the Maya here.” There are examples where people have deliberately fused architectures in order to make a statement like that. For example, there is a building in Seoul, in South Korea, that was built in the late 19th century by a Russian architect who was hired by the Korean government to help modernize architecture. He fused Korean and Russian architecture, and he made an absolutely beautiful building. The political premise of that building I find silly—that Korea somehow needed to become modern by European standards—but the actual building is magnificent, and it’s because Korean and Russian architecture are both humanistic architectures with a lot in common that they could blend and create this beautiful building. To do it for political reasons, cultural reasons, or for social reasons—I find it less interesting. But to do it for architectural reasons and for humanistic reasons... then I think it’s really onto something. I think that the best architecture results from open-minded searches dedicated to making beautiful and useful and sustainable architecture— and not political essays or illustrations of progress. I also think that beauty, as a social experience, can and should be enriched with social and political kindness. Drawing on West African ornaments, for example, is an especially good thing to do in America, because it reveals a respect for Black achievement. But, if the architecture is not good on its own merits, such cultural references become insulting appropriations and token gestures.

SM: Speaking of social and political kindness, this past summer you gave a lecture at the Institute for Classical Architecture titled, “Grace Under Pressure: Classical Architecture and the Aesthetics of Kindness.” What was the premise of your argument?

There was a completely different vision of modernity that had emerged— and was very powerful and beautiful, I think—and that’s the concept that you look all over the world and you take good ideas.

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One of the great stories of human architecture is our attempt to figure out how to make these sympathetic, beautiful things also structural, so that they are economic and expressive on that level. Maybe the best system in my mind is the Chinese Dougong bracketing system, which is imitated all over east Asia and to this day is the best earthquake-resistant technical system ever made. It’s composed of mass produced parts that are cranked out of workshops by the thousands and millions of pieces and components, like Legos, and assembled into something which is beautiful, articulate, structural, economical and magnificent. The basic aesthetic ingredients are identical to Western European classicism, or to Mayan classicism, or to West African classicism, or anything else. Gentle architecture doesn’t make you a good person, but it can speak to that part of you, and that was important to pick up. That’s one of the things I’ve tried to locate in architecture with this so-called aesthetic of kindness. When the column develops

a capital to meet the lintel, it is an expression of humility, sympathy, and gentleness. Architecture can and should do these things.

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NRW: It’s one thing to look around and say, “Oh, the Maya did this and I see the same thing in Takayama, Japan, or I see the same thing in Guanajuato, Mexico,” and to say it is all similar, therefore it must be something that unites humans—but I wanted to ask why. Why do we always do these things? Why do we always put capitals on columns? It’s clearly not just structural, because you will find ornamental capitals that are not necessary, also in all these different cultures. I try to detach myself somewhat from the standard histories of Greek or Roman architecture, which explain these capitals in their own ways as cultural symbols, and actually just think about what they all have in common: they all create visual transitions. It’s something that eases from one thing and into another thing, because it’s too violent otherwise. The architecture of classicism—the classicisms of all these societies— is full of these kinds of little transitions. They are designed to speak to our sympathetic faculties so that we see architectural structures as being alive, as being healthy, and as being gentle and compassionate, both internally with one member to another, and ultimately to us. In general, it’s much easier to do that with these transitions than without. That’s why you see them everywhere.

SM: Do you have any advice for students on thinking in terms of good architectural ideas, and how to design in a way that integrates good architectural ideas from across styles and across eras?

NRW: Well, as a historian, one of my favorite things to do is to just look at stuff. I would seek out these architects who did that. I would look at Julia Morgan, H. H. Richardson, Stanford White, the designs of Christopher Dresser; he was one of the first industrial designers and a student of Owen Jones, who has this amazing pattern book. Have you ever seen his Grammar of Ornament? Just go through and look at that stuff. The last sheet in the book is just of leaves, because Owen Jones argues that all of these design traditions come from nature. What you see is the human mind distilling nature into something that people can apply in the making of their own world and the shaping of their own lives. Pore through that book, and look at Tiffany’s architecture and at Louis Sullivan, of course. And

Beauty, as a social experience, can and should be enriched with social and political kindness.

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The Architecture of Kindness with Nathaniel Walker then just imagine! You don’t see too many architects, even classical architects, who are attempting to do this, but imagine what would happen if you fused Islamic ornament with Italian ornament, with West African akrafokonmu, and then illuminated it all! Just try to imagine what it would look like if the Barcelona Pavilion hadn’t been funded by white supremacists and eugenicists—which it was—but had instead been created by people who were in love with nature and with human beings, and if it was invested with the language of the flower! Break down these boundaries in your imagination and try to fuse things, taking the best, even from bad people. SM: You’ve talked a lot about humanism and how architecture should serve living people, but what do you make of architecture’s associations—especially classical architecture’s associations—with religious purposes, which are meant to go beyond the human into the realm of the sacred or the spiritual? NRW: That’s definitely an interesting topic. I’m a Christian, but I’m also a really committed pluralist, and I don’t believe Christianity has a monopoly on good architectural forms. In fact, some of my favorite architecture is Islamic, and I think the hunger that Muslims feel to be rooted to the divine and in nature is something that all great traditions seem to have in common. I do think that our spiritual needs, our need to connect to these larger things, can and should be nurtured by architecture. I’m also very conscious, and glad of the fact, that we live in a pluralistic society and that not everybody shares my faith as a Christian, and so I’m very careful to craft my language and my arguments such that they can apply beyond the confines of my own liturgical fabric. I do believe that architecture and religion are incredibly linked. I do believe that humans have a spirit, but even my friends who don’t, they agree that humans have emotional and intellectual facilities, and so we can speak on those levels, and we can agree that architecture needs to serve the whole human. SM: What did you think of the executive order mandating new federal buildings be built in “classical styles”?

NRW: Your previous dean and I were both interviewed for a business newspaper called Quartz back when the proposal first came to light, and they published a pretty balanced and sensible reply to that order, basically saying that Trump doesn’t understand classicism. That to me is the answer. The vision of classicism spelled out in that executive order is all about Greeks and Romans, which just puts it hand-in-hand with imperial history; Thomas Jefferson did like Roman architecture because he fantasized about being a Roman slave-holding aristocrat. Classicism, like anything else which is powerful, can be abused. It's very powerful. It goes right to the human mind, right to the human heart. You can use it for good or you can use it for ill, and Thomas Jefferson used it, in my opinion, for ill a lot of the time. And just like Thomas Jefferson, Donald Trump doesn’t get it—he sees it as a symbol for something else. The other thing I always remind people is well, geez, at the same time that this executive order is coming out, a petition has been placed before the Museum of Modern Art asking them to remove Philip Johnson’s name, because Philip Johnson, the great promoter of modernism in the United States and in Europe, was a card-carrying Nazi. Le Corbusier celebrated Hitler’s victory in France, and Mies van der Rohe wanted to turn the Bauhaus into the official Nazi design school! Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, agreed, but Hitler had other ideas; he wanted to do a classicism that strips away everything soft, everything gentle, everything that resembles a flower—turning it into this monstrosity of brutality. Hitler liked his grotesque classicism. Trump likes, I suppose, his crass vision of classicism, but modernism is not pure either. It’s also been contaminated by tons of 1920s era European eugenic fantasies. So, basically, I attack this problem from all sides. Let’s please just be sensible and have an architecture of beauty and kindness. And, you know, there’s a lot of modern buildings I like and a lot of talented modernist architects who have done good work and are doing good work now. Remember, in my opinion, the best classicists are those in search of good ideas. It doesn’t matter where they come from. There were many

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SM: What is your new book, Victorian Visions of Suburban Utopia: Abandoning Babylon, about? NRW: It’s ultimately the answer to the questions I began to think about in Nashville. Why did we destroy our cities? Why did we turn to absurdly bad architecture and throw away good architecture? The book offers a kind of prehistory of the suburban revolution and also a prehistory of modernism, and it explains both the desire to continue the idea of progress but also the desire to destroy everything else. Long story short, with the rise of the industrial city in the early 19th century, there was immediately a call to abolish cities of all kinds but to continue the industrial program, because industrialism brought great wealth. For people who were already growing contemptuous of the past, it also promised a new order—a new order of being, a new way of life—and so a number of a very, very important visionaries said that we can claim the best of both worlds if we wipe out the old way of doing things and turn to industrialism as the key to a whole new era. Then, we can liberate ourselves from cities, we can liberate ourselves from traditions, and we can all live in a garden paradise of machinery. This manifested in science fiction literature and in utopian manifestos that were distributed all across the world. The 19th century Victorian city was, in many ways, a very hard place to be. The industrial slums of Manchester and London were hell on earth, and the

whole field of architecture failed to really deal with that. They tried, but they could have tried harder, and so in many ways, the avant-garde modernist reaction and their hatred of classicism—their desire to strip everything away, ornament, symmetry— all that stuff was really an expression of political anger at what the 19th century had produced. And so I began to understand and feel even quite a bit of sympathy for this desire to create a new kind of architecture that would actually help poor people. At the same time, this desire to throw everything away was also linked to a desire for violence— political violence against selfish industrialists—but the idea that you want to destroy all religion, all values, all old places, cities, cathedrals, temples, just sweep it off the face of the earth; this was really terrifying. This led to, or at least it contributed to, a great deal of the violence that we saw in the 20th century that was so horrible all over the world. To understand how this kind of culture of architectural violence came about, you have to understand both the bad things that the Victorians had produced that should have been reformed and changed, but you also have to understand, I think, the visions of modernity that had risen alongside all of that bad stuff. It's a sad story, really. Even though it's a story of hope, and ambition, and dreams, it's a sad story of dreams becoming nightmares.

Le Salon

modernists who were doing really amazing work synthesizing different cultural traditions. You also had a number of early modernists who were not so full of this kind of eugenic purity fantasy—you had people like Bruno Taut and Eric Mendelsohn, who infused their architecture with sentiment and with a humanistic appreciation for the language of history, but also just for color and organic forms, and also again—not to repeat myself too much— but for flowers and seashells. Modernism is not this huge, monolithic thing, but neither is classicism, and anyone who suggests otherwise is ridiculous.

The upside is that it also demonstrates that human dreams have incredible power, and that we can, in fact, change the world. We can move mountains, we just need to do it with a little more humility and a little more sympathy. We also need to reclaim the architectural manifestations of humility and sympathy; we need to respect the people who came before us, we need to cherish the people who are coming after us, and we need to never let go of that love of the flower.

Interviewed by Anna Drechsler

In many ways, the avant-garde modernist reaction and their hatred of classicism—their desire to strip everything away, ornament, symmetry— all that stuff was really an expression of political anger at what the 19th century had produced. Stoa Magazine

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A Brief Etymology of Stoa by Michael Bursch and Hope Halvey

The term Stoa captures different concepts in different minds: a philosopher might recognize its root in Stoicism, an Ancient Grecian would recognize it as a place to shop, and a Notre Dame architecture student would know it as the giant entryway in Walsh Family Hall. No matter the association, all ideas of Stoa stem from the architectural typology of the Ancient Greek Stoa. 1. Architectural Typology Stoa, or στοά, is the Greek term used to describe a colonnade or covered walkway. Many Stoae featured the Doric order on the outside and the Ionic order for the interior colonnade. Early Grecian examples usually employed single-story colonnades, but during Hellenistic and Roman periods architects innovated this building type to include a second story. In such cases, the first floor featured the Doric order, while the second story employed the Ionic order.1 While many Stoae were built as one straight colonnade, it was also common to find Stoae that formed a U or L shape around the perimeter of a public square. The use of the Stoa as an architectural piece to help define public spaces lent itself to cheaper construction: unlike temples, which used marble, Stoae were usually made out of limestone columns, beaten earth floors, and mudbrick shop walls. Although the quality improved throughout the Hellenistic period, the materiality and form of the Stoa defined it as a cheap, effective, and versatile building type for Ancient Greece.2 Although Stoae were built in similar forms, each provided a unique expression of the structure and the people who frequented it. This is similar to most building types; like the temple or the theatre, the Stoa evolved based on the needs of communities as well as available land and material throughout the Ancient Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman periods.

One particularly unique Stoa is the Stoa Poecile, one of the many Stoae that surround the Athenian Agora. After the excavation in the 1980s, archaeologists named this Stoa “Poecile” (painted) after uncovering a series of painted panels that hung on its back wall. These painted panels represented various mythical and historical topics such as Theseus battling the Amazons, the Greeks fighting at Troy, and the Battle of Marathon. Some speculate that these adornments are what attracted Zeno of Citium, the philosopher who established the Stoic school of thought, to teach at Stoa Poecile.3

Stoa of Attalos

Another notable Stoa is the Stoa of Attalos, which was gifted to Athens by the King of Pergamon, Attalos II, in return for the education he received from the Athenian philosopher Carneades. In tradition with the Hellenistic period, it was more intricately built than the early Greek Stoae; made of marble, it occupied two stories with 42 closed rooms lining the western wall.4

1.https://oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-6088?sid=oup :orr&genre=book&title=The%20Architectural%20Development%20of%20the%20Greek%20Stoa&aulast=Coulton&date=1976 2 www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/greek-art/beginners-guide-greece/a/introduction-to-greek-architecture 3 https://iep.utm.edu/stoa/ 4 http://www.agathe.gr/overview/the_stoa_of_attalos.html

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Stoae, of course, were never constructed to stand alone; while plan, elevation, and use characterize the typology of the Stoa, its identity cannot be fully understood without understanding the context of its environment.

functions would have their own buildings, such as dikasteria (courthouse) and bouleuterion (city hall). However, in smaller cities and towns, the Stoa would often function as a proxy for these civic functions. The shelter of the long, open colonnade provided the perfect place for discussion of laws, rules, and norms. In some places, courts would meet in the Stoa to discuss cases and application of law.5 Even in bigger cities, Stoae still had important civic roles. Situated in close proximity to all of the important government buildings and in relation to various temples, such as the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, the Stoa was part of a great crossroads, bringing together different people and ideas.

Le Poché

While the other Stoae in the Agora of Athens lie in various states of ruin, the Stoa of Attalos still stands tall due to a holistic reconstruction in the 1950s, sponsored by the Rockefeller family. The Stoa was rebuilt on the original foundations with material from the surrounding site. It continues to be a place of culture, learning, and discussion today as it houses the Ancient Agora Museum by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Grecian cities often built many Stoae in order to define agorae. For example, the Athens Agora features six different Stoae. Both the South and the East sides of the Agora were strongly defined by Stoae—the Middle Stoa and the Stoa of Attalos, respectively—creating long, straight boundaries to the open space. On the two remaining sides, smaller Stoae sit between other important structures, still creating spatial definition and covered areas for walking between the great buildings of the Agora.

II. Urbanism As a public, commercial piece of architecture, the Stoa found its place in the heart of Greek cities in two main ways: along major streets or on an agora of a city. An agora was a large, public, open area surrounded by civic, religious, and important commercial buildings. In larger cities, government

In the South-East corner of the Agora, between the Stoa of Attalos and the Middle Stoa, ran the Panathenaic Way. This was the most important road in the city of Athens, which ran from the main city gate, the Dipylon, diagonally through the Agora, and up to the Acropolis.6 As the street crossed the Agora, it was defined by the Stoa of Attalos on one side, and spilled out into an open area on the other, forming the most significant public space in the polis. The Panathenaic Way was not only used for general travel and commerce, but for religious processions and chariot races as well. Running both north and south of the Agora, the Panathenaic Way was lined with Stoae on both sides of the street, creating long, covered paths all the way through the city to its heart, the Acropolis. Other major Greek cities would have had Stoa-lined streets too, creating continuity of passage and aesthetics throughout the city.

5.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299507863_Aspects_of_Urbanism_An_Exploration_of_the_Concepts_Functions_and_ Institutions_of_Urban_Settlement_in_Democratic_Societies 6 http://agora.ascsa.net/id/agora/monument/panathenaic%20way

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A Brief Etymology of Stoa The two small Stoae on the East side of the Agora were not perfectly linear like the Stoa of Attalos. Instead, these Stoae—the Stoa of Zeus and the Royal Stoa—were both slightly U-shaped, with two pedimented ends protruding out in a perpendicular manner from the central, linear portion. These created smaller urban spaces within a larger setting, and broke up the monotony present in their more linear family members. This plan was not only used in Athens, but in other cities as well, sometimes at a scale rivaling the largest Stoae of Athens.7 The Stoa was one of the most important set pieces for the urbanistic layout of Greek cities. Mandatory for any city, Stoae served many functions, sometimes even taking extra roles if a city was too small to have specialized governmental structures. Stoae lined both open urban areas and streets, leading the way with rows of gleaming columns. III. Uses Although the Stoa sat on the edge of the agora, it was the centerpiece for public life. As a frame for civic space, it was a place for announcements, political or judicial discussion, and schooling. Most Stoae had offices for record keeping, as well as shops that people could rent and own. Others, such as the South Stoa of the Athenian Agora, had a series of rooms that were arranged to accommodate dining. If it was placed near a sanctuary or religious building, the Stoa was often used as a shelter for those who were viewing a ceremony; the Stoa would function as a secondary space for sanctuaries, welcoming in visitors and holding people for religious functions. Most importantly, though, the Stoa was a place for the common people to gather; entertainers, salespeople, and other citizens spent their day buying, selling, having philosophical discussions, or gossiping.8 IV. Stoicism The intellectual tradition of the Stoics was one of the great philosophies of the Hellenistic Age. Founded by the philosopher Zeno of Citium, the ideas of

Stoicism were spread around the Mediterranean world, and grew even more under Roman Imperial rule, jostling for followers against the Aristoleans, Platonists, and Epicureans. The name “Stoics” came directly from the Stoa of the Agora in Athens, where Zeno and other philosophers traded ideas on life, morality, and ethics. For the Stoics, philosophy was not just another academic subject, but a comprehensive way of life. Almost all philosophies discuss telos—what the goal or end of living is—at length; Stoicism too proposed an internal order by determining what was good and what was worth pursuing in life. For Stoics, along with many other Hellenistic philosophers, this goal is happiness, or fulfillment: eudaimonia. Happiness to the Stoics meant a “good must benefit its possessor under all circumstances,” meaning something that is helpful in every situation. For example, money is not considered good, since there are some circumstances where money would not be helpful. Since life has many changing and often opposite circumstances, the conclusion is that happiness is attained through the possession and practice of virtue. The Stoics sought out the Socratic cardinal virtues of wisdom, temperance, justice, and courage. This system of virtue ethics and the cardinal virtues were subsumed into Christian thought by the early Church Fathers and the Scholastics, in addition to the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. The Stoic view of emotions is not far from the common term “stoic” in present day use. To be stoic means to be “not affected by or showing passion or feeling.”9 Although Stoic philosophy is more complicated than the colloquial meaning, this idea of detachment runs strong in Stoic philosophy; Stoics believed that emotions were “false judgements” of the heart, and were “excessive impulses which are disobedient to reason.”10 Since reason and virtue were undermined by emotions and passions, the latter two were seen as negative things. For the Stoics, bad events were only “bad” if you let them affect you. They believed that it is one’s own reaction to an event that makes it positive or

7.https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=wVJdDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=stoae+that+lined+the+way+to+the+ac ropolis&ots=eD77Yrb7H0&sig=-Y1gKJay4JK-FNrYvhtANAwdnN0#v=onepage&q=stoa&f=false 8 https://iep.utm.edu/stoa/ 9 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stoic 10 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/

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Many historic leaders incorporated Stoicism in order to gain control over their life and develop stronger leadership skills. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius,

for example, was a strong follower of Stoicism. In one of his journals on Stoic philosophy, Meditations, he wrote, “You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” He would use self-imposed fasting and harsh physical conditions to attain a clearer mind and self-control, and sought reason over passion. His mighty willpower helped him to fight wars and rule an expansive empire. Many centuries later, Nelson Mandela read the words of Marcus Aurelius during his extensive imprisonment, which helped him through many troubled years to become the great leader we know. Even after spending 27 years unjustly in prison, he was still able to say, “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” Despite all of the abuse and maltreatment, he was able to rise above it all and find forgiveness, seeking peace instead of hatred, paving the way for an end to the Apartheid in South Africa through a Stoic-like practice of virtues.

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negative, that it is up to oneself to decide one’s reaction and perception. They saw the world and decided that you cannot change everything wrong or evil, but you can change yourself. This interiorfocused worldview has gained criticism for a perceived allowance of evil. Stoicism can be negatively seen as solely fixating on self-perfection, instead of helping others in need. Although Stoicism holds that you must change yourself before you can change others, this does not mean that you should tolerate evil. Tolerating evil would be against virtue, thus going against the Stoic system of ethics; therefore, followers of Stoicism are supposed to combat evil and injustice, despite their initially interior-focused worldview. A historic example of this was the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca, who spoke out for the shared humanity in all persons, including slaves, at a time when this was an unpopular opinion.

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Illustration by Eric J. Kerke

A Brief Etymology of Stoa

In the 21st Century, Stoicism has seen a peculiar resurgence. Stemming from an increasingly secular culture and increased agnosticism, the appeal of a philosophical and moral system free of religion is attractive to many, forming a framework for meaning and morals untainted by faith. Additionally, “mindfulness” is currently a buzzword, thrown around everywhere from Silicon Valley TED talks to university classes. Although this mindfulness has strong roots in Eastern philosophy, Stoicism was also a precursor to modern mindfulness in Western thought. Self-improvement and controlled reactions to outside events are core tenets of mindfulness, and have been promoted by Stoics for centuries. Stoicism created a rigid order for one’s life. Happiness is to be achieved through virtue, selfcontrol, and reason. Although criticized in its own day and today, parts of Stoicism have been accepted into doctrine by many other philosophies and religions, bringing virtue and asceticism to other realms. Stoic thought and order can be attractive to many searching for meaning and direction, giving concrete ways to live and act to attain self-perfection, and have a telos: a purpose of life. Stoicism, like the Stoa itself, brought people together to share ideas; under the Stoa roof, everything from deep philosophical discourse to commercial trade was brought to life, and remains a lasting influence on the wider world today.

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V. Notre Dame School of Architecture Almost daily, architecture students walk to studio by going through Walsh Family Hall’s Stoa as they make their way to their design courses. The large windows looking out to a square to the south of the building on one side and the large, colonnaded walkway with classrooms on the other side emulate the classical Stoa typology. Functionally emulative as well, it is a very versatile space in the School: from a waiting area for students about to enter into class, to a place for formal events for alumni, students, and faculty, to a studio space when the school had to spread out during the COVID-19 pandemic. The rooms on the side, like spaces in the Stoae of antiquity, also remain flexible for meetings, classes, and studios. The Stoa, whether it sits in Athens, Greece, or South Bend, Indiana, is a place to both formally and informally gather and share ideas. This is the goal of Stoa Magazine; as a scholarly magazine for the School of Architecture, we endeavor to facilitate debate, discussion, and creativity in order to bring the Notre Dame architectural community closer together.

A Brief Etymology of Stoa

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Stoa at Walsh Family Hall School of Architecture Photo by Andreas von Einsiedel

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Living Tradition in the Pacific a study of how the Marae of the Maori people of New Zealand are architectural representation of their culture and continued living tradition by Tia Williams

Intent My primary objective is to study the living tradition exhibited in the marae of the Maori people of New Zealand. Doing so will inform my own understanding of my Hawaiian culture and its architecture. I will travel to major pockets of Maori development in New Zealand so as to study assorted marae from various communities. Through photo documentation and measured drawings I will study the spatial character of each marae, and how its tectonic details of construction can be symbolic of living heritage in architectural form. I will visit, analyze, and compare marae in Rotorua, Auckland, and Waitangi.

Project Proposal Polynesian cultures developed as sailing canoes carried communities across the Pacific Ocean to new land masses. Pockets of community development occurred both in series and parallel as more and more voyaging canoes1 discovered new land to settle and colonize. The island nations of Hawaii, Aotearoa2, Samoa, and Tahiti were the major Polynesian powers and developed in close contact with one another. Linguistically and anthropologically, all the Polynesian nations are interconnected and share analogous traits. Myths of creation, major deities, and key vocabulary words share obvious connections. For example, the three major deities in Hawaiian mythology were Kū, Kāne, and Kanaloa, in Maori3 they were Tū, Tāne, and Tangaroa. Although distinct, all the Polynesian nations consider the others a ‘brother culture’ or ‘sister culture’ and recognize that despite the differences, each can learn about its own culture through the study of a ‘sibling’ culture’s developments. Throughout the Pacific, with the arrival of European settlers and missionaries in the 15th and 16th centuries, Polynesian culture, architecture, and language faced a steep decline. European traditions, forms, technologies, dress and language were adopted from then on and through much of the 18th to mid-20th centuries, which almost led to the extinction of many Pacific cultures. Hawaii in particular suffered a large loss due to foreign disease and the overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy 1 wa’a/waka/va’a, local language for the voyaging canoes. 2 New Zealand. 3 The language of the native people of New Zealand.

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in 1893. Thankfully, contemporary movements to bring back the lost art and knowledge of traditional Polynesian peoples have been growing in popularity throughout the Pacific. I was born and raised in Hawai’i and had the unique experience of attending a high school dedicated to the education of Native Hawaiian students. I thus grew up with the idea of living tradition as a means of perpetuating my culture, and understanding the connectivity between the people of Polynesia. Today, much of Hawaiian architecture and traditional structures have been destroyed as major residential and commercial development continues on each of the Hawaiian islands. New Zealand had a similar experience. However, thanks to the larger size of its islands and the signing of the Waitangi treaty, more of their traditional structures were able to survive. The primary example is the preservation and continuation of the marae. Although traditional village structures have been replaced with larger developments and cities, the central role of the marae in the lives of the contemporary Maori culture has remained unchanged. It is one of the greatest examples of living tradition in Polynesian architecture, and is probably the best preserved. This research will examine the main components of marae from three major cities in New Zealand. Comparative analysis of the marae is meant to show how its living tradition still informs the way Maori people understand and design their important and sacred spaces, as marae are still used today whenever large celebrations or gatherings are required, such as births, weddings, funerals, or community meetings. A comprehensive analysis of the marae throughout New Zealand will allow me to glean what themes and traditional forms were perpetuated throughout Maori history, and how they are continually represented and constructed. Ultimately, this knowledge will inform my own understanding of traditional Hawaiian architecture, and educate me on how to impart a sense of living tradition in spatial and architectural details. I hope to apply these themes of living tradition and the incorporation of sacred cultural meaning in order to elevate the forms seen in architecture in Hawaii today, and to help continue the development of spaces with deeper meanings and inherent value. My proposed thesis project is the design of a school dedicated to reteaching/relearning the traditional Polynesian voyaging method. This design will rely heavily on Polynesian architectural language and forms and is intended to serve as a Hawaiian example of living tradition and the revival of the lost art of celestial navigation. My research on the marae, its form and tectonic construction, as well as how it interweaves traditional meaning in its forms, will be invaluable to the development of this design. A marae is a gated enclosure typically containing four significant buildings, with a large open gathering space in front of the marae which serves as the place for communal meals and events and is called the marae ātea. The Wharenui, the most important structure in the marae complex, is the most intricately carved building. Modeled after the human body, the structural elements serve not only to hold up the building but the entirety of the structure is representative of an important member

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Living Tradition in the Pacific of the community, oftentimes a significant ancestor. The major parts include the tekoteko4—representing the head, the tahuhu5 –representing the spine, and the heke6—representing the ribs. Each of these parts are equally structurally and symbolically important and uphold not only the Wharenui itself but the living traditions of the Maori people. I will study the layout of each marae in the form of a site plan to look for similarities in building placement and see how emphasis is placed on the Wharenui. I will then study the plans and elevations of various Wharenui. I also want to look at the tectonic structures of each Wharenui–measured drawings of the tectonic connections will reveal important similarities between Wharenui constructions, as well as traditional motifs which will inform my knowledge of Maori character. Because marae typically belong to either a tribe, a sub tribe, or a single family, each Maori individual considers his or her marae their true place of belonging, the place where they can connect to their ancestors and traditions. Therefore, marae were and are still incredibly private and sacred to the Maori people. For the majority of the sites I will have to obtain permission from the Maori community leaders who manage and direct each marae. I have reached out to Tracey McIntosh, the head of Maori studies at the university of Auckland for assistance. Through maorimaps.com—an online registry of marae throughout the country—I have also obtained contact information for each marae I am planning on visiting, and am contacting these organizations for permission to visit and study their marae and its architecture. Some marae are more open than others, so for each city I found both more public marae which are more open to visitors and some more private marae. It is customary in New Zealand, and many pacific cultures, to offer oli, or chants, to ask permission to enter a sacred space. Thanks to my Hawaiian education I have a broad knowledge of the oli to pay the necessary respects to the communities hosting my visits to their marae. My trip to New Zealand will be primarily based on the North Island–even before European settlement this was the chief island where the native people resided, and thus has a higher variety and concentration of visitable marae. I intend to use the major cities of Auckland, Rotorua, and Waitangi as bases and will travel from these points into the more remote Maori communities to study various marae. I am expecting to find typological similarities between each marae, and through photo documentation and measured drawings focused on detailing plans, elevations, and tectonic details, I hope to more fully understand marae spatial and architectural character. To start, I intend to briefly visit the library in the University of Auckland to research what, if any, was documented of marae from pre-colonial periods. I would also like to determine if there are any drawings documenting any of the marae I am visiting, to see if any changes have been made and why. Analysis of any plan, elevational, or construction detail drawings of ancient or non-existing marae will give me a basis for comparison when I study the marae that are existing today. I will conclude my time in 4 Carved figurehead on the roof. 5 Central roof beam. 6 Rafters.

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My next stop will be Rotorua, just south of Auckland. Rotorua is widely renowned for its significance in Maori culture, and although touristic, it has excellent examples of traditional Maori village layouts. Here I hope to analyze how the marae used to relate to the civic structure in ancient Aotearoa. I will conduct a brief analysis of the urban layout of the Maori villages with a focus on their relation to the marae. I will also examine the architectural character of traditional village structures through plan and elevational studies to observe what differentiates vernacular Maori architecture from the sacred marae architecture. I will conclude my time in Rotorua with visits to existing and contemporary marae in the surrounding communities.

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Auckland with visits to local marae and the marae used at the University of Auckland for Maori studies.

Finally, I will visit Waitangi, on the Northernmost tip of the North Island in New Zealand. Waitangi is a significant city in New Zealand history. It is where the treaty of Waitangi was signed to ensure peace between the Maori and the early European settlers. I would like to see if this early conflict and resolution was historically significant enough to impact the designs and carvings on marae in the area. I will be looking in particular at marae in Waitangi to see if historical connections were made in the carving of portions of various structures in the marae. Analytical drawings of carved construction details and elevational details will be especially useful at these sites. I will start my research using the online resources which I can access from my personal laptop and which can be accessed anywhere. I have started reading a source from the Bloomsbury Architecture Library, accessed through an online portal made available to me through the University of Notre Dame Architecture Library. It is the chapter of Sir Banister Fletcher’s Global History of Architecture that focuses on Southeast Asia, Australia, and Oceania. Already it has provided me with a good base on which I can continue to research further as well as several helpful drawings and images for me to start documenting Polynesian building typologies. This source has a section entitled “Further Reading” which lists further sources on the topic. From that list I will look at Maori Architecture: From Fale to Wharenui and Beyond, Art in Oceania: A New History, Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms, and potentially Prehistoric Architecture in Micronesia. As I continue my research, I hope to do so with the guidance of Professor Onyango at Notre Dame. I am also in contact with Professor Deidre Brown of Auckland University in New Zealand. Professor Brown has written about and researched Maori and Polynesian architecture and her recommendations on relevant literature and resources will be invaluable. Through the University of Auckland, with the assistance of Sarah Cox, I will look at measured drawings of marae done by past University of Auckland students. There are roughly nine pages of drawings of elevations, plans, and sections of existing marae. Furthermore, the

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Living Tradition in the Pacific architect Noel Bierre donated drawings to their collection documenting the Ōrākei marae which I intend to study as well. I am reaching out to the Bishop Museum in Hawaii to see what resources they have–hopefully they will have documentation on heiau that is as extensive and in depth as the Maori versions. Today what remains of most heiau (found around the islands) is the stone base upon which the actual architectural structure sat; many of these structures are no longer in existence. Finally, I intend to contact the leaders of Ōrākei marae and interview them about their personal connection to the marae of their community. If such a contact relating to a heiau arises as I study further, I would also speak with them. My research will focus on comparing marae to heiau. Both structures serve similar purposes in the ancient Maori and Hawaiian communities, respectively. These two Polynesian nations left the center of Polynesia at around the same time yet developed very different styles and traditions. In recent correspondence with Professor Brown, she noted how Hawaiian social structure was more stratified than that of the Maori. Perhaps this is reflected in the differences between heiau and marae. Or perhaps the differences are due to the difference in climates between the Hawaiian archipelago and Aotearoa. I will be taking notes–typed and handwritten– from each source to compile the important bits of information that I glean from my readings. From the drawings and pictures I come across, I will document them in the form of sketches and studies. For example, if given a picture of an ancient structure, I may rely on some conjecture to construct what a section of the structure would have looked like. I will organize the types of Polynesian buildings I find and compare the Hawaiian/Maori typologies to each other through sketches, measured drawings, and scanned photographs.

Research Objectives A. Connect with the Architectural Culture of the Maori people and study the living traditions expressed through the architecture of the marae. B. Analyze and compare marae and heiau–understand the relationship between the two styles and highlight the similarities and differences between them. C. Use information gathered to assist with the completion of my fifth-year thesis design project. The proposed project is a new center for the Polynesian Voyaging Society which is committed to reviving the lost art of traditional Polynesian navigation. D. Establish cross-cultural relationships and enhance my knowledge of not only my own Hawaiian culture but the architectural relationships of the Pacific Island nations.

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Foundations and Theory is a broad introductory course discussing the theoretical underpinnings and history of new classical architecture and urbanism, taught in two modules. The first, led by Professor Richard Economakis, focuses on the nature of the traditional city, building typology, and architectural expressions. The second module, taught by Professor Samir Younes, introduces some formative concepts such as architectural type & character, imitation & invention, the nature of modernity; it also discusses the intellectual history of Modern Traditional Architecture and why an international group of architects chose a comprehensive reform of architectural practice and education.

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Selected Writing from Foundations and Theory

Towards A Cosmopolitan Architecture by Anna Drechsler Much of the Modern Movement’s success lay in its claim to universal applicability—its self-proclaimed capacity to transcend particular geographies and cultures and unite humankind through a new, efficient, universal architectural language of glass and steel. Though this vision of modernity was primarily defined in terms of European norms, technological progress, and industrial aesthetics, this desire to develop an architecture accessible to all people, attuned to the needs of modern society, remains a noble and worthwhile pursuit. In fact, reforming this vision may prove essential for creating a future beyond the technocratic paradigm of modernity—our current condition, where in a world that seems too complicated to change, politicians have resigned to simply manage an increasingly unstable status quo rather than imagine any alternative. In our heterogeneous, globalized societies, meaningful architecture must engage universal qualities that are inherently trans-cultural and trans-historical. It must speak to human psychological and physiological conditions in addition to material ones: the experience of beauty, the feeling of place, and the sense of historical continuity. This requires an architecture rooted neither in nostalgia for a mythologized past, which ignores opportunities to critically engage with the technical and cultural challenges of the present, nor in the pseudo-progressive ideology of newness—a pursuit of formal novelty increasingly tied to the workings of the market. This architecture must emerge from a renewed understanding of nature and culture and individual and collective as interdependent, inseparable parts of a greater whole—where past, present, and future are in continuity, and technology serves as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. It must be universal in its embrace of humankind as a single species on a shared planet while integrating geographic and cultural differences, and without privileging one particular heritage or tradition over another. The question becomes how to develop universal architectural principles without imposing uniformity, and without becoming an ideological tool. Cosmopolitanism In the early 20th century, Bruno Taut was one of the first architects to grapple with the issue of homogenization and the complexities of cross-cultural relations brought forward by modernization.1 While he criticized European modernism and the International Style for its placeless machine aesthetic, he also recognized the threat of reactionary nationalism that was taking hold in countries such as his native Germany, where the revivals of vernacular types were becoming tools for the cultural politics of the National Socialist Party.2 Confronted with two imposing possibilities, the International Style’s uniformity on the one hand and reactionary aversion to foreign influence on another, Taut alternatively proposed a “cosmopolitan” ethics of architecture—a kind of universality where geographic, cultural, and climatic specificity could be integrated to 1 Esra Akcan, “Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics in Architecture: Bruno Taut's Translations out of Germany,” in Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular Dialogues and Contested Identities (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 193-211, 194. 2 Ibid., p. 206.

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Selected Writing from Foundations and Theory allow for new hybrid creations to flourish. He argued for an architecture rooted in the universality of nature rather than the machine, exemplifying the “Greek Temple,” the “Gothic Cathedral,” the “Turkish Mosque,” and the “Japanese House” as models across differing cultures that shared an affinity for organic forms.3 For Taut, the key to this universal architecture was climate-specificity; while nature involved the entire world, climate—a fact of nature—was particular to place: “the more architectural forms are appropriate to the climate, light and air of their place, the more they are universal.”4 Taut also emphasized the need for architecture to address the human spirit through beauty and transparency. In his text The City Crown, he drew from the civic functions and patterns found in Indian pagodas, Chinese temples, Gothic cathedrals, and ancient acropolises to describe an ideal city of glass and steel dedicated to nurturing the human spirit.5 Rooted in cross-cultural hybridity and the universality of nature, Taut’s cosmopolitan architecture combined new technologies afforded by modernization with sensitivity to geography and climate. Making as Weaving To create a cosmopolitan architecture in continuity with history and engaged with the richness and complexity of cultural traditions, we might also adopt two metaphors: making as weaving and design as bricolage. These concepts convey the inherently collective nature of design and construction, beyond making and craftsmanship. This is a radical departure from the mainstream fixation with novelty, which treats invention and innovation as the result of individual genius rather than the result of the appropriation and reappropriation of shared knowledge, resources, and ideas. In his treatise, The Four Elements of Architecture, published in the mid 19th century, German architect Gottfried Semper located architecture’s origins in the ritual acts of weaving found in textiles. He argued that the skillful looping, binding, and knotting of material found in weaving represented the universal human desire to imitate the creative processes of nature, by which all other artistic endeavors emerged.6 Rather than formal or stylistic imitation, Semper’s theory of weaving argued for a kind of imitation similar to the Greek notion of mimesis, or Aristotle’s poetics, where artistic making was not copying something already present, but creatively interpreting reality as a whole.7 In fact, the Greek tekhne, meaning the skill of the craftsman, and the latin texere, meaning to weave, are both derived from the same Sanskrit words for axe (tasha) and carpenter (taksan).8 The carpenter’s process of making can be thought of as a kind of weaving: not imposing form on inert substance, but rather guiding the axe through the material of the wood, following the “the variable undulations and torsions of the fibres.”9 Modernity’s technocratic paradigm tends to encourage a linear conception of making: a rational, systematized process where parts are fitted together to form a predetermined design, like toy building blocks or a jigsaw puzzle. By thinking of making as a process of weaving, however, we can understand architecture not only as a static physical object, but also the product of a method. It mobilizes materials, requiring labor and energy; it is embedded in site-specific climates and topographies; it emerges within pre-existing histories and overlapping cultures. The process by which architecture comes into being requires the weaving together of ideas, materials, and a whole host of skilled people working together to materialize a project. Like a carpenter, a cook, or a gardener, an architect must be aware of the various components required in the process of creation, working collaboratively with materials, tools, and fellow humans rather than against them.

3 Ibid., p. 206. 4 Ibid., p. 206. 5 Matthew Mindrup, “The City Crown by Bruno Taut,” Journal of Architectural Education 63, no. 1 (October 2009): pp. 121-134, 122. 6 Mari Hvattum, “Between Poetics and Practical Aesthetics,” Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Historicism, December 2004, pp. 175-188, 539. 7 Ibid., 539. 8 T. Ingold, “The Textility of Making,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 34, no. 1 (September 2009): pp. 91-102, 92. 10 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Continuum, 2004), 450. 9 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia” (London: Continuum, 2004), 450.

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To support this concept of design as a collaborative weaving process, we might also adopt the concept of bricolage. Anthropologist Claude Lévi Strauss describes bricolage as the skill of making do with things at hand. The bricoleur works with a finite set of tools and materials that are not necessarily related to the current project; these elements have a past, which gives them meaning. Where the engineer or scientist would break down and analyze these constraints, the bricoleur works within them—reorganizing materials to yield delightfully unexpected results.10 Bricolage can be thought of as a kind of tinkering.

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Design as Bricolage

In the 1950s, just as many of Athens’s older buildings were being torn down to make way for new International Style apartment blocks, Greek architect Dimitris Pikionis salvaged marble scraps from the rubble and employed Greek craftsman to construct a new pedestrian path around the Acropolis using the reclaimed material. The project also included renovations to the small Byzantine church of Agios Dimitrios Loumbardiaris on neighboring Filopappou Hill, as well as the addition of a small pavilion.11 This project exemplifies the idea of bricolage in its reuse of both material and ideas. Pikionis was wary of the prevailing functionalist orthodoxy of his time. For this project, he eschewed the International Style and adapted various design traditions that were sympathetic to the landscape and climate of Athens. He especially integrated Japanese construction methods into the project; for the pavilion, the ground floor is elevated and uses stone footings at the column bases, while the paving of the path integrates into the landscape similar to the sequential patterns of Zen temple causeways.12 In abstract patterns of marble and gestural concrete, the path’s composition is a poetic dialogue between modernity and place, weaving together histories, materials, and methods of construction that present a hopeful vision of modern Greece. Conclusion These concepts propose a new paradigm of modern architecture: a mediation between global modernity and our shared desire for place and beauty. In contrast to a technocratic approach, cosmopolitan architecture weaves together cross-cultural elements with an economy of materials and energy that acknowledges the interdependency of nature and culture. It encourages hybrids and emerges from complexity. It is a process of bricolage that speaks to universal humanity by imitating the creative processes of nature, which cultures around the globe have pursued with equal enthusiasm since humanity’s beginnings. Cosmopolitanism presents a hopeful alternative for modern architecture.

Sources Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum, 2004. Frampton, Kenneth. “Dimitris Pikionis (1887–1968).” documenta 14. Hvattum, Mari. “Between Poetics and Practical Aesthetics.” Gottfried Semper and the Problem of Historicism, 2004, 175–88. Ingold, T. “The Textility of Making.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 34, no. 1 (2009): 91–102. Lejeune, Jean-François, Michelangelo Sabatino, and Esra Akcan. “Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics in Architecture: Bruno Taut's Translations out of Germany.” Essay. In Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular Dialogues and Contested Identities, 193–211. London: Routledge, 2009. Lévi-Straus, Claude. “The Science of the Concrete.” Essay. In The Savage Mind, 19–22. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1966. Mindrup, Matthew. “The City Crown by Bruno Taut.” Journal of Architectural Education 63, no. 1 (October 2009): 121– 34.

10 Claude Lévi-Straus, “The Science of the Concrete,” in The Savage Mind (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 19-22. 11 Kenneth Frampton, “Dimitris Pikionis (1887–1968),” documenta 14. 12 Ibid., documenta 14.

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Visualizing the Acropolis in Eleusis: Part 1 An Elective with Professor Giuseppe Mazzone Eleusis was an ancient Greek city located about 14 miles West of Athens, from which it was independent until the 7th century BC. Professor Giuseppe Mazzone’s course Digital Drafting and 3D Modeling: Reconstructing the Acropolis in Eleusis uses two-dimensional, animated two-dimensional, and three-dimensional representations to visualize the ancient ruins of Eleusis. Based on ruins and their plans, Prof. Mazzone and his students are reconstructing one of the four main buildings of the Acropolis each semester. Part of the intention of this course is to make studying the history of a place more realistic and accessible. Wanting to incorporate 3D modeling into Notre Dame’s classical architecture program, Professor Mazzone has students use computer programs such as ArchiCAD, Blender, and Adobe After Effects to create an immersive experience through virtual reality. In an effort to make each temple as realistic as possible, students are assigned a single piece of a building to recreate stone by stone then compile their pieces together to complete the temple. The resulting 3D models of each building allow the viewer to see classical architecture in more detail than would be currently possible by visiting the Archaeological Museum at Eleusis. However, Professor Mazzone plans to partner with the museum upon completion to share this high-level of thoroughness and historical knowledge. Through this course, students have revealed a variation among buildings despite their similar typology. For example, students discovered that columns of the same order, or “family” as the Greeks saw them, and position vary from building to building; each architect had their own proportions. These proportions may even differ inside a single building. An example of this can be found in the Doric columns from the Stoa of Attalos, whose proportions alter to coexist with the Ionic columns one row behind them. Students have discovered patterns amongst the buildings and experienced first hand tectonic principles from Classical Greek Architecture. One aspect found in both the Acropolis in Athens and the Acropolis in Eleusis is polychromy, or the use of various colors on the exterior of the buildings. Nick Sloan, a fifth year student and a recent participant in Professor Mazzone’s class, studied the patterns of polychromy from all over the Greek world, and related it to these two sites—the Acropolises in Athens and Eleusis.

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Visualizing the Acropolis in Eleusis: Part 2 On the Architectural Polychromy of Ancient Eleusis A Research Paper by Nicholas A. Sloan While there isn’t much surviving evidence of polychromy in Greek architecture, enough documentation exists to where we can begin to see patterns and in some cases a standard of color on buildings. However, while there are some aspects of polychromy that are more standardized, there are many others that do not follow a single canon, leading to a variety throughout the ancient Greek world. The Experiment For my research, I attempted to hypothesize the polychromy of three of the buildings on the Acropolis in Eleusis, a religious center in Attica. Another goal that is a precursor to the final hypothesis is to establish the general rules or trends of ancient Greek polychromy, as well as how they fit into the architectural scheme. Ancient Greek architecture was not a single cohesive system. Although some Greeks strove to create a canon for design, as will be discussed later in this paper, there is an exception, if not many, to any rule. Ethnic, geographic, and political boundaries created isolated environments for city states that would result in variety within the Greek world. As a result of this, any rules or trends that I find will more than likely have some sort of exception somewhere. Furthermore, Greek architecture underwent changes through time, just as architecture in the modern era has changed from period to period. For example, Hellenistic architecture especially challenged many previously followed rules, and is considered by some to be the “ancient baroque.”⁸ With this in mind, it’s hard to identify rules for all Greek architecture. In order to attempt this, I studied the polychromy found in renderings from the archaeological excavations, modern digital models, as well as what I had observed directly in Athens. In studying these examples, I was able to find patterns of which elements shared colors, which mouldings sported which geometrical patterns, and other similarities across these sources. Despite this process, there are still many questions that couldn’t be answered, leaving me to hypothesize solutions based on information given to me, as well as logic. To add another layer of substance to my claims, I’ve also read papers and reports about archaeological evidence of polychromy in Greece. It must be noted that this is a speculative exercise, and is based on renderings from European archaeologists and architects, some of which may have questionable accuracy, as examples will note. Unfortunately, due to the lack of preservation, there is very little known about the polychromy of ancient buildings, and what we do know only comes from fragments. Some illustrators in the nineteenth century tended to take many imaginative liberties with their reconstructions, leading to potential wrong information. However, I hope

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Visualizing the Acropolis in Eleusis

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to attempt to thwart these inaccuracies through extensive investigation. By analysing multiple representations of a variety of buildings, I can find commonalities between them, filtering out some potential outlandish, or simply less supported claims. Even today there are debates about polychromy that result in variety among modern models as well. These too will have to be evaluated along with the renderings of the past in order to include any more recent discoveries. On Eleusis Eleusis is a religious center in Attica, the region of Athens. There would be two religious processions from Athens to Eleusis along the Sacred Way, the most important road hierarchically in Athens that connected Eleusis to Athens, as the road cut through the Agora and led to the Acropolis. The Acropolis in Eleusis hosts a massive temple to Demeter, the goddess of fertility and the harvest, as well as related temples, such as the “Temple of Kore” (synonymous with Persephone, the daughter of Demeter), and the Ploutonion. Within the site is also a stoa hosting shops and a bouleuterion (a city council hall). Then, beyond two propylaea lies another court, of which the center is occupied by a temple dedicated to Artemis, the goddess of nature, the hunt, and protectress of children. Also within the court is another stoa with shops, as well as two Roman Arches, marking the entrances to the site. (Image A) The three buildings I attempted to recreate were the Temple of Artemis, the Greater Propylaea, and the Telesterion due to the level of documentation of these buildings, as well as their potential precedents. The Temple of Artemis was a small Doric Temple at the entrance to the site, built in the amphiprostyle. The Temple was dedicated to Artemis Propylaea, an epithet (or a specific aspect of a deity ex: Athena Parthenos) that denotes her as a protector of the realm beyond the Propylaea, which is further illustrated by the situation of the building as confronting the viewer before they are able to turn and go into the acropolis.⁶ The Greater Propylaea was the larger and first of two propylaea on the site, and was modelled after the Propylaea in Athens.⁶ Then the largest Temple, the Telesterion, was a massive structure dedicated to the Demeter, as well as the mystery cult dedicated to her. The Telesterion grew from a small two room building from the time of Solon (approximately 620 BCE) to a massive structure with twelve large Doric columns on the front facade, and seating wrapping around the massive interior by the time of Pericles (approximately 460 BCE).⁷ A. Map of Acropolis of Eleusis (shown by Roman period)

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Visualizing the Acropolis in Eleusis The Ancient Greek Palette The Greeks had used polychromy as far back as Mycanean times in the Bronze Age² (Image B). After the reemergence of monumental architecture in the Archaic period (650-480 BCE), the Greeks resumed painting their buildings. With access to many materials and minerals native to Greece, as well as those imported from other places like Egypt and Cyprus, the Greeks had access to many more colors by the Classical age. The major colors of Classical Greek architecture were red, blue and turquoise, yellow, orange/brown, and green.⁴ Below are the major sources of these colors, as well as other information. Red: Red found in ancient Greek polychromy comes from Cinnabar (a bright red), a mineral that was readily available in the Aegean islands,² or from red ochre (an earthier red). A less common red was Vermilion, or “Dragon’s blood.”³ B. Tholos of Atreus Gate restored, S.E. Lakovides: Example of Mycenaean polychromy applied to complex geometric patterns far before the Classical Greeks.

Blue and Turquoise: The two main blue pigments were Azurite and Egyptian Blue. Azurite is a copper based mineral that makes a deep blue, was readily available in Greece, and was the precursor to Ultramarine blue.² Egyptian Blue comes in a range from a similar deep blue color to a paler turquoise depending on how the paint is ground (coursest to finest respectively).¹ A less common blue paint was lapis lazuli, however, this was very expensive and not typically done.² Yellow: Most likely either Yellow Ochre or Orpiment from Arsenic compounds as seen in Egypt. While the arsenic substances necessary to make orpiment are found in Greece, little archaeological evidence has traces of this pigment.² Orange/Brown: Orange and Brown hues could be made with a variety of different resources, such as Ochre and Hematite, as well as the less commonly used arsenic compounds of Realgar and Orpiment. Ochre, depending on factors such as oxidation, can be yellow, red, or an orange-brown color.³ Green: Green would most likely come from malachite, which comes from copper, and is often found along with azurite.⁴ Other colors were also sometimes used, such as purple and black.² Gold, silver, and bronze would also be used for details on important buildings.¹¹

C. Interpretation of Parthenon Order polychromy, Benoît Lovoit: This interpretation is very far fetched in terms of where certain colors are used, as well as how much polychromy is applied. Other interpretations show temples with no marble unpainted whatsoever. This conclusion is illogical for reasons mentioned in the main text.

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The colors would be used to accent specific details, and much of the original material would be left bare. While some renderers tended to view the whole temple as painted, this notion is not widely held, and negates logic (Image C). For example, the Parthenon is made of pentelic marble, which would be mined from a preferred hill (that happened to be quite far), and transported to the Acropolis. Much care was taken with polishing this marble, which was prized for its pale green veins. To go through this extensive process, only to paint the entire temple, seems rather illogical. For both this thinking, as well as the lack of support for the claim, my final hypothesis does not follow this idea. Paint would be applied in a flat coating to cover certain features of the orders or statuary (with some use of small highlights in a few cases), or integrated into more complex geometrical patterns corresponding to the molding to which it is applied.

A Research Paper by Nicholas A. Sloan

Throughout its development, the Greek Doric order strove to find a standard cannon, as exemplified by the corner triglyph debate. A similar need for standardization resulted in many common themes within the polychromy of the Doric order. The most obvious of these is that the triglyphs, the band running across triglyphs and metopes (sometimes referred to as the cap of the triglyphs), the mutuli, and the regulae were almost always blue. While some scholars say that the triglyphs could also be red, many more would argue against this claim (Image D).

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The Doric Order

Another trend is that the taenia is almost always red, and in many cases, the band behind the mutuli is also red (however, this is not always the case). With these in mind, some scholars say that the organization of the colors is that red is for horizontal bands, while blue is for vertical elements.¹¹ Being surrounded by blue to either side and above, as well as red to the taenia below, the metopes (or at least the flat surface in the case of metopes with statues) would usually be depicted with either orange, yellow, or left bare (Image E). The colors of the metopes matched the color of the pediment in many renderings, however, this is not a constant. The last major trend of the Doric entablature is that the guttae and the corona were almost always left plain, and to some extent the architrave usually was as well. The architrave, however, in many cases would receive some form of embellishment on the more important temples. For example, many Doric temples such as the Parthenon hung bronze shields on a plain architrave. As seen in the example below, the architrave of the Telesterion engages a gold and silver pattern with a double fern motif. The cornice could have a few different varieties of motifs painted on, usually some variety of the fern motif. The lion head sculptures (acting as gutters), would be painted with orange/brown manes and red tongues (if the tongue was showing). Acroteria along the sides of the temple in many cases would follow the color scheme of alternating red and green leaves, or orange and blue leaves. Unlike the entablature, there is less consensus on the Doric columns themselves. It seems that the shaft was generally considered bare, and that polychromy (if any), was reserved for the capital. The annulets, or the small carvings separating the shaft of the column from the capital, would either be D. Restored Elevation of Temple of Artemis Propylaea, Andrew Bartos: This rendering seems illogical considering the red triglyphs, the painted coronas, as well as the fact that the corona of the cornice, and the corona of the raking cornice seem to differ in color. E. Propylaea Order Polychromy, Louis-François Boitte: This example here illustrates general rules and patterns of Doric polychromy, despite possibly being too ornate for the Propylaea.

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Visualizing the Acropolis in Eleusis painted red or blue. The echinus in a few examples is also bare, but in many it’s painted with an egg and dart motif (some modify the egg to be a fern or more similar to the lilymotif found on kyma mouldings, such as seen in Image C) and the egg is usually blue. The abacus was left bare in most renderings, although a few have an intricate geometric pattern applied. The antae capitals, however, find a large sense of agreement amongst different renderings since their polychromy is derived from their mouldings, which will be discussed later. The only variety really found is that the “fusto” of the antae, or the large block at the bottom of the capital that slightly protrudes over the shaft, which has a similar predicament as the architrave, sometimes shown with a double Greek Key, and sometimes left bare (Image F). F. Parthenon Anta, F.C. Penrose: The anta capital shown here depicts the general agreement of what the capitals would have looked like.

G. Erechtheion Elevation restored, Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe: Here one can see an example of the Ionic order, with a red upper stripe in the base of the column. Also note the usage of Egyptian blue in the columns, antae, and the frieze. H. Perspective of Erechtheion reconstructed, Peter Connolly: This rendering shows the notion of the base of the column having a gold band at the top. As a side note, notice the mostly bare entablature, as well as the use of egyptian blue in the columns, antae and entablature.

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The Ionic Order Unlike the Dorians, who strove for canonization, the Ionians felt no pressure to regularize the Ionic order. The result of this is a greater variety found in Ionic temples across the Greek world, leading to less trends as discussed with the Doric order. Without consistency, the Ionic order is harder to draw solid conclusions for. However, Athenians, despite being Ionians themselves, were on the mainland and therefore had much stronger cultural ties to the Dorians than the Ionians in Asia minor or many islands in between the two. This influence led the Athenians to approach the Ionic order with a mentality that focused more on standardization than found elsewhere amongst the Ionian Greeks, resulting in a more standardized palette for the Ionic order. However, there still was much variety within Ionic orders in Athens, leading to a few competing ideas of how the order was painted. Thankfully, much of the polychromy is derived from the specific mouldings, allowing for one to piece together at least a portion of it with confidence. The main reference I used for the Ionic order is the Erechtheion, since it is one of the most intricate examples in Athens. Many sources show the base of the column either entirely bare, or with the uppermost taurus moulding painted in red (or on occasion gold) (Images G & H). Some have arrissae plated in gold, creating golden arches, where the “spandrels” would be shown in red up until the edge defined by the astragal, containing a baguette and bead motif, as the neoclassical National Library of Athens exemplifies. Above the first astragal was a band with a fern motif carved in relief, where the majority of sources indicate the fern motif shown in gold against a turquoise background (occasionally shown as blue).

A Research Paper by Nicholas A. Sloan

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I. Erechtheion Capital polychromy schemes: These two color schemes are the most common in models and renderings.

Resting on that band is another astragal in the same fashion as the one below. The upper astragal supports an egg and dart motif with varied opinions on the colors (this will also be discussed in the next section dedicated to mouldings). Above that is a braided band typically shown in gold. There are two camps in terms of opinions on the volutes of the capital, one showing the moldings as entirely gold, and the other as a mixture of gold and red (and on occasion a bit of blue) (Image I). The latter of the two includes one interesting rendering by Dr. Josef Durum, where he reverses the necking elements so that the background of the fern motif is red, and the “spandrels” of the fluting are turquoise. His hypothesis places a lot of emphasis on the use of red in the order (Image J). However, this is an outlier amongst many opinions. Above the volutes is another egg and dart motif that encounters the same problem as the one below. The corresponding antae shared a very similar color scheme, especially since many of the mouldings aligned with the columns. Now, comparatively, the Ionic order of the Propylaea was much more plain than that of the Erechtheion. Renderings of the interior Ionic order show a rather plain order that doesn't have the elaborate necking found on the Erechtheion, only painting the egg and dart motifs, as well as the volutes. This would make sense, since the Erechtheion is more important hierarchically, and that some of the paints mentioned before would have to be imported.

J. Polychromy of Ionic order as supported by Dr. Durum: This scheme places a much larger emphasis on red elements, but is not a common theory held amongst the examined models and renderings

The entablature of the Ionic order has great variety in proposed renderings. With the exceptions of those who believe the order to be entirely painted (as discussed before), most renderings seem to depict the iInic entablature either more bare than Doric buildings, or equal in polychromy applied, unlike the capitals where the Ionic tends to be shown as far more intricate than the Doric is usually shown. In most renderings I’ve analyzed, the architrave is either completely bare (with the exception of the smaller top molding), or has small designs painted at infrequent intervals, occupying very little space. The corona, just as in the Doric order is bare, the kyma usually has some variant of the fern motif, and the rest of the polychromy usually is derived from the individual

K. Temple of Ilissos model: Note the mostly bare entablature with some painted patterns, as well as the use of Egyptian blue in the frieze and the pediment. L. Temple of Athena Nike Elevation restored, Louis Philippe Francois Boitte: While this rendering shows both the frieze and pediment as blue, interestingly, it illustrates the pediment as more of an azurite blue. This, however, is rare amongst renderings which seem to support the notion that the background of the frieze matches the pediment. Side note, the kyma also uses Egyptian blue.

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Visualizing the Acropolis in Eleusis mouldings. One trend that does show up is that the frieze is usually shown as turquoise with most buildings (Images K & L). While it may be coincidental, it’s interesting to note that a majority of Doric renderings use an azurite blue, while Ionic renderings (with a couple of exceptions) use a turquoise egyptian blue (Images M & N). The Patterns of Mouldings As mentioned many times beforehand, many moldings tend to be quite consistent with one another between renderings. For example, the beak motif found in entablatures and antae capitals involves rectangular objects with rounded edges, an outline of gold, as well as an internal smaller rectangle with its own golden frame. The colors inside these frames are an alternating pattern of red and blue, and the opposite color in the internal rectangle, as well as the inverse on the opposite face below. Similarly, the baguette and bead motif, which corresponds to an astragal moulding, almost always is shown in gold. These constants allow us to better piece together the polychromy of different parts of ancient buildings. However, as is typical in Greek architecture, rules are accompanied by several exceptions. The two most notable are the egg and dart and the kyma. The egg and dart, which usually corresponds to an ovolo moulding, is shown across renderings in a wide variety of colors. In the case of the Ionic capital mentioned above, some show the moulding with turquoise eggs, gold surrounds and darts, against a red background, whereas some inverse the color of the eggs and the background (refer to Image I for both examples). As for the upper egg and dart motif, some sources show it as matching the one below (refer to image O), some show it with the same color scheme except bare or gold eggs instead, and some use a completely different scheme entirely (once again refer to image A). Even more confusing is the kyma, the upper most molding of the cornice. While most sources indicate some variety of the fern motif, there seems to be very little agreement between treatises in terms of color or pattern. This leads me to believe that there probably was great variety amongst kyma patterns in the Greek world. M and N. Temple of Bassae, Denis Lebouteux: Interestingly, this rendering shows the frieze of the Doric Exterior of the building using a deeper azurite blue, while the frieze of the interior ionic depicts a lighter Egyptian Blue. If this illustration is true, then there could be a cultural significance surrounding the connection of each order with each blue.

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A Research Paper by Nicholas A. Sloan

The research above led me to the attempts at recapturing these buildings below (plate on bottom of page):

O. Interpretation of Parthenon Order Polychromy, Dorisches Gebälk: This illustration, while slightly more liberal in where they place patterns, is a good example of the Doric Cornice. On a side note, it also offers an example of a pattern on the echinus of the column capital.

P. Interior Hall of Propylaea restored, Helmuth Theodor Bossert: Here one can see the comparatively more simple ionic order in the Propylaea, as opposed to the Ionic temples shown before.

Le Poché

My Hypothesis

The Temple of Artemis is shown with the characteristics of Doric polychromy (blue triglyphs, red taenia, bare corona, etc), as well as the typical patterns for mouldings also previously mentioned. Since there is no evidence to support any kyma pattern over another, I referenced the pattern used in the rendering of the Doric order of the Parthenon found in Kunsthistorische Bilderbogen (Image O) since the proportion seems to fit nicely, as well as the cultural connection between the Parthenon and Eleusis that stems from the procession which provides reason to believe that there could have been intentional connections between the patterns of these buildings. This pattern involves evenly spacing out each fern so that they fit in a semi-ovular shape, which also align with the lion head gargoyles along the sides of the structure. Since sources show the metopes of the Telesterion as orange, I wanted to illustrate the potential use of yellow here to show an alternative. The annulets here are shown as red, the more common color, whereas the rest of the capital is bare due to the lack of a conclusive theory of what the painted capital would look like, as well as similar amounts of evidence supporting an unpainted capital. The Greater Propylaea is shown in a more simple color scheme. Just as with the Propylaea on the Athenian Acropolis, the Greater Propylaea of Eleusis would probably have much less polychromy than the temples, which are hierarchically more important (Image P). The Doric order and antae follow the general rules listed above, and leave more area unpainted, such as the metopes. Here the Doric column is presented with blue annulets to show the alternative from the red ones previously discussed, and the capital is bare for the same reasons listed above. The Ionic order takes inspiration from renderings of the Propylaea in Athens in terms of the simplicity of the polychromy, as well as from the colors typically found in renderings of the Erechtheum.

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Visualizing the Acropolis in Eleusis The Telesterion, unlike the previous two buildings, was based almost exclusively on the renderings of the front elevation by Victor Blavette (Image Q). Although, it should be noted that due to the scale of the drawing, details such as the kyma or the design of the metope were not discernible and were simplified down to the base color. The metope was shown to have some sort of circular pattern involving ferns in black against an orange background, but for the reason stated before, was shown as simply orange. This exercise served as an attempt to hypothesize the rules of Greek polychromy, as well as the polychromy of three specific buildings. However, this is still a work in progress, and is by no means absolute. The future will bring new discoveries in the polychromy of ancient buildings, which can contradict the claims of this piece. Furthermore, any more extensive research I make could find existing evidence that could further challenge my hypothesis. In any case such as this, I will have to reevaluate my claims and adapt my hypothesis.

Q. Restored Elevation of Telesterion, Victor Blavette: Although some parts might be more fanciful than realistic (for example, the acroterion involving statuary at the top seems more Roman than Greek), the basis of the colors applied seems to be rooted in established rules of Doric Polychromy.

Sources 1. Boddy-Evans, Alistair. “Colors in Ancient Egypt: Appearance, Character, Being and Nature.” ThoughtCo, January 25, 2019. https://www. thoughtco.com/colors-of-ancient-egypt-43718. 2. Brecoulaki, Harikleia. “‘Precious Colours’ in Ancient Greek Polychromy and Painting : Material Aspects and Symbolic Values.” Story. In Revue Archéologique 57, no. 1, 57:3–35. Paris, France: Presses Universitaires de France, 2014. https://www.cairn.info/revue-archeologique-2014-1page-3.htm 3. Brouwers, Josho. “Colours of the Ancient World.” Ancient World Magazine, December 28, 2017. https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/colours-ancient-world/. 4. Gurewitsch, Matthew. “True Colors.” Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, July 1, 2008. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ arts-culture/true-colors-17888/. 5. Mylonas, George E. “The Peisistratean Period (H) Ca. 550-510 B.c.” In Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 77-105. PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY: Princeton University Press, 1961. Accessed December 13, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctt183q0hq.9.

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6. Mylonas, George E. “Eleusis in Roman Times (L).” In Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 155-86. PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY: Princeton University Press, 1961. Accessed December 13, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctt183q0hq.12. 7. Mylonas, George E. “Illustrations.” In Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 347-95. PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY: Princeton University Press, 1961. Accessed December 13, 2020. doi:10.2307/j.ctt183q0hq.19. 8. Lyttelton, Margaret. Baroque Architecture in Classical Antiquity. London: Thames & Hudson, 1974. 9. Robertson, Noel D. “The Two Processions to Eleusis and the Program of the Mysteries.” The American Journal of Philology 119, no. 4 (1998): 547-75. Accessed December 13, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/1561917. 10. Solon, Leon V. “Color in Architecture: Part 5 and 6.” Architectural Record RSS. Architectural Record, January 18, 2016. https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/11457-color-in-architecture-part---and--. 11. Zink, Stephan. “polychromy, architectural, Greek and Roman.” Oxford Classical Dictionary. 26 Mar. 2019; Accessed 13 Dec. 2020. https:// oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/ acrefore-9780199381135-e-8184.

A Research Paper by Nicholas A. Sloan

Color

Description

Palette (watercolor)

Red

Red found in ancient Greek polychromy comes from Cinnabar (a bright red), a mineral that was readily available in the Aegean islands,² or from red ochre (an earthier red). A less common red was Vermilion, or “Dragon’s blood”.³

3/4 Alizarin crimson + 1/4 cadmium red

Blue & Turquoise

The two main blue pigments were Azurite and Egyptian Blue. Azurite is a copper based mineral that makes a deep blue, was readily available in Greece, and was the precursor to Ultramarine blue.² Egyptian Blue comes in a range from a similar deep blue color to a paler turquoise depending on how the paint is ground (coursest to finest respectively).¹ A less common blue paint was lapis lazuli, however, this was very expensive and not typically done.²

Blue: ultramarine + bit of cadmium red

Most likely either Yellow Ochre or Orpiment from Arsenic compounds as seen in Egypt. While the arsenic substances necessary to make orpiment are found in Greece, little archaeological evidence has traces of this pigment.²

Orpiment: indian yellow + small bit of alizarin crimson

Yellow

Le Poché

Greek Polychromy

Turquoise: antwerp blue + bit of indian yellow

ochre: yellow ochre

Orange & Brown

Green

Orange and Brown hues could be made with a variety of different resources, such as Ochre and Hematite, as well as the less commonly used arsenic compounds of Realgar and Orpiment. Ochre, depending on factors such as oxidation, can be yellow, red, or an orange-brown color.³

Green would most likely come from malachite, which comes from copper, and is often found along with azurite.

Burnt sienna + small bits of venetian / light red

Viridian hue + small bits of indian yellow, venetian / light red, & antwerp blue These values are approximations of what I used

Images Sources A. Map of Eleusis: “Classics and Ancient History.” Sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis. Accessed January 11, 2021. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/intranets/ students/modules/greekreligion/database/hypaaq. B. Tomb of Atreus Gate: Iakovides, S.E., Mycenae-Epidauros-Argos-Tiryns-Nauplion. Complete guide to the museums and archaeological sites of the Argolid, Ekdotike Athenon, Athens 1999, p. 52, ill. 24. C. Overpainted Parthenon Order: Loviot, Benoît. “Order, Restored.” Watercolor over India ink outline; 1.87 x 1.01 (72.9” x 39.4”); scale 1/4. Paris--Rome--Athens : Travels in Greece by French Architects in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Ce. Houston, Texas: Museum of Fine Arts, 1984. D. Temple of Artemis Propylaea: Bartos, Andrew. “Temple of Artemis Propylaea at Eleusis.” Pinterest. Sijia Lin, 2018. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/710583647441280441/. E. Propylaea: Boitte, Louis-François. “Eastern Façade, Details.” Watercolor over India ink outline, India ink wash; dim. 109 x 0.79 (42.5” x 30.8”); scale 1/4. Paris-Rome--Athens : Travels in Greece by French Architects in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Ce. Houston, Texas: Museum of Fine Arts, 1984. F. Parthenon Anta: Penrose, F.C. “Antae Capital.” Paris--Rome--Athens : Travels in Greece by French Architects in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Ce. Houston, Texas: Museum of Fine Arts, 1984. G. Erectheion Watercolor: Witcombe, Christopher L. C. E. “Greek Art and Archaeology: High Classical c. 450-400 BCE.” Greek Art & Architecture: High Classical Architecture: Erechtheion, 2016. http://arthistoryresources.net/greek-art-archaeology-2016/erechtheion.html. H. Erechtheion Persp Watercolor: Connolly, Peter. “Erechtheion Reconstruction.” Pintrist. Accessed 2020. http://www.venalmundoclasico.com/imagenes/erecteon_5.jpg. I. Erechtheion Order Models: Lopreiato, Martin. “The Classical Orders.” Dendrobyte, April 13, 2020. https://dendrobyte.com/2019/09/17/the-classical-orders/.

J. Red ionic order: Solon, Leon V. “Color in Architecture: Part 5 and 6.” Architectural Record RSS. Architectural Record, January 18, 2016. K. Temple of Ilissos: Marshall, Colin. “Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Digital Reconstruction of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influence.” Open Culture, February 17, 2020. https://www.openculture.com/2020/02/explore-ancient-athens-3d-a-digital-reconstruction.html. L. Temple of Athena Nike watercolor: Boitte, Louis Philippe Francois. “Temple of the Wingless Victory - Athens.” Watercolor. Quest for Beauty. Accessed 2020. https://hadrian6.tumblr. com/post/87838947657/temple-of-the-wingless-victory-athens-greece. M. Temple of Apollo, Bassae Section: Lebouteux, Denis. “Longitudinal Section, Restored.” Watercolor over India ink outline; dim. 1.02 x 2.085 (39.8” x 81.3”); scale 1/25. Paris--Rome-Athens : Travels in Greece by French Architects in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Ce. Houston, Texas: Museum of Fine Arts, 1853. N. Temple of Apollo, Bassae Elevation: Lebouteux, Denis. “Lateral Façade, Restored.” Watercolor over India ink outline; dim. 1.02 x 1.24 (39.8” x 48.4”); scale 1/50. Paris--Rome--Athens : Travels in Greece by French Architects in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Ce. Houston, Texas: Museum of Fine Arts, 1853. O. Parthenon Order: Gebälk, Dorisches. “Antike Polychromie.” Kunsthistorische Bilderbogen. Polychrome Architecture. Gonnagan, April 12, 2012. https://piminy. wordpress.com/2012/04/12/polychrome-entablature/. P. Propylaea Ionic Watercolor: Bossert, Helmuth Theodor. An Encyclopaedia of Colour Decoration from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the XIXth Century. London: V. Gollancz, 1928. Q. Telesterion Elevation: Blavette, Victor. “Elevation of Telesterion, Restored.” Watercolor over India ink outline; dim 1.12 x 1.54 (43.7" x 60.1"); scale 1:50. Paris--Rome-Athens : Travels in Greece by French Architects in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Ce. Houston, Texas: Museum of Fine Arts, 1984.

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Selected Writing from History of Rome: From Antiquity to the Present History of Rome: From Antiquity to the Present, taught by Professor David Lewis, introduces graduate students to the history and urban fabric of the Eternal City. The course begins with the traditional founding of Rome in 753 BCE and traces its events, social structures, and architectural ideas to the present day. By becoming acquainted with the city’s many visible and invisible layers before their semester abroad, graduate students are able to better find their way around, visualize how various parts of the city developed, and further enrich their time in Rome.

Ovid’s and Livy’s Death of Remus by William Marsh The foundation myth of Rome is widely known today and would have been ingrained in the minds of Romans in the early first century. The abandonment of Romulus and Remus, the twins being raised at the paws of a she-wolf, and the eventual death of Remus with the founding of the city by Romulus played an integral role in how Romans viewed their society and their rise to power in the Mediterranean. The founding myths and ideals of Roman prehistory created the aura of what a true Roman was and how they should act. As an integral part of Roman identity, this story was used by Roman political figures in order to harness the support of the citizens. Augustus’s rise to power exemplifies this use of the foundation myth. After a century of turmoil within the Italian peninsula in the first century BCE, Augustus was able to stabilize the power structure within Rome and her provinces. In doing so, he drastically altered the makeup of the Roman political structure by moving away from the republic that governed for the last five centuries, opting for a system closer to a monarchy. While the moniker of King was never applied to Augustus, the restructuring of the empire towards the fabled kingship required legitimization and acceptance among the Roman people. In order to make this transition more palatable, Augustus sought legitimization of his political reforms and reign through literary sources. Both Ovid, in Fasti, and Livy, in his History of Rome, tweak the myth of the death of Remus to promote different aspects of Augustus’s vision from Rome’s future. Their literary works provide legitimacy to the changes Augustus is proposing through the guise of returning to the roots of Roman culture and civilization. The common understanding of Remus’s death in Roman lore begins with the attempt to agree upon the sole ruler of the city. Because Romulus and Remus are twins, there is no age difference to give authority to one over the other. The brothers agree for the decision to be made by the gods protecting the site; augury becomes the decider of the namesake and kingship of their new city. Romulus chooses to set up on the Palatine Hill while Remus sets up on the Aventine. Remus saw six vultures in flight, and proclaimed himself as the first of the two brothers to receive a sign. Shortly afterward, Romulus notes seeing twelve vultures. Each side proclaims their leader king: Remus through the claim of priority and Romulus through the claim of number; thus began war. Romulus, claiming himself king, starts building walls around the Palatine as the beginnings of his city. A short while later, Remus jumps over the unfinished walls as a mockery towards his brother. Romulus, in a fit of rage, kills Remus and says, “So perish whoever else shall leap over my walls!”1 1 Livy, Book I

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Another account of the founding of Rome appears in Fasti, a poetical treatise on the Roman calendar written by Ovid. He proceeds through the poem in a chronological order, beginning with a conversation with Janus about the origins of January and finishing with the end of June. Ovid’s telling of the death of Remus2 appears on the birthday of Rome, the twenty-first of April. In Book III, Ovid gives the narrative of the birth and discovery of the twins, isolating the foundation of Rome from the rest of the myth of Romulus and Remus.

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With his brother dead, Romulus gains sole control of the city and Rome is founded under his name.

