What Jane Jacobs Saw

by Michael J. Lewis

Some influential books fade as their ideas become conventional wisdom, but Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities remains as startling as when it appeared in . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Mar 2017

The Other Assisi

by Matthew Milliner

It turned out there was no need to condemn Sigismondo to hell—his own defeats brought him to his knees. The Tempio Malatestiano, moreover, is now an active church, and people are trickling in for Saturday confession. Our group stops for discussion, and we concede a reluctant parallel with our own American Sigismondo, and then we imagine the ruins of a bankrupt Trump hotel, its deserted lobby the setting for a humble Mass. Continue Reading »

13 Jun 2016

Monument to Failure

by Justin Shubow

The General Services Administration, together with the D.C. State Historic Preservation Office, has determined that one of the most banal buildings in the nation’s capital is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. It is the Department of Education’s headquarters, originally . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Mar 2016

Making the Garden

by Christopher Alexander

It has taken me almost fifty years to understand fully that there is a necessary connection between God and architecture, and that this connection is, in part, empirically verifiable. Further, I have come to the view that the sacredness of the physical world—and the potential of the physical . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Feb 2016

Re-Styling Tradition

by Gregory S. Bucher

A new Roman Catholic church, dedicated to St. Thomas Aquinas, has risen at the Newman Center of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Designed by architect Kevin Clark, the church and center together came in at a cost-effective $25 million. St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church is a classic . . . . Continue Reading »

16 Oct 2015

Building on Truth

by Philip Bess

Building is a willful act of symbolic import, sometimes intended and sometimes not, and all architecture expresses the power of its makers and their aspiration to legitimate authority. This is true of individual buildings, public spaces, and all human settlements. Temple, forum, cathedral, city . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Jan 2015

Rebuild Penn Station!

by R. R. Reno

Yes, it sounds like a pipe dream. Rebuild Penn Station? Why imagine that’s possible when New York can’t even build a new subway line or bring a direct rail link to any of its three airports? Continue Reading »

7 Jul 2014

Henry Hope Reed, Defender of Decoration

by Catesby Leigh

The distinguished architectural historian Henry Hope Reed died May 1 at age ninety-seven. More than any cultural figure of his generation, Reed perpetuated an awareness of the classical tradition’s enduring role as the indispensable means for improving the human habitat … Continue Reading »

22 May 2013

Sacred Spaces & Other Places

by Catesby Leigh

A Sense pf the Sacred: Theological Foundations of Christian Architecture and Artby R. Kevin SeasoltzContinuum, 394 pages, $29.95Heavenly City: The Architectural Tradition of Catholic Chicagoby Denis R. McNamaraLiturgy Training, 160 pages, $59.95It’s no secret that the state of contemporary . . . . Continue Reading »

1 May 2006

A Dutch Master and the Good Life

by Philip Bess

What follows is prompted not by a cigar, but rather a painting by the Dutch (strictly speaking, Flemish) master Jan Van Eyck. “The Mystic Adoration of the Lamb” is the central painting of twenty panels of various sizes completed in 1432 that together constitute the Ghent Altarpiece. Since the . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Mar 1995