Author Archive
Classical Architecture: Or how we learned to stop worrying and love the rules
A lot has been made, in the last few posts, of the difference between vernacular and classical architecture. Interestingly, at least according to Wikipedia, the counterpoint of vernacular is not “classical,” but “the polite,” which I find to be an intriguing concept. “Polite” seems, in contemporary usage, to be fraught with connotations of affectedness and the importation of [...]
The Column
The law school and the Gothic lexicon As we return for the second half of the spring semester, I find myself increasingly reflective about my time at Notre Dame. I thus thought it would be appropriate to bring the subject of this column, which has recently covered topics as far afield as India and postmodernism, back to that of the very first column of Fall 2010. Loyal readers may recall [...]
Tempest in a teapot – Michael Graves and the Driehaus Prize
The Students for Classical Architecture hosted a student discussion with Michael Lykoudis, the Francis and Kathleen Rooney Dean of the School of Architecture, on February 24. The event provided a forum to address the selection of notable postmodern architect Michael Graves as the 2012 Driehaus Prize laureate. According to benefactor Richard H. Driehaus, “Beauty, harmony, and context are [...]
The Column
India outsources its archaeology to American students who work for free In my last article, I gave a brief introduction to my travels in India and discussed the tomb of Akbar at Sikandra. Today’s column will present the other sites we visited. The other major tomb researched was that of Itimad-ud-Daula. You may recall that the Emperor Akbar’s tomb was completed after his death by [...]
The Column
Research in India, or how I spent my winter vacation Over the break, two contingents of architecture undergraduates specializing in historic preservation traveled to India for an unprecedented research project. Led by Professor Krupali Krusche, DHARMA (Digital Historical Architectural Research and Material Research - a play on the DHARMA Initiative from the TV series LOST) uses both [...]
Owning beauty: The suburb in the American imagination, Part IV
Notre Dame’s School of Architecture is well known for its new urbanist tendencies, but I think what is more important is our unspoken credo that pretty much anywhere below the Arctic Circle can be made beautiful, comfortable, and prosperous; in short, a great place to live. To do so requires vision, and sensitive, informed development - but it can be done. Our endless outpouring of schemes [...]
Owning beauty: The suburb in the American imagination, Part III
The mortgage interest deduction (MID) is a well-known tax incentive, the popularity of which arguably exceeds its efficacy. The typical rationale is that it promotes homeownership. It attempts to do this by making it easier for the taxpayer to increase his ability to borrow for the purchase of a home. There are several problems here. First, it is generally claimed that elimination of the [...]
Owning beauty: The suburb in the American imagination, Part II
At the end of my last column, I outlined two important arguments about the social contract between companies and people. Based on an ownership-driven model, Milton Friedman states that a company “cannot act effectively as a moral agent for all of its shareholders,” and that assets “diverted to social causes undermine market efficiency.” It is relevant to consider whether these [...]
Owning beauty: The suburb in the American imagination, Part I
In this column, I will once again be looking beyond the verdant, rain-soaked parklands of Notre Dame. Besides avoiding running out of buildings to cover, I feel that this column can and ought to address larger trends in architecture. In support of this mission, I intend to spend the next few installments discussing the suburb. It has long been a subject of great fascination to me, and it is [...]
The Column: Geddes Hall
Completed in 2009, Geddes Hall figures prominently among the recent cohort of buildings erected on Notre Dame’s campus. It is located opposite the LaFortune Student Center on Fieldhouse Mall. Geddes Hall was built to be a home for the Center for Social Concerns and its sister initiatives within the Institute for Church Life. Weighing in at 64,000 square feet, the facility offers [...]
The Column
As I begin my final year here at the Rover, I would like to dedicate this particular article to the Lindsley family, with a discussion of an architectural assemblage in their own backyard of Belmont, North Carolina. My brother is entering his sophomore year at Belmont Abbey College, a small, Catholic college a short distance west of Charlotte. It is of particular interest to me because I am [...]
Tradition: Commodity or consonance?
The new hockey arena, known as the Compton Family Center, is currently under construction south of the Joyce Center. In visiting the site the other day and studying the renderings and photographs on the university architect’s website, one word immediately leaps to mind: typical. Typical is not necessarily pejorative. A typical building is a practical building – a prudential use of [...]
The Column
It is another week at Notre Dame, and another team has come just short of a national championship. Like the basketball team before them, the men’s hockey team fell in their tournament. Certainly, this was a tremendous disappointment, and more importantly, it denied us the opportunity to defeat those monogram-stealing “Fighting Sioux” of North Dakota in the final. But there is a silver [...]
Visiting sculptor Dony MacManus discusses sacred art
A resident of Florence, Italy for the last ten years, sculptor Dony MacManus visited Notre Dame to talk about sacred art. His lecture Monday afternoon was an exhilarating and ennobling commentary linking scholars, artists, and the future of sacred art. In his introduction, Professor Duncan Stroik contextualized the role of the talk within MacManus’ whirlwind tour of Catholic universities [...]
The Column
Introducing Students for Classical Architecture The groundwork is currently being laid for a new student group in the School of Architecture. Students for Classical Architecture, as it will be called, seeks to fill a void in the landscape of architectural education. At Notre Dame, classicism occupies a privileged place in our curriculum, not only because it expresses a historical and [...]