Central Building of the Eishin Campus, built by Alexander in Japan in 1985. Source: www.tricycle.com

The National Building Museum has made a fascinating selection for its 2009 Vincent Scully laureate and all of us here are eager to share the news as an auspicious, consensus-building way to remind our constituents of Christopher Alexander’s unique and under-appreciated contribution to design pedagogy and practice.   The article form Metropolis Magazine attached sums it up well.  As far as I know Mr. Alexander does not and would not label himself a classicist and traditionalist. In any case, I make no such presumption in marking this tribute. Instead, I recognize his steadfast iconoclasm in the face of all dogma including the hegemony of modernism which inevitably shaped his training and predominant collegial milieu. There is in his work always a central place for nature, the human figure , and the applied endurance of  time-tested patterns,   contrasting his work with most of what has been the overall design zeitgeist of his lifetime.  Combined with his innovative embrace of technology and its resulting tools, his role as universal, provocative asset is secure. Congratulations to him the Museum’s selection committee for such overdue recognition.  PWG

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you. Leo Tolstoy

The inherent dichotomy expressed by Russia’s foremost literary genius in this passionate admonishment has been resolved magnificently by his latter-day native compatriots: Anton Glikin and Irina Shumitskaya.

That fact is revealed well by their exhibition and accompanying catalog and I am pleased to join in heralding its advent here in our design classrooms (the first exhibition we’ve been yet able to feature…) and the fine continuing achievement of both artists.

Anton and Irina long ago learned how to stand still and observe with the patient and discerning eyes of the draughtsman. This act informs their minds and guides their hands.

They stop in order to work.

Of particular interest to the architects, designers and other classically-inclined constituents of the Institute are their drawings of buildings and interiors, whether old and new, which delight the viewer’s eye while also informing the attentive practitioner in search of exemplary lessons for the sake of their own respective design endeavors.  In this way, they record results and inspire anew; and in this way, they demonstrate above all how drawing is a pathway to seeing.

Irina Shumitskaya, The Greek House, East View, 2004, Watercolor on paper, 40x25”

The ICA&CA was pleased in 2003 to recognize Anton with its Arthur Ross Award in Rendering –although it might just as well have fallen in a category of fine art. He transcends categorization. Meanwhile, the work of his wife and fellow traveler, Irina, reveals comparable excellence and reinforces our celebratory impulse on behalf of each.

Anton Glikin , A Rotunda, 2004, Pen on paper, 7 ½ x 5”

Likewise their rigorous studies at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, where those enrolled advance to new tasks and assignments only when each sequential assignment has been mastered fully, constitute a fine pedagogical model for the Institute today. This is the case in our fine arts division, the Grand Central Academy of Art, whose curriculum demands years of cast and figure drawing preceding the paint brush, as well as in our classical design certificate sequence and its close ties to a well-tested progression of skills and aptitude.

Irina Shumitskaya, An Empire Style Garden Seat, , Elevation, 2001, Watercolor on paper, 17x12”

Anton and Irina personify the Institute’s work both in the course of study they followed in Russia and in the results of this preparation achieved in America. It is a joy to know that their contributions to contemporary classicism will continue for many years to come.

Paul Gunther

August 2009

Anton Glikin, A Mosque at Sunrise, 1995, Watercolor on paper, 18x19”

The Southern California Chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America (ICA&CA-SCC) announced the winning designs of its inaugural Affordable Housing Design Competition at a special reception at the new Waterworks, West Hollywood, on July 16, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m..  The event was held to benefit Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles. The winners are:

Best Overall Design

Cindy Grant Architecture, Inc. with Tierra Sol y Mar, Inc. and Brooke Gardner Interior Design

Best Craftsman

William Hefner Architecture, Interiors and Landscape

Best Spanish Colonial

Cindy Grant Architecture, Inc. with Tierra Sol y Mar, Inc. and Brooke Gardner Interior Design

Best Mid-Century Modern

KAA Design Group, Inc. with Kaplan Gehring McCarroll Architectural Lighting

Best Contemporary

William Hefner Architecture, Interiors and Landscape

Best English Colonial Revival

Michael G Imber, Architects

Spanish Colonial & Best Overall Design Winner by Cindy Grant Architecture, Inc.

