One day last October a crane from the National Wrecking Company lumbered up to the front of 1117-19 Cleveland Avenue and began ripping the top off the 19-story building in Chicago's notorious Cabrini-Green housing project. With every swipe, chunks of the Chicago Housing Authrity high-rise tumbled to the ground, until finally the vacant apartment building and its Modernist urban vision were reduced to a heap and carted away.
No tears were shed. Not by the public, not by the architectural community. The Bauhaus, it seems, was not our house after all. The city of Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and LeCorbusier, the great architects of Modernism, was to be one of stripped-down towers set in vast expanses of open space, a sleek machine for production. But those ideas, conceived in the 1920s and '30s and built mostly in the '50s and '60s, have been coming down in the '90s.
Modernism may been an inevitable reaction to stilted 19th century architecture, and it may have created some interesting buildings, but even among its heirs there's wide agreement that it has not produced livable urban space. Now, in the waning days of the 20th century, architecture is at a crossroads. The old order has unraveled, and it's not yet clear how it will reform itself.
Deconstruction, an odd name for an architectural movement, is the hot design ideology of the moment. Inspired by the linguistic work of Jacques Derrida, it dictates that buildings should be "chaotic and discordant, reflecting the alienation of our time." Buildings are "metaphors to be torn apart through their design in order to expose their inherent contradictions."
But not everyone is a believer in Decon. A few weeks before the Cabrini-Green demolition and a few miles to the southeast, a group of architects met at Chicago's Art Institute to discuss a radical alternative that has more to do with beauty, harmony and proportion than with chaos, discord and alienation.
The Art of Building Cities conference showcased an avant-garde approach that the architectural establishment views with disdain, if not fear and loathing. To its critics, it represents a giant step backward. To its adherents, it is nothing less than the solution to all of the problems created by Modernism.
We're talking, if you haven't already guessed, about a 3,000-year tradition that ranges from Greek temples and Italian villas to Georgian mansions and Federalist-style townhouses. Classicism, ladies and gentlemen, is back.
Strictly speaking "Classical architecture" refers to architecture inspired by the great Greek and Roman buildings of antiquity. Namely, those that make use of the Classical orders -- Ionic, Doric, Corinthian, Tuscan and Composite. Many also would include traditions that grew out of Classicism, such as Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classical, Greek Revival, Federalist, Georgian, Colonial and American Renaissance.
"The key is the notion of 'precedent,' that one building draws inspiration and is related to a previous building," says Notre Dame architecture chairman Thomas Gordon Smith.
For some New Classicists style is of paramount concern, for others it is less of an issue. "Classicism is more about a certain frame of mind than a style of architecture," argues Norman Crowe, a Notre Dame professor of architecture. For Crowe, "Nature is the ultimate paradigm and example. Threrefore, just as there is harmony in nature, all the elements of a building should fit together and every building or town should fit with its surroundings."
To be sure, the New Classicists are a tiny minority. But the fledgling movement appears to be gaining momentum. Organizers were elated that more than 300 architects, urban planners and developers registered for the three-day "Art of Building Cities" conference last year; a follow-up conference in Bologna, Italy, in March 1996 drew a like number.
"Ten years ago we could have held the [Chicago] meeting at my house; it would have attracted 10 people," says Michael Lykoudis, an assistant professor of architecture at Notre Dame and one of the leaders of the Classical Architecture League, the group that organized the conference.
Prospects are indeed looking up for the Classical crowd. For the first time in 50 years, a U.S. school of architecture (Notre Dame) has adopted a Classical curriculum. The Institute for the Study of Classical Architecture was established four years ago in New York to provide practicing architects with classical training, and last year the institute began publishing a new architectural journal, The Classicist.
New organizations, including the Classical Architecture League, have sprung up; such established groups of enthusiasts as Classical America report record membership levels. On the popular front, the Hearst Corporation began a new publication, Classic Home, and the periodical Traditional Building remains vibrant. Feature stories have appeared during the past year in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, the New Republic and House Beautiful, among others.
Not bad, considering Classical architecture was deader than Julius Caesar as little as 10 years ago. For most of the 20th century Modernism has ruled the architectural aesthetic with an iron girder. Its goal was to liberate creativity from the stifling constraints of historical forms. After liberation, there would be no backsliding. Tradition was seen as the root of architectural evil and would not be tolerated.
And so, for the past 50 years, Classical architecture has been largely a lost art form. Those who wandered into the forbidden approach did so at their professional peril. As a student in the '70s, Lykoudis recalls being scolded by a professor when he submitted a Classical design. "This is not architecture," the professor fumed. "Where is you in this?"
