Special thanks to: Flower Construction

The Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) is a nonprofit membership organization committed to promoting and preserving the practice, understanding, and appreciation of classical design. Learn more at classicist.org.

The ancient Vitruvian analogy between the human being and architecture was reconsidered in the Early Renaissance, most profoundly by Leon Battista Alberti. His writings emphasize the role of a human being as an ideal type, worthy of representation in the visual arts. According to Alberti, beauty in architecture is innate, which means that a person cannot help but respond in a positive way to well-proportioned buildings. Alberti even believed that if an army were to enter a city with the intention of destroying it, but the buildings are beautiful, the warriors would lay down their weapons and act in a peaceful manner. This utopian theory provides insight into architecture’s extraordinary role of maintaining civic life. In his theoretical writings, Alberti assisted architects by outlining the steps to be followed when designing a building.

This video course presented by Peter Kohane, Senior Lecturer of Architecture at UNSW Sydney, reviews Alberti’s principles and discusses both their relation to the architecture of the Renaissance and how they can be applied to architectural debates today.

On April 24, 2021, the ICAA hosted its first-ever Open Access Workshop in Classical Architecture, making the program available to any interested university-level student across the globe for the first time. The course was met with significant interest from students, with 38 different schools across eight countries represented among attendees. In this retrospective from the ICAA Education team, learn more about how the ICAA brought a virtual version of the Workshop to life and see student work from the program.

Following the success of this program, the ICAA is excited to offer a second Open Access Workshop in Classical Architecture this fall on November 6, 2021.

Lead Sponsor for Continuing Education courses: Uberto Construction.

Regional Classicism: Cosmopolitan and Local

1 AIA CES Learning Unit|Elective and 1 credit towards the Certificate in Classical Architecture (Elective)

Scholars of classical design in the Chesapeake have tended to focus on a handful of buildings with identifiable English pattern-book sources. But a fuller picture of the region’s architecture emerges from a consideration of the ways in which a distinctively local approach to classical design developed in the eighteenth century, one that enabled people to understand that a cyma backhand on a one-room house and the full entablature at Christ Church, Lancaster County were both part of a broadly intelligible language of design.

This presentation explores the distinctive regional idiom of classical architecture that emerged in the colonial Chesapeake, outlining its derivation from English sources and its relationship to local social life.

Scholarship applications are due for the ICAA Intensive in Classical Architecture: Houston

Scholarship applications are due for the 2021 Christopher H. Browne Savannah Drawing Tour

Scholarship applications are due for the 2022 ICAA Intensive in Classical Architecture: New York

Lead Annual Public Programs Sponsor: RINCK

Seasonal Public Programs Sponsor: Dell Mitchell Architects

Seasonal Public Programs Sponsor: Hyde Park Mouldings

Please join interior designer Mark D. Sikes for a tour through his latest book, More Beautiful: All-American Decoration. Mark will reveal his sources of long-time inspiration and show a glimpse into his creative process. He shares his favorite rooms — all of which are light-filled and crisply patterned, chic yet comfortable, and just the way people want to live today. Finally, learn what is new and upcoming from this esteemed design firm.

Edith Wharton is well known among architects and designers for her first book, The Decoration of Houses, an enormously influential tract on interior design published in 1897. She was also, of course, one of America’s greatest novelists, and 2020 marked the one hundredth anniversary of her best-known novel, The Age of Innocence. In this lavishly illustrated talk we will explore the native Manhattanite’s home town from the time of her birth at 14 West 23rd Street in 1862 to her departure for France at the turn of the century, and the world of The Age of Innocence, set among New York’s insular upper class in the 1870s, a time of profound change in America, in New York, and in what constituted “society.” Not least, we will examine the intellectual and literary foundations of the American Renaissance in architecture and art.

Francis Morrone is an architectural historian and a writer, and the author of fourteen books, including, with Henry Hope Reed, The New York Public Library: The Architecture and Decoration of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (W.W. Norton, 2011) and architectural guidebooks to Philadelphia and to Brooklyn.

One of the largest private collections of architectural drawings and related artifacts was quietly assembled over thirty years by American investor and philanthropist Peter May, a client of ICAA board members Bunny Williams and Mark Ferguson. The collection has now been published in a stunning two-volume catalogue with innovative texts by leading authorities.

Please join the ICAA on Tuesday, June 8 for a virtual conversation with Peter W. May, architecture buff and collector, and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, curator of the New-York Historical Society exhibition, The Art of Architecture: Beaux-Arts Drawings from the Peter May Collection, and co-author of Living with Architecture as Art: The Peter W. May Collection Architectural Drawings, Models and Artefacts (2021). This lecture will be moderated by Mark Ferguson, founding partner, Ferguson & Shamamian Architects and Dean of the School of Architecture, Catholic University.

The ICAA is pleased to announce the resumption of in-person travel programs in 2021, once again opening access to a world of design and architectural discovery and inspiration, and offering the opportunity to share unforgettable experiences with fellow classicists.

The first tour of 2021 to the Hudson River Valley is sold out, but the calendar is rapidly filling up with new dates and journeys (stay tuned for news of the ICAA's forthcoming tour of the Berkshires!). Visit classicist.org or contact development@classicist.org to learn more.

Great Country Houses of the Hudson River Valley SOLD OUT

This tour, arranged in conjunction with Classical Excursions, will cover three centuries of some of the region’s finest architecture. Both sides of the Hudson River have a rich design legacy, and given the valley’s proximity to New York City, it had been the recipient of substantial investment in the construction of stunning architectural treasures.

Immerse yourself in the art, architecture, riads, and romance of Marrakech on this special journey crafted and co-hosted by luxury travel planning company Indagare in partnership with the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art.

The ICAA Florida Chapter is pleased to announce the Call for Submissinos for Contemporary Classical: Architecture, Urbanism and Craft in Florida and the Greater Caribbean, Volume I of the chapter’s new print publication series Classical Florida.

Contemporary Classical: Architecture, Urbanism and Craft in Florida and the Greater Caribbean will document and celebrate Florida’s and the Caribbean’s most accomplished classically-oriented work in architecture, urban planning, interior design, landscape architecture, craftsmanship and related arts and disciplines. The publication will be an attractive, large-format, rigorously documented and widely distributed overview that includes photography, plans, drawings and texts related to each featured project, and will also include a critical appraisal and an historical overview of classical work in Florida and the Greater Caribbean.

Participation in Contemporary Classical: Architecture, Urbanism and Craft in Florida and the Greater Caribbean is open to all ICAA members who have completed projects in Florida and the Greater Caribbean (individuals and firms may join the Florida Chapter of the ICAA at any time by visiting https://www.classicist.org/membership).

The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2021.

If your membership is due for renewal, or if you would like to join and support the ICAA, you can do so on our website.

The intent to enter deadline is June 25, 2021, and the final submission deadline is July 20, 2021.

The deadline for all entries and submission fees for the 2021 Bulfinch Awards is May 3, 2021.

The deadline for all entries and submission fees for the 2021 Jacques Benedict Awards is June 4, 2021.

The Call for Entries for the 2021 John Russell Pope Awards has been extended to June 4, 2021.

The deadline for all entries and submission fees for the 2021 John Staub Awards is August 14, 2021.

The regular submission deadline for the 2021 Philip Trammell Shutze Awards is June 11, 2021 and the late submission deadline at a higher entry fee is June 18, 2021.

The student/emerging professional deadline is June 18, 2021.

Chicago-Midwest Chapter

There is so much more available online at classicist.org: filmed lectures and public programs, panel discussions, and numerous online articles provide an opportunity to stay connected with the ICAA.