Home
News Page
KATARXIS N°2
KATARXIS N°3
Reconstruction of Manhattan
New York
Tradition and Modernity
On Tradition
Contemporaneity
On Modernity
On Classicism
Temenos
Pantheon
Classical and Vernacular
Notes and Quotes
Sketches and Paintings
De Picturas
Polemics
Book Reviews
More Books
Books Again
Urban Design
We Can Build It
Dwelling and Building
New Houses
Houses
More Houses
Other Projects
City-Building
Smart Cities
Post-Scriptum
CONTACT US
Subscribe!
Selected Links
Life by Architecture
Archives
KATARXIS
City-Building

" To protest against the transformation and destruction of cities serves no purpose if we do not have a global alternative plan of reconstruction in our hands. A critique which has no project is another face of a fragmented society, of which the city is the instrument and expression. "

Leon Krier

Spetses, Demetri Porphyrios

Pitiousa, Spetses by Demetri Porphyrios and Associates (1998)


" The design for the town of Pitiousa recognises that every context is a self-regulating, living system; that the basic elements of urbanism are the urban block, the street and the square; that buildings should never be as large as the commission; and that they should use well-tried constructional techniques and materials.
Pitiousa also recognises that " Classicism is not a Style ", but a tradition that has evolved from and coexisted with the vernacular. It is a living tradition open to adaptation and interpretation, and responsive to region, climate and nature. "

Demetri Porphyrios

Senior Housing Streetview Rob Krier

" The Village ", Muehlheim an der Ruhr, Germany
Senior Citizen Housing by Rob Krier (Krier&Kohl)
1989-1991

Seaside Roofs DPZ 240 JPG

New Town of Seaside, Florida (1987)
by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk

Poundbury Roofs 240 JPG

A New Town at Poundbury, Dorset, England
by Leon Krier (1988-1991)

fieldfarmmasteradam350.jpg

Masterplan Development for Field Farm, Shepton Mallet, England
by Robert Adam Architects

" Unlike the currently marketed conception of tradition as the "peddling of antiques", the classical project does not aim at upholstering a spurious restoration. Instead, its aim has been to ferret out in existing society those traditional elements that could foster the new. The story of cities has been the story of endless innovation. But the new has never been a mere novelty. The new has always been the result of a process of knowledge and merit. the various phases of history are additive and the storing of new experience has been the law of mankind. The exclusive characteristic of civilised man has been his ability to record and to retrieve from memory. In that sense, Classicism and the Traditional City are less absorbed in the dialectic between an imagined future and a nostalgic past ( as many critics have claimed ), than in the search for realistic projects. The ultimate criterion in the design of cities ought to be the public well-being of their inhabitants. "

Demetri Porphyrios

" Classical Architecture ", ( Andreas Papadakis Publisher )

Berlin Project Maurice Culot

Reconstruction of Friedrichstrasse in Berlin (1981)
IBA Competition entry by Maurice Culot and Leon Krier

" Urban centers are not called " historic " because of their age, but because of the maturity and genetic power of their organizing principles. These principles are transcendent, and timeless. "

Leon Krier (Building Cities 1999)