The taboo against tradition began to erode slightly in the '70s and '80s when Postmodernist architects started to play with historical forms. Postmodernist treatments, however, were more apt to distort or parody Classical elements than render them faithfully.
With the barrier worn down, some architects began to flirt with fidelity. Influential architects such as Smith, Leon Krier, Demitri Porphyrios, John Blatteau and Allan Greenberg began talking and writing seriously about Classicism and, most significantly, designing Classical buildings. The movement received a further boost when England's Prince Charles adopted it as his special cause.
The movement has largely been a spontaneous grassroots phenomenon. Individual architects became frustrated with what they perceived as the constraints of Modernism. (Ironically, their complaints mirror those of the Modernist avant-garde 70 years ago in its attacks on Classicism.) Independently they began experimenting with Classicism, then discovered they were not alone.
The revival has progressed beyond the pen-and-ink phase. For the first time in decades, Classical designs are being built. In Chicago, Thomas Beeby's Harold Washington Library Building has created a stir. The popular 10-story, block-square main public library combines imagery from other Chicago public buildings with Classical elements. Modernists decry it as too traditional; strict Classicists wish its Classicism were more rigorous. As the squabble indicates, the New Classicists do not march in lockstep.
While some New Classicists find inspiration in the various revivals of Classicism, 1983 Notre Dame graduates Thomas Rajkovich and David Mayernik, both of whom recently were named by Interiors Magazine to the prestigious "40 under 40" list of rising star architects, argue, "The more you copy a revival, the more you dilute the poetic power of the original source."
A building closer to first sources than Beeby's is Allen Greenberg's Athens, Georgia, News Building. The red brick structure, which houses the offices of two newspapers, was completed in 1992 and has garnered critical and popular approval. It features a two-story stone Doric portico and a dazzling lobby marked by Doric and Ionic columns accented with colors reminiscent of those used on ancient Greek temples. "Contrary to popular belief, ancient buildings often were quite colorful," says Notre Dame's Smith.
A building here and a building there is all well and good. But the New Classicists really have their sights on something more. "Classicism is about cities, primarily," Lykoudis observes. "It is an urban frame of mind." The architects' ultimate goal is to transform the profession and the built landscape. The way to do that, they know, is to build Classical cities.
Modernism, it is fair to say, has not been particularly kind to the urban fabric. LeCorbusier saw the 20th century city as one of zones -- housing, shopping, work and play -- all joined by high-speed roads. These single-use zones have given us tall buildings, superhighways, suburban subdivisions, office parks, shopping malls and strip malls, all of which suck life out of the traditional city and foster urban sprawl. It's produced places like Houston, once described as "subdivisions in search of a city."
Modern cities seem to be built more for automobiles than for people, but Modernist architects often don't see a problem; in fact, Robert Venturi once suggested the Las Vegas strip as an ideal model for creating urban public spaces.
Duncan Stroik cites recent construction in downtown Chicago as a prime example of Modernism's insensitivity to human scale. "If you look at the new buildings in the area east of Michigan Avenue bounded by the river, the lake and Randolph Street, you find immense towers often widely separated from one another and set back from the street on plazas," says the Notre Dame assistant professor of architecture. "The area seems sterile and dead. The scale isn't human. It doesn't feel right; it produces a sense of alienation. Contrast that with the streets west of Michigan where the buildings are compacted and oriented toward the street. There it's bustling and alive."
Stroik says it's telling that Modernist cities are often described as "interesting" but rarely as delightful or charming. Harlequin Plaza in Denver, for instance, is a vast checkerboard that makes for a good tourist postcard, but people don't dally there as they do at a piazza in Rome. It is an environment that has been designed as a geometric art form, not for people.
Classicists argue that Modernism's fatal flaw is that nothing relates to anything else. "I used to think you could have a great city composed of modern architecture," says urban planner Andres Duany. "I no longer think so . . . You look at the buildings and they photograph beautifully one at a time. But when you look down the streetscapes, it's an abusurdity. Every building destroys the next."
Duany's views solidified on a recent visit to Allmere, Holland, a small town showcase of new Modernist architecture. "Allmere is absolutely the best Modernist town I have ever seen. Everything is exquisitely designed, and the town works well enough in a functional way. But you wouldn't want to live there. It has a hectic, hyperkinetic atmosphere."
Discord is built right into Modernism, Classicists contend. "The Modernist says everything should be invented once and then thrown away, to be re-invented new the next time. But this merely produces architectural illegibility," says Lykoudis.
