Special thanks to Sawyer | Berson

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.

On Monday, October 26th, 2020 the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) welcomed Linda Jane Holden, Thomas Lloyd, and Bryan Huffman, who spoke on topics related to their new book Garden Secrets of Bunny Mellon in a discussion moderated by Architectural Digest's Mitchell Owens.

Garden Secrets of Bunny Mellon is for anyone who has enjoyed time spent in a garden, from aspiring garden makers to those who manage large estates. This collection is comprised of extracts from Bunny’s own writings and garden notes, as well as photographs and drawings from her archive.

Linda Jane Holden is a garden historian and the author of Presidents’ Gardens. She first became aware of Mrs. Mellon’s contributions to landscape design while working in the White House during the Reagan administration. She lives in the Northern Virginia portion of the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

Thomas Lloyd is the grandson of Bunny Mellon and the president of the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation. Lloyd is a Wealth Advisor for Hemington Wealth Management and lives in Washington, DC.

Bryan Huffman was a friend of Bunny Mellon and is an interior designer based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Mitchell Owens is the decorative arts editor of Architectural Digest and host of the magazine’s podcast, The AD Aesthete, now in its fourth season. He is also writing a biography of Pauline de Rothschild, which is to be published by Rizzoli.

Additional presentation as part of the Bunny Mellon Curricula at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. The ICAA is very grateful to the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation for its generous support of this program, along with the Curricula's Lead Co-Sponsor Edmund D. Hollander Landscape Architecture Design, Film Series Co-Sponsor Janice Parker, and Continuing Education and Public Programs Co-Sponsor Charlotte Moss.

The world’s urban population is projected to almost double over the next fifty years, and if current settlements trends persist, this would mean a tripling of the urban land mass. Half of that growth is projected in secondary cities and across Commonwealth Countries, with much of it likely to be unplanned.

In this presentation, hear from Peter Oborn from the Commonwealth Association of Architects, who has just published a survey of the professions – a critical piece of research exposing how areas of the world that are growing most rapidly often lack any professional built environment resource, Ben Bolgar from the Prince’s Foundation who presents a new mayor’s toolkit designed to assist with planning for rapid urbanisation in places where professional planning resources are scarce, and Haja Halimah Lukay from Bo City Council, Sierra Leone, speaks about her experience of using the mayor’s toolkit in Bo (where the urban populations is projected to triple in 20 years) and how she and her team have managed to implement the first phase of development control—planning and planting—within 7 months of starting the process.

Perhaps now more than ever before, we are all aware of the built environment that surrounds us, and of the impacts it has on the health of individuals, communities, and the planet. The Architecture of Place, a collaborative series from the ICAA, INTBAU, and the Prince’s Foundation, brought together the established and emerging voices working to create a better built future. You can find more information on the full series here.

Additional thanks to INTBAU's supporters for this series, Fairfax & Sammons, ADAM Architecture, and Size Group. Additional thanks to The Prince's Foundation's supporter, Mr. Paul Beirne.

The Classicist No. 18

The Classicist is an annual, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the classical tradition in architecture and the allied arts. Featuring professional and student portfolios as well as academic articles authored by leaders in the field, this beautiful, color-illustrated journal serves as a forum for contemporary, classical practice as well as a source of inspiration and information for students, practitioners, teachers, patrons, and enthusiasts.

The ICAA invites submissions for the Professional Portfolio of the Classicist No. 18, which will be published in the fall of 2021 and is focused on the Mid-Atlantic region. If you are a practitioner who has completed work in the region in the past 10 years, please submit your projects for inclusion by filling out this form. 

The Classicist No. 17, edited by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and focused on Florida, is now available for purchase here.

Lead Sponsor for Continuing Education courses: Uberto Construction.

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 a well-proportioned building. 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 premiere of a video course presented by Peter Kohane, Senior Lecturer of Architecture at UNSW Sydney, will review Alberti’s principles and discuss both their relation to the architecture of the Renaissance and how they can be applied to architectural debates today. The video premiere will be followed by live Q&A with Dr. Kohane.

The age-old impulse to build a villa is a fundamentally paradoxical one which, nevertheless, strikes at the heart of what it means to build and what it means to dwell on this earth. A villa, set, as it inevitably is, in a garden, is a “home away from home.” Why do we seek such a place? What ultimately, does the villa and its garden represent? How have architects and landscape architects addressed these over the centuries? This two-part lecture program will explore the villa and garden tradition from antiquity to the present.

This course is presented as part of the Bunny Mellon Curricula at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. The ICAA is very grateful to the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation for its generous support of this program, along with the Curricula's Lead Co-Sponsor Edmund D. Hollander Landscape Architecture Design and Continuing Education and Public Programs Co-Sponsor Charlotte Moss.

Lead Annual Public Programs Sponsor: RINCK

Seasonal Public Programs Sponsor: Dell Mitchell Architects

Seasonal Public Programs Sponsor: Hyde Park Mouldings

ICAA Book Club: City Country Sea

In making homes, how do you take, as Weaver said of Lutyens, adversity and turn it into amenity? This question has had the attention of the firm Oliver Cope Architect since Oliver’s first house in 1985.

Please join the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) for a virtual lecture featuring Partners Oliver Cope, Rita Marks, and Olivia Rowan, as they discuss the design and revitalization of some of New York and Long Island’s most treasured homes, all featured in their new book, Oliver Cope Architect: City Country Sea. This lecture is moderated by award-winning architectural historian and journalist, Clive Aslet.

Our special thanks to Presenting Sponsor of the ICAA Book Club:

For over fifty years, Robert A.M. Stern Architects has designed extraordinary houses and residences around the world, each suffused with a rich understanding of traditional architecture and an intuitive sense of how to shape a home to the needs of modern life. Many of the firm’s important early commissions were houses, and while RAMSA has since evolved into an internationally renowned with an extraordinarily broad portfolio, an unflagging dedication to timeless residential design has remained a cornerstone of its practice.

Join four of the firm’s distinguished residential Partners and coauthors of the new book Houses: Robert A.M. Stern Architects—Roger Seifter, Randy Correll, Grant Marani, and Gary Brewer—in conversation with Architectural Digest Features Editor, Sam Cochran, for an in-depth look at some of their recent and most exciting projects from around the country in a variety of different architecture styles, many of which have never been seen before.

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 centerpiece of the newly opened, highly-anticipated Moynihan Train Hall is a monumental Art Deco clock, designed by Peter Pennoyer Architects and inspired by the Jazz Age architecture of New York City and the golden age of railroad travel. The clock which has been praised by the New York Times, Architectural Digest and many others was a late addition to the development of the train hall and required intense work in the architects’ office and in the factories of Hyde Park Moldings and Americlock Inc. to meet the Governor’s New Year’s Eve deadline.

How does a team design, coordinate and create a 12 foot by 6 foot clock that will be suspended 25 feet in the air in six months? Join Peter Pennoyer, Steven Worthington and Colin Richardson—the team at Peter Pennoyer Architects that led the effort—for a behind-the-scenes virtual tour of the design and construction of the clock, from inception to installation. They will share their early inspiration, discuss the challenges they faced and talk about what it means to have a public commission at the center of a New York City landmark.

PLINTH is an active and energetic young members group of the National Chapter of the ICAA comprised of students, emerging professionals, and all those interested in developing and advancing the appreciation of classical tradition. If you are interested in joining PLINTH, please reach out to programming@classicist.org.

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.