Although Christopher Alexander, who died this year on March 17, was officially an architect, the significance of his life lay in the challenge he posed to architecture. In a sense, he did not believe that -architects were necessary. Put a small group of people on a building site, give them materials . . . . Continue Reading »
Michael Lewis join the podcast to discuss the late Christopher Alexander's work of attuning architecture to practical human needs. Continue Reading »
Architecture is profoundly important; beautiful architecture is healing, and ugly architecture, even if functional, can be harmful. Continue Reading »
Going to a concert, like going to church or a nice restaurant or traveling on a plane or an overnight train, once meant dressing up and looking your best. We had been taught that dressing up showed respect—and classical music evoked special respect. This had little to do with how much one . . . . Continue Reading »
Modern people, despite being drawn to medieval aesthetics and artificats, cannot seem to bear to examine what those artifacts are modeled on: the intelligible order glimpsed by the eye of faith. Continue Reading »
The planned redesign of Notre-Dame de Paris’s interior is an atrocity that will turn the cathedral into little more than a Catholic Disneyland. Continue Reading »
A Catholic understanding of art is about more than cherishing faded glories.
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Charles Dickens, according to his son Henry, “never made a point of his religious convictions,” which were “very strong and deep.” They were also liberal and rather loose. Although he sometimes attended Anglican services and was well-versed in Scripture, Dickens was not interested in . . . . Continue Reading »
Washington, D.C.’s cultural apparatchiks have long hankered for a Frank Gehry showpiece. On the eve of the new millennium, the director of Washington’s Corcoran Gallery implored Gehry, then basking in accolades for his titanium-clad Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to enter a competition to . . . . Continue Reading »
Catesby Leigh notes in his essay “Monumental Contrast” (October) that the removal of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial in New York City is a sign that the “monumental aesthetic” in public art is an “endangered species.” Those of us in the art world know only too well that in civic art the . . . . Continue Reading »
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