Classical architecture is adept at producing a harmonious grouping of buildings because all of the elements are part of a coherent system, says Smith. Adds Notre Dame Assistant Professor Samar Younes, "Classicism is about where we fit in the scheme of things. It is first and foremost about relationship. The relation of the column to the entablature, of public buildings to private buildings, of the street to the neighborhood, of the neighborhood to the city. It is only through such relationships that things become legible and understandable."
Classicists are convinced they have the cure for what ails urban America. Leon Krier, a founding father of the New Classical revival, cites five characteristics of Classical cities that he believes can improve urban life.
* Cities should be planned, as medieval cities were, so a person's routine business could be conducted within a 10-minute walk of his or her residence. This would lessen our dependence on the automobile.
* The basic unit of a city should be the quarter, which is really a city within a city. The quarter provides for all aspects of life: residential, educational, commercial, recreational. This "mixed use" contrasts with the Modernist single-use zones.
* The quarter should feature a diverse network of streets and public squares, providing variety in the urban vista.
* To curtail urban sprawl, green belts should be established at the city's edge, and cities should not be allowed to creep beyond them.
* Buildings should be no higher than five stories. Classicists blame skyscrapers for destroying the variety of the central city. As architecture critic Witold Rybczynski notes, once the price of land became based on renting 20 floors of office space, nothing else got built.
If applied, Krier's principles would produce a city that looks much like a portion of the illustration by Jason Montgomery '93 for the "Art of Building Cities" conference poster. The illustration depicts a standard Any-Modern-City of glass-and-steel high-rises; superimposed on this image is the ideal 21st century Classical cityscape of low masonry buildings edged with a green forest.
This future city, in fact, closely resembles Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennet's 1906 plan for Chicago. Burnham, one of the leaders of the Classically inspired City Beautiful movement, envisioned a Chicago of low buildings on a grid of boulevards and streets punctuated by squares and plazas. Ironically, Burnham and his firm designed many of the first skyscrapers, including New York City's first, the Flatiron Building.
Detractors charge that Classical urban planning is impractical. But where it has been applied -- and it is with increasing frequency -- it has met with success. Such contemporary urban planners as Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater Zyberk and Peter Calthorpe are legitimate heirs of Burnham.
Duany and Plater Zyberk drew inspiration for their Seaside, Florida, plan from the City Beautiful movement. They have produced a new community with an old, village-like atmosphere. Buildings are oriented to the street and streets are scaled to the pedestrian. Daily needs are within walking distance.
One of Calthorpe's most exciting projects involves transforming a failed shopping mall into a traditional city neighborhood of streets with homes and commercial shops.
Although the New Classicist revival may be gaining momentum, its leaders believe it remains largely misunderstood. It runs much deeper than a quibble about style, they insist. At issue is a way of looking at the world, a cast of mind. "Some dismiss us as looking for some nostalgic, golden age of the past," says Younes. "But that's not us. They don't understand what we're after. We're not merely hankering back."
The Classicists insist they are not attempting to resurect museum pieces. The point is to demonstrate that tradition is alive today, that the past has meaning for the present.
"For the Modernist, the '90s are about cyberspace," Stroik observes, "therefore some say our buildings should have a cybernetic look. But a Classical architect says, 'No, there's enough that remains the same about today, about the 19th century, about the Renaissance, about ancient society that we can build a Classical building that can accept computers. A Classical building never goes out of fashion visually or functionally. Classical architecture deals with technology either by hiding it or beautifying it."
Architect Robert Adam defines tradition as "the means by which society maintains its identity in the face of change." Classicists argue that the swift pace of modern life makes traditional design all the more necessary. Buildings that last more than a lifetime are important for cultural continuity, notes Thomas Rajkovich. "These buildings are something we share with our ancestors. How would we feel if Rome had been primarily rebuilt in the 20th century?"
In an age concerned with minimizing waste, Classicism's emphasis on durable construction seems right for the times, its supporters argue. "Masonry ... which is typically used in classical buildings, lasts generations," says Rajkovich.
How great a force Classicism becomes in the next century remains to be seen. For now it is once again a respectable option in the marketplace of architectural ideas. No longer unseen or unspoken, tradition has returned to shape our cities.
At Cabrini-Green the plan is to replace the old high-rises with a mix of public and private housing in a variety of styles on a new grid of streets. Meanwhile, a few miles to the north, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, new row houses have gone up that emulate those built in the area in the early years of this century. The Classical neighborhood is back. And our cities are the better for it.