In Ovid’s retelling of the story, “Romulus says, ‘There needs no contest. Great faith is put in the birds; let’s try the birds.’ Fasti, Book IV, 813-815.” Remus sees six birds, while Romulus sees twelve. The city’s governance is bestowed upon Romulus, who begins work on the walls of Rome encircling the Palatine hill. Celer, Romulus’s protector, is given the command by Romulus to “let no man cross the walls, nor the trench which the share hath made: who dares to do so, put him to death.”3 Remus is unaware of this command when he half-mockingly leaps over the walls. Celer strikes Remus with a shovel, killing him. Romulus, filled with grief, says, “So fare, the foe who shall cross my walls.” Remus is granted funeral honors, at which Romulus publicly weeps for the loss of his brother. Ovid finishes the story with a celebratory claim of the achievements of Rome rising from that moment, Remus’s funeral, to “set its victorious foot upon the neck of the whole earth,” to rule the universe, and for many great Caesars to rule over Rome forever.4 Ovid changes the story, but refrains from altering certain aspects of the traditional myth. Remus must end up dead at the end, but the way in which he is killed and how Romulus acts to the news are important distinctions. The biggest change between this story and the traditional myth is the relationship between the two brothers. The amicability between the two of them is something Ovid stresses, and he changes the details about the brothers’ relationship. This first appears with the governance of the city itself. In Ovid’s telling, Remus seems to have willfully ceded the rights to leadership, something bitterly contested in the other retellings of his death. The pronouncement of Romulus about Rome’s walls and its protection comes initially before Remus’s death. In the common myth, Romulus actively kills Remus in a fit of rage, announcing and proclaiming a harsh warning about those who oppose his will. Alternatively, Ovid avoids the act of fratricide at all costs in his story. The addition of Celer, portrayed as a dutiful protector simply following orders, removes much of the blame from Romulus. This allows Romulus to be viewed in a much different way than in the warrior-like pose he takes up in the common myth. Ovid is able to inject feelings and regret into Romulus missing in the other stories. In Fasti, Romulus speaks throughout the story, taking the lead in the choosing augury, proclaiming protection of the walls, giving a somber warning, and bidding a farewell to Remus at the end. With this, the tone of the story changes from the commoner myth to Ovid’s. Ovid is able to give a much more personal feel to the story, while avoiding the bloody and violent overtones often associated with the myth. Ovid uses the celebration of Rome’s birthday on the twenty-first of April to showcase Augustus’s championing of family values. The idea of celebrating the murder of family members, no matter how justified Romans may have felt it was, is not the tone Ovid or Augustus would have wanted to strike during the celebrations. The addition of Celer allows for the main points of the story—Remus’s death and Romulus’s claim to kingship to remain, while removing the founder of the city from any culpability. The ideals promoted and the accidental nature of Remus’s death are further reinforced by Ovid. Romulus announces full funeral rights for his fallen brother Livy in both his individual telling and the common myth, leaving Remus dead inside of Rome’s walls. We hear nothing of how the body is treated and what would become of Remus’s faction. In Ovid’s tale, because of the amicable nature of the beginning, one can reasonably assume Remus’s faction had already begun peacefully integrating into Romulus’s. In Book V, Celer 2 Fasti, Book IV, 807-862 3 Fasti, Book IV, 838-840 4 Fasti, Book IV, 856-858

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Selected Writing from History of Rome: From Antiquity to the Present reappears to ask the holiday of the dead to be named Remuria in honor of Rome’s first death; A holiday of such significance would never be named after an enemy. Romulus grants Celer his wish, showing how strong the familial bond was between the brothers in Ovid’s retelling. The day of the dead had been changed to Lemuria by the first century, but Ovid retains the day was initially named after Remus. Livy’s telling of the death of Remus begins similarly to the common myth. The brothers go to their hills, Remus sees six vultures and reports the sign. Romulus sees twelve, but after Remus’s reporting. Both are crowned king by their respective factions. Livy then diverges from the traditional myth in his story. The two parties begin a war of words, taunting each other until blood is shed. During the fighting, Remus is struck down. The first act of Romulus after the death of Remus is to fortify the Palatine: something done before Remus’s death in the other stories. While Ovid promoted the familial bonds in Roman society with his story, Livy is striking a much sharper and foreboding tone about the current status of Rome. Fratricide is once again removed from the story, but this time instead of an accident, Livy has the two factions fighting. He is promoting the idea of bellum civile, civil war. Because civil war had become so integral to the Roman society, Livy placed it before any fortifications had been made. Romans were at war with each other before they even had a city. According to this retelling, the ways with which Julius Caesar and Augustus fought for and found power are legitimate and are at the core of how Roman power is dictated. Livy’s story is the foundation upon which emperors for centuries can lay their claim to power: you win it by taking what is rightfully yours. He further backs this up with the suggestion that the original founding myth is merely “the commoner story.” The Plebeians have fratricide to allow them to believe this is the founding of the city, but the Patricians know how it actually was founded. The literacy levels in ancient Rome would have meant that virtually everyone who came across his history would have been from either Patrician or Equestrian status. His introduction of the words “commoner story” reinforces the class divide in a way that helps to further legitimize the reign of Augustus among the upper classes. If everyone agreed upon this from the higher classes of society, senators were less likely to refuse Augustus’s rule. Livy further reemphasizes this by tying Julius Caesar much more closely to Romulus. Livy mentions the popularity of Romulus is high among the people and less so with the senators. Traditionally, Romulus is killed with a lightning strike. However, Livy suggests the possibility of the senators surrounding and killing Romulus. This is a direct link to Julius Caesar, popular with the people of Rome and killed by senators. Livy is suggesting Caesar is the start of another kingdom of Rome, the second Romulus, even if under the moniker of Emperor and not King. Livy is hinting that in many ways, the introduction of the Emperor is returning to Rome’s foundations. Both Ovid and Livy took liberties within the common telling of the foundational myth, but were careful to not stray too far from the original. Their choices of where to diverge from the traditional telling and when to return offer interesting tonal differences. Ovid is able to reinforce the traditional family values Augustus is championing, while also keeping the celebratory nature of his poem. Livy legitimizes the new Julio-Claudian rule and the shift in the governmental systems of the Roman Empire by framing it in a traditional Roman light. The traditional telling of the death of Remus would have been common knowledge for hundreds of years by then, so the likelihood of anyone taking the Ovid or Livy retellings as the true story above the traditional telling is unlikely.

Bibliography Livius, Titus. Livy Books I and II. Translated by B. O. Foster, vol. 1, W. Heinemann, 1967. Naso, Publius Ovidius. Ovid's Fasti. Translated by James George. Frazer, W. Heinemann, 1959.

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am tch

ossibility: p B Im

y Angeli ca K e

The sphere—geometrically speaking—is often a preliminary design inspiration, but rarely finds itself a pure architectural subject. A perfect sphere fits within the Pantheon, but the ancient structure itself merely uses the shape as a foundation for more complex topological excursions. Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome adopts the sphere for logical, structural reasons, leaving its striking form secondary to this initial advantage. Spheres appear at fairs and amusement parks, occupying a playful role and reminding visitors that the architecture in such places is given a carefree, tongue-in-cheek surrealness.

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ée’s Cenota l l u

Étienne-Louis Boullée’s Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton does not merely present the whole, unadulterated sphere as an interior space; he also makes it unsettling, even sinister. In honor of the groundbreaking mathematician and scientist—and using only his tomb and a few minuscule figures for scale—Boullée’s renderings of the 150-meter diameter spherical room are painted in high-contrast black and white. The architect made several drawings of his Cenotaph, each of which calls upon a different interaction with nature to convey the terrifying scope of his creation. A view from above presents concentric hoops of stone and trees, as though rings around a smooth, white planet. One exterior drawing shows a memorial fire, whose wisp of smoke is dwarfed by the globe behind it.

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Sublime Impossibility: Boullée’s Cenotaph Another shows a colossal shadow, draping the upper dome with its intangible cloak, and cleaving the lower forms into bleak sectors of dark and light. Boullée’s section drawings are still more austere in this regard, using bright days and inky nights to transform the immense chamber. In one, exterior sunlight shines through the tiny holes that pepper the upper hemisphere, creating constellations within the interior illusion of a night sky. In reverse, when exterior darkness falls, it exists in contrast with a powerful artificial light source suspended in the center of the chamber. In spite of their potential for a strong psychological and emotional effect on visitors, Boullée’s drawings of the Cenotaph never transitioned into a built reality. This is the rare type of architectural drawing: the design of a meticulously-rendered yet intentionally impossible building. Boullée’s work inspired his many students, but it is the opposite of a student project— something which must be able to exist in spite of the fact that it never will. Not quite the fantasy landscape of a capriccio, either, the set of Cenotaph renderings possesses a strange beauty not in spite of but by the fact of their hopelessness. The drawings are the building, because there is no actualized building. They are not of a past structure, nor for a future structure. Without them, the Cenotaph cannot be remembered, and through them, it is frozen in timelessness.

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Since Boullée’s time, the pure-geometry building has remained rare, but the unfeasible building has gained traction. Previously impossible structures have been enabled by advances in computer drafting technology, and the act of realizing a seemingly ludicrous building has become an art. Architects can co-opt the laws of physics to balance outrageously-arranged deconstructivist hodgepodges, and twist huge expanses of metal into suspended shapes of perfect structural soundness. Construction, in this scenario, is a venture that— however conveniently available—should not always be pursued. There are many idea-defined postmodernist buildings that could have remained as satisfyingly two-dimensional as Boullée’s. Their triumph comes from making the impossible possible, while Boullée’s triumph came from keeping the impossible far out of reach, and gorgeously formidable. Despite this gap of style and technology, our world is gripped by existential woes cut from a similar cloth to those of Boullée’s. He and his contemporaries weathered the pangs of an increasingly globalized world, whose scope was dizzying. They sought to confront the smallness of humankind with their work through a movement called the Sublime, and in doing so to wrest some control from the unyielding grip of the universe. This movement ran its historical

Sublime Impossibility: Boullée’s Cenotaph a cake in the shape of the Cenotaph on his first night in the eternal city, viewers cut through the layers of a film depiction of a dessert depiction of an ink-andpaper depiction of the domed memorial.

Peter Greenaway’s film The Belly of an Architect follows the loss of control and existential confrontations of titular designer Stourley Kracklite. He arrives in Rome to direct an exhibition of the work of his architectural hero: none other than Étienne-Louis Boullée. The film features expansive shots of Italian interiors and ruins. The spaces are enormous, and the characters are set within them as scale figures, lurking at the very bottom, their arms resting on a dinner table that might just as well be Newton’s tomb. Moving from monumental space to monumental space, Kracklite faces the fragility of his own humanity in the face of the natural universe, his life gradually brought to a close by a stomach cancer he cannot halt.

Boullée’s masterpiece embodies the paradox of the Sublime. It seeks to inspire fear and awe at the power of the natural world by representing the vast universe, but is undeniably designed by humans. Our insignificance is made all the more potent within the Cenotaph’s spherical space—a space whose permanent two-dimensionality does not dim the effect of the drawings. Boullée reminds us that though we cannot control the universe, we can at least manipulate it within the scope of our own creations.

The Belly of an Architect, like Greenaway’s other films, is notable for its scenes mirroring famous paintings—in this case, those of Bronzino and Piero della Francesca—alluding to art with art. Similarly, it provides an additional artistic lens through which Boullée’s work can be viewed. As Kracklite sits behind

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course, but these sentiments have been present since humankind’s first glance up at the stars. We stay humble because of them, grow in spite of them, and reference them constantly in our art.

This is no Epcot sphere, where distant Disney voices sing that, after all, this is a small world. Boullée knew that the world is an immense and bleak one. If we could stand in his unrealized chamber, as the false stars twinkled above, perhaps we would come to terms with our own smallness. Yet, though we cannot tangibly gaze up into a vast and spherically-fabricated ceiling, the powerful starkness of Boullée’s drawings nevertheless allows us a brief shiver of awe-tinged fear.