The ICA&CA-SCC and Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles launched this competition in response to the critical need to shelter families impacted by the current economic crisis.  This partnership brings a fresh approach to an age-old problem: affordable homes which families actually dream of owning. Over twenty-two firms nationwide representing architects, interior designers, landscape architects and those in the construction industry have entered the competition.  The single-family home designs capturing the best of Southern California vernacular styles will be adapted for use by Habitat for Humanity affiliates throughout Southern California.  The design entries inform and inspire affordable, neighborly, sustainable homes that can be readily built by Habitat volunteers. The winning entries will be published in a pattern design guidebook for use by Habitat for Humanity.

Craftsman by William Hefner Architecture, Interiors and Landscape

Committee member Brooke Gardner speaks to the importance of this initiative: “The goal of the competition was to produce an Architectural Pattern Book to be used in the field by Habitat volunteers. The Pattern Book will feature five different architectural styles, Spanish Colonial, English Colonial, Craftsman, Mid-Century Modern and Contemporary and will offer aesthetically pleasing, affordable design solutions that will help Habitat secure the permits and the resources to house families in need.  It is hoped that the partnership between these two highly respected non-profit groups will result in building designs that will encourage healthy community growth, accelerate project approvals within building agencies, and ultimately, provide affordable homes to those desperately in need. This was a unique opportunity to direct the skill and attention of design practitioners to meet an urgent social need and to reduce the ‘not in my backyard’ community response to many affordable housing initiatives.”

English Colonial Revival by Michael G. Imber Architects

The competition is made possible by the support from DC Williamson General Contracting, Inc., McCoy Construction, Waterworks, Richard Holz, Inc., Taylor Development, William Hefner Architecture, KAA Design Group, and the Pacific Design Center.

About ICA&CA-SCC:

The ICA&CA is the leading national non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the practice and appreciation of the classical tradition in architecture and the allied arts.  The organization fulfills its mission through four program areas:  education, publications, awards and advocacy.

The Southern California Chapter regularly produces unique events, home tours, lectures, continuing education courses and discussions with architects, authors and designers committed to advancing the institute’s core values.

For more information, log onto www.classicist-socal.org.

About Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles

Habitat For Humanity of Greater Los Angeles strives to eliminate poverty housing through advocacy, education and partnership with families in need to build simple, decent affordable housing. Since 1990, HFH GLA has built and renovated nearly 500 homes locally and worldwide, transforming the lives of hundreds of individuals.

For more information, visit www.habitatla.org.

The Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America at the behest of its fine arts division, the Grand Central Academy of Art, is pleased to announce the winners of the second annual Classical Figure Sculpture Competition.

The first place winning work by Joshua Koffman

The competition took place from June 8-12, 2009 in the Grand Central Academy’s Sculpture Atelier at 20 West 44th Street in Manhattan. It was made possible by a grant from the Morris and Alma Shapiro Fund of New York, New York.

The twelve finalists (selected  last April from more than 60 applicants) competed in a deliberately all- consuming 40 - hour, five-day competition, modeling a half-size figure from life.  The model held her pose  throughout the intensive week that defined the competitiveconcours. Promptly at 5 pm Friday, the artist competitors put down their tools and the judging immediately commenced.

Viewing the sculptures at the award ceremony

The  just session ensued with the winners announced at 8 pm to the assembled reception and presentation ceremony. The judges were 1) GCA founder, director and teacher, painter, Jacob Collins; 2) designer and ICA&CA co-founder and teacher, Richard Cameron ; 3) sculptor, educator and founder of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill Academy of Fine Art, Stuart Feldman.

They are:

First Place, $10,000     - Joshua Koffman
Second Place, $3,000   – Kate Brockman
Third Place, $2,000      - Jiwoong  Cheh
Honorable Mentions    - Julia Levitina McGeehan and Angela Cunningham

The first place winner lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he studied and presently teaches at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. For more information on Mr. Koffman, as well as the other honorees please visit the GCA Web site.

First Place Winner Joshua Koffman at work

Juror Richard Cameron said, “This second competition was an unqualified success and I was pleased to serve as a judge. During our deliberation, the three of us had an engaging dialogue about naturalism versus classicism in contemporary figurative sculpture. The choice of Josh Koffman was unanimous as his piece emerged as the most coherent whole of style, form, and expression.”

ICA&CA President, Paul Gunther, said “The sculpture competition like the new Atelier that houses it each year is now integral to our overall drive to sustain an interdisciplinary center for the study, appreciation, and advancement of classical art and architecture. The physical and psychological rigor of the competition takes its cue from the Beaux Arts model as an annual complement to the regular class schedule and includes both regular core students and artists from around the world who pay attention to our work from a kindred perspective. What it signifies is a growing community of students and practitioners, who seek an alternative to the more solipsistic basis of most of today’s schools of art. One path to such an alternative is the slow and exacting development of technical skill nurtured above all by a lifelong examination of the human body as a centering point of creative departure. The Competition thus serves as an eventful metaphor for all we endeavor to impart as stewards of the classical course throughout history.”
For additional photographs of the twelve final pieces, as well as the competition itself,  along with more information about  all of the finalists,  visit the Grand Central Academy ‘s Web site at http://grandcentralacademy.classicist.org/sculpturecompetition.html .

For more information about all ICA&CA programs visit www.classicist.org Members of the press can contact Paul Gunther at pwg@classicist.org

Despite the small amount of designated funding presently available, the Institute continues making strides with the restoration and installation of its historic plaster casts collection, received so kindly five years ago from the de-accessioning Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Late last month, after a patient wait of more than a year, our consultant conservator, Treese Robb, delivered another of the six Ghiberti Gates of Paradise panels we are lucky enough to have.  (Four of the ten were absent at the time we made our initial 2003 curatorial inspection at the Bronx warehouse, where they’d been stored for decades– see the catalog entry here for a more complete description.)

It is the Isaac panel, which more than any other, features classical architecture as spatial context. Some refer to it as “#5” as it was created as the left-side panel of the gate’s middle band.

As you see, what makes this intervention extraordinary is its gilded surface – as Ghiberti intended and created in the 15^th century and as now restored on the originals held today in sealed cases in Florence’s Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (www.operaduomo.firenze.it) just alongside Brunelleschi’s  masterpiece.

At the end of the 19^th century when the Met procured its casts directly from the originals, the gild had long been eroded and covered by a succession of well-intended interventions and it appeared instead with its underlying bronze patina.  It was that surface that has therefore guided our own restoration, i.e. in careful evocation of the vaguely opalescent bronze surface that its great Met-engaged casters first intended.

The original gilded surface was revealed only in the later 20^th-century after the originals were replaced in situ and literally brought inside.

With all this conservation history in mind, I accepted Treese’s spirited (largely subsidized—bless her) proposal to treat one of the panels with like impulse—and Isaac seemed ideal given its architectural setting.

ICA&CA stalwart and guiding light, Clem Labine, awarded the funds as per our ongoing if somewhat “under known” Adopt-a-Cast” enterprise and long, exacting labors ensued.

I am pleased to cite Clem now that we have this literally brilliant teaching resource in hand. As per usual, he sums it up best:

The transformation is magical. The bronze patina of the other restorations is excellent, but with the gilding, the Isaac panel absolutely comes alive. It is no longer just an artifact, but a piece of vibrant contemporary art—contemporary in the sense that it seems fresh from Ghiberti’s hand. Treese is a true artisan as her subtle variation in the levels of burnishing brings new levels of perceptible depth. The gold leaf emphasizes the play of light and shadow as can best assist future teaching –after all, the cast collection’s ongoing raison d’etre. The projecting areas of the relief are now so bright that the receding areas in shadow provide insightful contrast. In sum, it has come alive.

Please come by soon for a personal inspection.

Paul Gunther

Francis Morrone and Matthew A. Postal, Photography (and all photos below) by Edward A. Toran, Robin Lynn, Editor

W. W. Norton & Company with a proprietary assist from New York’s beloved and too-little-understood Municipal Art Society (MAS) has published a new volume entitled 10 Architectural Walks in Manhattan.

The Madison Square skyline, though not nearly as large as the downtown or midtown skylines, nonetheless is quite extraordinary. The easy intermixture of tall and low buildings and open space has had no small role in the neighborhood’s late twentieth-century renaissance.

When it comes to the Society it’s NOT “Arts” but “Art”; in 1898, when among distinguished others, Richard Morris Hunt, Daniel Chester French, and Edwin and Evangeline Blashfield founded this civic organization, inspired, as they were, by the hopeful lessons of the Ecole des Beaux Arts it was to promulgate the concept that today we would call “urban planning” “ or “town planning,” or “New Urbanism,” or now more currently, “emergent urbanism” or “smart growth.” Back then it was purely, simply, and very elegantly referred to as “municipal art”—not bad when you think about it with the distinct advantage of removing the polemical schisms of recent years…Maybe it’s time to revisit that moniker in the face of all the opportunity now at hand.

Besides paying attention to the good works of MAS generally, I urge all to those who either reside in New York or who love and visit New York to secure a copy and use it accordingly, soon and often. Visit our online bookstore to that worthy end via www.classicst.org.

The monument to Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, with a bronze statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and an exedra by Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White, was recognized early as one of the most important public artworks in America.

This MAS guidebook is a fine resource for those either already pre-disposed or eager to encourage the not-yet-converted to take the time to look about and discover the joyous and endlessly illuminating lessons of the built environment in the full historic palimpsest it promises to reveal for discerning onlookers. Look and you shall see!

The cherub is one of the principal formal devices of Western art. No one- before or since- executed them better than the Alsatian Philip Martiny, New York’s greatest architectural sculptor.

Plus it is dedicated to our co-founder, Henry Hope Reed , who on April 8, 1956 invented the New York walking tour and brought what he himself describes as a French construct to America. The visite conference as it was and is denominated took its permanent place in American culture; he thus spawned what is now commonplace and ubiquitous.

Henry Hope Reed, the late Arthur Ross and Janet Ross, at the 2007 Arthur Ross Awards

I have asked my friend and former colleague, Robin Lynn, to comment further:

• 
  

  Architectural historian Henry Hope Reed led what was not only the first MAS walking tour but also probably New York’s first architectural walking tour for the general public. The tour “From Madison Square to Gramercy Park” was such a novelty that newspapers sent reporters to cover it, and neighborhood residents didn’t know what to make of it. It is a testimony to what MAS and Henry started that walking tours are today an accepted part of the city’s culture.

  10 Architectural Walks in Manhattan costs $29.95. ICA&CA members can present their membership card at Urban Center Books, 457 Madison Avenue, and receive a 10% discount. Books can also be ordered online atwww.urbancenterbooks.org. To find out how to walk with Francis or Matthew or other MAS tour guides, visit www.mas.org.

The principal facades of the redbrick Potter Building are enlivened by sculpted terra-cotta ornament.

By the way, the self-guided tours as listed in the index are as follows:

1) Old City, New City: Downtown Preservation and Planning

2) Before the Code: Downtown Skyscrapers

3) Along the High Line

4) Of Farragut and Flatiron

5) Midtown Deco

6) Grand Central City

7) When It Was New: Park Avenue

8 ) Midtown since Modernism: East 57th Street to Columbus Circle

9) Country in the City: Central Park

10) Harlem Haven: Hamilton Heights

The titles best hint at the full content. I commend all who have made it happen and I do so in like tribute to Henry Reed, who whether with praise or occasional wrath loved above all to look about at the achievements of his fellow city dwellers –some renowned yet most anonymous. This post first appeared in the Summer of 2009 but it’s recommendation will hold for at least a decade to come.

Paul Gunther

Henry Hope Reed calls The Glory of Commerce America’s greatest work of monumental sculpture.