Tag Archives: The Classical Vernacular

Sir Roger Scruton, RIP

Posted on January 12, 2020 by

Death took Roger Scruton today. He was the world’s deepest thinker on architecture and aesthetics, which were embedded in the conservatism of his broader philosophy. Scruton embraced tradition, holding that “the tried and true” are a stronger foundation than novelty … Continue reading →

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Scruton’s architecture school

Posted on September 23, 2019 by

There’s much in the air these days about architecture school. British students have petitioned for architecture schools across the pond to do a better job teaching how architecture school can be more relevant to climate change. Sir Roger Scruton has … Continue reading →

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How modernism is killing us

Posted on September 5, 2019 by

In my post on Tuesday, “Alien spaceship in Alberta!,” author and iconoclast James Howard Kunstler tagged Edmonton’s new Deconstructivist library as August’s “Eyesore of the Month.” (The name pegs the style as accurately as that of Brutalism.) Well, as they … Continue reading →

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Style vs. form balderdash

Posted on September 7, 2015 by

Justin Shubow, the provocative head of the National Civic Art Society, has posted a segment from a 1996 book review by the late Paul Malo of Roger Scruton’s The Classical Vernacular: Architecture in a Time of Nihilism, which I recently … Continue reading →

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Naked proportion

Posted on December 8, 2014 by

Here is Roger Scruton’s passage regarding the human body and its proportions, from Chapter 3 of The Classical Vernacular: Imagine a beautifully formed body – as depicted by Ingres, for example. Here we see a certain kind of perfection, in … Continue reading →

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Scruton on proportion

Posted on December 8, 2014 by

As an advocate of classicism I’ve always been sort of absent without official leave from discussions of proportion. Perhaps that is because it involves mathematics, which I have tried to keep at arm’s length throughout my life. Thank God for … Continue reading →

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