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Building Brick Culture American Plains by James Lengen As part of a grant from the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, colleague Sanketh Bharathish and I had the opportunity to learn traditional brick masonry. We gained hands-on construction experience working at a development near Norman, Oklahoma and grappled with problems inherent in contemporary construction. One of the most remarkable aspects of traditional towns and urban centers in the United States is the use of load-bearing, mass wall brick construction. The historic brick districts of cities like Lincoln, Omaha, Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth, St. Louis, Tulsa and Oklahoma City have been the location of recent urban revitalization with immense economic and cultural value. The buildings of these brick town centers have an architectural character ranging from Victorian or Romanesque to something industrial and uniquely American. They express mass, permanence, and a robust urbanism for an agricultural economy linked by rail. Their ornate facades reflect the proportions of modular brick and dignify the streets they front. Traditional masonry lives on today in the work of a few builders. Recognized as an emerging talent by the ICAA, Austin

in the

Tunnell strives to reinvigorate this tradition with his company, Building Culture.1 Austin’s firm focused initially on custom homes and has contributed a pocket neighborhood to the New Urbanist town of Carlton Landing, Oklahoma. Here, small affordable brick homes gather around a cozy central green. A brick court, accessed through a moongate, leads to a community fire pit. All of the homes have front porches, and lime-washed, tumbled bricks grace both exterior and interior walls. Sanketh and I joined fellow student Dylan Rumsey near Norman, Oklahoma to learn from Austin at another New Urbanist development, Selah. Here we laid out the kitchen wing of a restaurant with walls composed of three wythes of brick. Austin showed us how to mix mortar and lay brick efficiently. He showed us key aspects of construction, like the location of vertical shafts and bond beams reinforced with GFRP (glass fiber reinforced polymer), especially at arched openings and gabled end walls. Austin explained that polymer reinforcement will not rust out and helps the wall resist lateral forces. We watched as the masons built rough arches with three courses of rowlock voussoirs corbelling out above the openings. Without needing to cut bricks, masons construct rough arches faster. In a rough

arch, trapezoidal mortar joints resolve the geometry of the curve. Austin used header courses to create a frieze band on the building’s two wings: projecting bricks alternate in a ‘checkerboard’ pattern creating a pleasant play of light and shadow. Austin hopes to create an apprenticeship program to pass on his knowledge and spread his love for the craft of brick masonry. Ultimately, Building Culture seeks to make traditional masonry a practical and affordable building method. The benefits of traditional masonry include longevity and low maintenance costs, but R-Values for a three-wythe brick wall are quite low, between R 3 and 4.2 Mass wall construction works well in temperate climates, where buildings slowly heat up during the day and release that heat at night, providing passive climate control. However, in cases where HVAC systems are more relied upon, a higher R value is necessary. A retrofit using contemporary construction methods creates more issues. Furring out and adding moisture barriers and polyisocyanurate insulation disrupts the moisture balance in the wall leading to leaks, mold issues, and freeze/thaw damage. Traditionally, R value was enhanced by plastering the brick on both interior and exterior. Austin plans to experiment

1 https://www.classicist.org/articles/announcing-gerald-bauer-and-austin-tunnell-as-the-winners-of-the-2020-award-for-emerging-ex cellen ce-in-the-classical-tradition/ (accessed 1/17/2021) 2 https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/digests/bsd-114-interior-insulation-retrofits-of-load-bearing-masonry-walls-in-cold-cli mates#:~:text=33%20per%20inch.,films%E2%80%9D)%20of%20another%20R. (accessed 1/17/2021) 3 https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/building-a-house-of-hemp (accessed 1/17/2021)

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Building Brick Culture in the American Plains

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Rough arch opening at the Norman Oklahoma restaurant Photo: James Lengen

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Building Brick Culture in the American Plains with traditional lime plaster, but also hopes to test other wall assemblies.

easy-to-construct alternatives to normative contemporary construction.

A double wythe of brick can be anchored with basalt ties to biocomposite units, like ‘Hempcrete’ blocks. Hempcrete has an R value of 2 to 2.5 per inch, so these walls can easily match contemporary construction.3 The basalt ties avoid rust and thermal bridging. Moreover, mass walls avoid thermal bridging at framing members and air leaks from construction defects and fastener holes. Another potential solution, integrating aerated clay blocks into the wall assembly would also provide a higher R value. Honeycomb clay blocks, like Porotherm, maximize the insulating properties of air by creating many small cavities within the unit. Unlike most biocomposite blocks, they can serve as stand-alone structure. Both Hempcrete and Porotherm have a high R value and are made from natural materials. They provide elegant and

The owner at the Norman, Oklahoma development gave our team the opportunity to design and build an arch to serve as a gateway between a park and the back garden of the restaurant. Guided by Austin, we quickly got to work on a four-foot clear span Roman arch, flanked by columns, and crowned with an entablature to display ornamental brick detail. Grounding the design in tradition, we converted the proportions of an Ionic portal to brick dimensions and chose details to connect it to the restaurant site. Having established the footprint on the footing with chalk lines, we set four posts at the corners. Using a laser level we marked the same height on each post and then a line for each course of brick. We attached strings to each post ensuring each course was level. Once we reached the height of the arch, we installed

Figures: James Lengen

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a plywood centering onto which we laid three rowlock courses. From there, we laid the crowning ornamental courses from atop the scaffolding. The greatest challenges for students on a project like this include: laying brick quickly and accurately enough to get the job done on time, and having the strength to move mortar and brick across the site on days where equipment is not available. Nevertheless, traditional construction is approachable and fulfilling. The many projecting details create a sculptural assemblage with a play of light and shadow on rough joints and tumbled bricks, producing a texture that can not be matched by veneer. The aesthetic advantages of traditional construction become obvious. As a culturally and environmentally sustainable practice, load-bearing brick buildings should be preserved and deployed for new construction to enrich our future cities and communities.

Building Brick Culture in the American Plains

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Students Sanketh Bharathish, James Lengen, and Dylan Rumsey pose at the Norman, Oklahoma arch. Photo: Austin Tunnell

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Il Bosco Sketching the University of Notre Dame Architectural Photography: to Look with the Architect’s Eye Architecture in Film “Coffee, please!”

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Sketching the University of Notre Dame A Collaboration with the Frank Montana Sketching Club

Main Building, Madeline Seago, née Fairman

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Sketching the University of Notre Dame

Il Bosco

by Angelica Ketcham Each of us starts sketching for a different reason. Perhaps we spin the great roulette wheel of hobbies, and this is where our ball lands. Perhaps, for those of us who are architects, we want to get closer to our field by drawing buildings, or to escape it by drawing absolutely anything else. Perhaps we were given a new set of pencils and feel the urgency to do them justice, or to feel a sense of triumph in gradually reducing our years-old set to nubs of graphite. We may have just dipped our toes into the swirling pool of The Arts, or we might have been swimming in it for a while, sketching the one creative form we have never tried. Eventually, once sketching becomes adequately sewn into our identity, these disparate motivations converge. Soon, we start to see the world through a sheet of sketchbook paper. It affects how we walk through life. We notice three-dimensional things that would be interesting to render in two-dimensions, and wonder what time of day will produce the best shadows. We look at buildings and people with new scrutiny, wondering how we would draw them, dreamily orbiting the subject in search of a perfect angle. A sketch is a tribute. It says, “I saw this, and I thought it was worth remembering.” It says, “I took the time to look—to really look—at its lines and shapes.” If a building, or person, or object is important to you, you honor it with a sketch; if it is not yet important to you, take the time to sketch it, and it will become so. After COVID-19 restrictions made club activities more challenging in the Fall 2020 semester, the Frank Montana Sketching Club used Instagram to connect with students, alumni, faculty, and friends via an “Online Social Sketching” series. With a different campus subject each week, we welcomed submissions from the Notre Dame community at large, many of which we received again for this collaboration with Stoa Magazine. Being able to unite virtually by drawing the same subject has helped to bridge some of the distance between all of us, across space, generations, and roles.

Basilica, Matthew Heithoff

Maddie Seago (née Fairman), Former Club President, Class of 2020 “For me, sketching is a way to collect memories. It's also a reminder that there is detail everywhere worth noticing and capturing.”

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Sketching the University of Notre Dame

Bond Hall, Michael Harris

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Bond Hall, Yi Huang

Bond Hall, Brian Droste

Bond Hall, Fran Beheran

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Basilica

Main Building

Bond Hall

Hesburgh Library Washington Hall

Lyons Hall Rockne Memorial

South Dining Hall

Alumni Hall

Law School

Dillon Hall

Eck Visitors Center

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Sketching the University of Notre Dame

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Martin Burns, Club Founder, Class of 2017 “I founded the Club after spending a transformative year sketching in Rome. My classmates and I were surprised that there was not already a student-based sketching club active at the time. We decided to name the Club after Professor Frank Montana, who was ultimately the reason we were able to have such time in Rome. Our first faculty patron was Professor Jose Cornelio da Silva, whose gorgeous plein air watercolors captivated us throughout our year in Italy. The joy of travel paired with the study of architectural precedent via drawing is something that is not only good for the eye and the hand, but also for the spirit. We hope the sketchbook page continues to serve as a respite from the depths of model space. I am grateful that the Club is growing and evolving. Thank you to all current students involved in the Club.”

Ducks, Andrew Seago

Andrew Seago, Former Club Board Member, Class of 2020 “I find that I can easily remember the impression or the feeling imparted by a place, but I cannot remember what the place really looked like unless I have drawn it. I don’t even have to look at my drawing, because it is the act itself which imprints on my memory. That is why sketching is so invaluable to architects; It seems to be the best way to capture only what matters. If you think about it like that, it is much more efficient than photography, and well worth our time and effort.” Map of the Notre Dame Campus showing featured sketching locations.

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Sketching the University of Notre Dame

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Jesus Statue, Kelly Mortell

Jesus Statue, Emily Fuchs

Moses Statue, Margaret Derwent

Eck Center, Fran Beheran

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Sketching the University of Notre Dame

Il Bosco

Lyons Hall, Margaret Derwent

Rockne, Sharon Yehnert

Grotto, Yi Huang

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Sketching the University of Notre Dame

Main Building, Joe Faccibene

Main Building, Noah Panos

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Main Building (from photo), Martin Burns

Sketching the University of Notre Dame

Il Bosco

Main Building, Rogelio Carrasco

South Dining Hall, Fran Beheran

South Dining Hall, Sharon Yehnert

Sharon Yehnert, Club Board Member, Class of 2023 “I love sketching architecture from everyday life. It forces you to slow down and really appreciate subtleties in your surroundings that you might otherwise miss out on.”

South Dining Hall, Bob Jakubik

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Sketching the University of Notre Dame

Walsh Family Hall, Matt Loumeau

Walsh Family Hall, Emily Fuchs

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Law School, Michael Bursch

Sketching the University of Notre Dame

Il Bosco

Washington Hall, Matthew Heithoff

Law School, Margaret Derwent

Alumni Hall, Dana Ishaq

Main Building, Andrew Seago

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ARCHITECTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY TO LOOK WITH THE ARCHITECT’S EYE Foreword by Professor David Lewis The best architectural photography seeks to look with the architect’s eye. It emphasizes spatial arrangements, sculptural masses, and atmospheric effects. Lighting is especially important because photography is a record of light. The architectural photographer Julius Shulman, famous for glamorous images of glass-walled California houses, wrote, “I emphatically insist that lighting should reproduce and even reinforce the designer’s intentions.”1 To achieve this, Shulman recommended studying a building’s orientation in relation to the sun, in order to determine the time of day that would best bring out its character. Even a precast parking garage can look good when a pink sunset suddenly highlights its edges and sparkles in the surrounding palm trees. Shulman often photographed buildings at twilight, when electric light could reveal inviting interiors, but exterior forms could still be discerned. He replaced bulbs with more or less powerful wattages as needed, seeking to emphasize existing lighting conditions rather than flood a space with artificial illumination. To take a good photograph, trust your eye and capture what excites you visually: a reflection, an unexpected view, or the sense of recession in a long vista. Emphasize texture and setting. All of the elements that make good architecture can be captured in a good photograph. If transparency is a key feature of the design, choose an angle that looks through the building, or wait until it glows like a lantern in the night. Change the camera’s position to increase or decrease the amount of ground in the frame, or to change the angles of converging lines. If structure is important, emphasize structure. “The architecture should take precedence over the photography,” Shulman wrote. 194

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When photographing interiors, Shulman moved furniture, pushing it forward into the frame to give a sense of enclosure and depth. A lot of people don’t think to do that. You should be creative and remember your own ability to modify the scene. Shulman tells the story of having assistants hold branches in the frame to make a building less desolate and hide construction blemishes. Architectural photography, although it gives the impression of authentic reality, can be deceptive. I recently asked students in the Alternative Modernities seminar to take a photograph that makes an ugly building on campus look good. (It was up to them to decide what constitutes an ugly building). The resulting black and white photographs made Decio and Mendoza look like sleek racecars. In black and white, shadows and repeating elements are reduced to compelling 2-D patterns. There is a reason that repetitive elements became an important aspect of modernist aesthetics in the age of the glossy magazine. But such devices are often less compelling in person. A two-dimensional art form has different aesthetic requirements. The only way to really judge a building is in person. Scale is so important, but even with cars and people for reference, the monumentality of a cliff of stone is not felt in the same visceral way in ten square inches of ink. The movement of light, an echo under a vault, a skin-tearing brush against bush-hammered concrete—these cannot be experienced through photography. A real building can be much more beautiful in person. When reality beats photography, that is good architecture. All quotations are from Shulman’s book, The Photography of Architecture and Design (New York: Whitney, 1977)

Palacio, Ryan Palczynski

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