Expert: John Henry Architect - 6/27/2009

Question
Hello,

I had a look at your site and I was a bit disappointed. Since Vitruvius is important to you, what is the relevance of your historicist pastiche to today s aesthetic and technological realities? I honestly fail to comprehend why an Italian villa should be found in Florida, for instance. Since it even lacks the humour of post-modernism, it must just for the sake of bourgeois vanity. I love architects like Aalto and Kahn, who had context in mind. Forgive me for being polemic but I think historicism lacks grace. It is totally out of modern life context.

Thank you,
Apostolos Maikidis, Civil Servant, Architecture aficinado

Answer
Hello Apostolos,
Vitruvius is as important today (three precepts: utility, longevity, and grace) for architects and the end user as they were two thousand years ago.  And just like during Palladio's time, people could afford just so much for a house, villa or palace, so budget has much to do with how any project is built and detailed.
Technically a Period Style home has less window to wall surface, simpler build out, lower cost, in its basic form.  Also more energy efficient and sheds water instead of dealing with flat and other convoluted roofs.
Contemporary architects emply period style with all the up to date technical aspects as modernists, post modernists, blobists, etc.
The exception is to twist steel and glass as is currently in vogue.
Most people did not see the humor in PoMo work, only an aberration of the Greek and Roman perfection; these movements spurred the classicists and traditional architects to re-introduce the classical lexicon.
Most people (probably 98%) do not care for non traditional styles in home design.  It is actually the very rich who can afford modern work, not the bourgeois.  One can live a modern life and love history, even live in it.
My mother is Greek, like your father, and I grew up in Turkey and Greece -- Europe.
I was college educated in Modernism only.  But the historical and archaeological remains in Europe and the Middle East continue to amaze and inspire me more than any modern work.
I have an ambivalence in that I do respect Modern work, but even they repeat themselves and continue to revive the earlier work.
Italian style villas are found in California, Oklahoma and Florida, and just about any state in the U.S.  They are replicated in Germany, England, France, the Middle East and now being built in China.
Architecture of any stripe can seem out of place though.
To get a better idea of how modernism failed us, please read "The Old Way of Seeing" by Jonathan Hale.
Sorry for this late reply as I was out of town on business, but please keep in touch.