DAVID MAYERNIK
LTD.

Classical architecture may be intrinsically elegant, and eloquent, but it is only truly noble if it is put to noble ends.

Today, we either take architecture too seriously, or not enough: in the former case we see it as either the destruction or salvation of society and the environment, in the latter it’s at best mere packaging and at worst shelter.

[I]t has somehow crept into the discourse lately that specific dimensions are in some way meaningful

Architects should stop thinking they have to be pseudo-scientists or technocrats to be taken seriously. Our research is naturally in the realm of imagination, not tabulation.

Leonardo's Vitruvian man, ad quadratum and ad triangulum, the normative Ionic, and the feminine Doric in Rome

Not only did I reconstruct the absent architectural form—from the proportions of the exterior order to the shape of the roof—I also imagined what it would be like if it were frescoed and stuccoed...

For my sake as well as for that of my former colleagues and students, allow me to outline what systematic thinking means for architects.

I suppose the word “New” insulates New Urbanism from expectations that it corresponds to the old or pre-Modernist way of making cities and towns.

the Ca’ d’Oro is not composed like a typical, or normative, Venetian palace.

Tradition is a modern idea.

What more can be said or done about the classical orders? Maybe still something...

The culture of classical humanism provides the firmest foundation for rebuilding a liberal architecture.