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Is there a bias against the institution of traditional architecture? Modernist

Michael Taylor

pastiche and passion with the traditionalist

Robert Adam

The war between traditional and modernist architects erupted again this week after Paul Finch, chairman of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, praised the fact that the modernists have prevailed in the tender to build the Olympic buildings. Robert Adam, a member of the traditional architecture, and Michael Taylor, senior partner of Hopkins Architects, the company completed the Olympic velodrome, met to discuss the architecture, Vitruvius Marcus and half of formwork, Lanre Bakare in the center.

Robert Adam: bias in favor of the traditionalists is sexism. Only in the culture. If you are in the profession is what you do. When you turn the damage that has not really noticeable, but if you're on the receiving end of it, so it's a problem.

Michael Taylor: underlying idea is a little strange that a single style or approach should prevail. It comes from far away. You hear stories about people who supported the struggle of Le Corbusier with the people who supported Mies van der Rohe.

RA: Some people are so passionate about what is what can not be separated from their personal preference of what is good . I met students who do not get the courses because they worked for me or told not to go to a course if you go ahead with a traditional style. To pass through a traditional university continues architecture is extremely unlikely.

MT: is particularly strange when there's a list for a contest, something like a college at Oxford and Cambridge, and a list includes a variety of styles and I think, "Are you really going to see them on their merits, or have you already made your mind on the type of building you want?"

RA: more traditionalist architects know that there is no point of entry for the contest if you are judged by d other architects. Then everything becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are planning guidelines for municipalities that specifically says "pastiche" will not be favored by modern design as well.

If modernity is preferable precisely because it is innovative and visionary

MT: have to look at the root of the problem, really. I would not say that there should be no neoclassical building or children should not learn Latin and Greek in schools. By definition, all buildings that are built today must be a contemporary building. What interests me is the consistency of thought that goes through this process. For example, if you [the Roman writer, architect and engineer] Vitruvius back here today, its core values ??of commodity, firmness and joy remains absolutely essential to everything we do. However, we expect to work on blocks of stone pediments? Well, no, I do not think so. People enjoy cars, planes and other modern technologies, and thus take on the appearance and facades of architecture as a separate element that should make an appointment very clear, literal history seems to be incompatible. And I think people struggle with that.

Let us agree on large parts of our cities are covered in very soft modern buildings, with lots of glass and steel. People like the material of the value of Vitruvius, things according to human scale and sense of place. I do not think that modernity destroys any of these things. How traditionalist groups speak of modernity, as if it is a form that is a derivation of the international style, but I would say the most progressive modernism considered in the context, scale and materials, and includes a modern form. I do not think you have no choice but to accept their current state. My challenge to you, why not accept these challenges, but without explicit reference to the past

RA: