Outside Paradise and Outside Utopia |

TRADITION, MODERNITY & MODERNISM

| A Perpetual Becoming

Riverfront Capriccio, Mixed Media (LS 2012) | Courtesy of Lucien Steil

To work within a tradition requires a certain acceptance of the limitations it brings; but if these
limitations are understood to be inevitable consequences of mans position within nature but outside
Paradise, outside of Utopia, they will be perceived not as constraints but as the simple and natural
containment of human action, including creativity. (Robert Maxwell)
Leon Krier noted pointedly that there is either architecture or the absence of architecture highlighting
that architecture in itself implies uncompromising standards of design, art, tectonics and execution
without which there could not be question of architecture. Architecture cannot be, either or, beautiful

or ugly; it is Architecture or it is not! Compromising in design and building with the ideals of
appropriateness, beauty, solidity, permanence, as well as the ideals of the Common Good, means
abandoning the very realm of architecture.
Asking What is Architecture then, is a legitimate question. It has been asked and answered
innumerable times, by each new generation probably, if not repeatedly in each generation. Inheriting
a pre-existing, fragmented world shaped by preceding generations, which it continues to alter and
develop before leaving it to successive generations, each generation needs to assume both past and
future, sometimes despite of itself, and contribute to the preservation, construction and remodeling of
the world, and take responsibility for change, or destruction all share in the responsibility for
reconstruction, and have to re-assimilate and re-think the legacy of knowledge, experience and culture
which will provide the foundation to be built upon.
What you have inherited from your ancestors must be earned before it can be possessed. (Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe)

Borghetto di Pino, Mixed Media (LS 2010) | Courtesy of Lucien Steil

Culture and the skill of the artist and the artisan are not genetically safeguarded in the same way as
the inherent, intrinsic reason, wisdom and inexhaustible skill of nature. Man has not only to keep
reminding himself of the achievements of the past, but also to learn them over and over again. He has
to re-invent his world and humanity constantly and continually. Memory is about remembering and
forgetting as Roberto Behar pointedly reminded me of.
Because this process of learning, invention and creation or re-learning, re-creation and re-invention
is continuous, there is always a legacy of remembering and forgetting, but above all a culture of
building, a tradition, for one generation to pass on to the next, a legacy of a finished world to an
unfinished humanity. Occasionally alas there can be a Culture of Forgetting only, and these periods
are called Dark Ages.

This relentless sequence of re-culturing is dependent on stable conventions which guarantee its
continuity, efficiency, and equilibrium. Without a commitment to permanence a common world would
be impossible (cf Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition), and continuity and permanence are the
basic conditions of this resilience of memories, experiences and conventions which form the ferment
and support of a beautiful, comfortable and lasting world.
The building and re-building of the world, the homeland, Patria and the home needs to guarantee the
continuity of a common world, safeguard a sense of place, and foster a living identity. The new
world we are born in each of us, and which is constantly in a process of change, invention and
adaptation cannot be ever the same nor a repetitive revival, but strives to the emulation and constant
perfection of itself, endeavoring to unfold ever new layers of a enhanced identity, of a better self. The
traditional process of creation and recreation is inspired by ideals of a familiar world articulating the
mythical prospects of Time and Place in an operational synthesis, a synthesis where Genius Loci
and Zeitgeist are at peace. In this synthesis the permanence of Genius Loci and the impermanence
of Zeitgeist agree upon vital tactical synergies allowing for a perpetual modernity and timeless
inspiration of living building traditions.

The Province and the Universe

Tradition has, on the one hand, a dimension of timelessness and universality, being the selected
wisdom of people throughout the ages and, on the other hand, a character of local and geographical
specificity. It fuses universal principles of art, architecture and city-building with geographical, cultural
and historical peculiarities inherent to the Canton (Colin Rowes term for that part of the world clearly
delimited in geographical and sentimental terms, which we call our homeland or Patria.) This
attachment is not a state of uncritical, static subordination to mummified customs, reactionary
nostalgia, rigid conservatism, but an inventive and creative commitment to the homeland and the
home.

Full Moon Capriccio, Adriatic Sketchbooks (LS 2012) | Courtesy of Lucien Steil

Change and Stability

Tradition arises from the selected wisdom of the entire people, says Ricarda Huch. Her statement
correctly stresses the active and genuinely creative dimension of tradition. Tradition is not concerned
with an undiscerning agglomeration and clustering of the whole global heritage of past times, but with
the careful selection of the best, the most beautiful and the most effective of mankinds achievements
throughout history.
Tradition is emphatically not a rigid dogma, but a living, organic ecological project. It has nothing to do
with obscurantist practices, reactionary customs and irrational revivalism. Tradition is always young,
fresh and new; not a helpless defense of the old, the ancient, or the antique. It is a project about
continuity based on memory, commonsense, and experience. Thus it would be erroneous to regard
tradition as the antithesis of modern inventiveness: tradition is the very foundation of invention. It is
the permanent embodiment of invention, discovery and perfection. Tradition fosters a perpetually
organic Modernity, in what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe calls an eternal newness and a new
excellence.
There is nothing past for which one may yearn, there is only an eternal newness which is shaped by
the wider elements of the past and true nostalgia has always to be productive to create a new
excellence.
(J.W. von Goethe)

Waterfront Square, Adriatic Sketchbooks (LS 2012) | Courte sy of Lucien Steil

A Perpetual Becoming

Impermanence is a principle of harmony. When we dont struggle against it, we are in harmony with
reality. (Pema Chodron)
Now Tradition acknowledges the principle of Impermanence and is not the opposite of Modernity as
often erroneously stated. It is not contrary to Change but in reality the very catalyst of a necessary,
organic and evolutionary balance between permanence and change. It is not opposed to change but
to unnecessary change andexcessive obsolescence which are enforced on the world by Modernism.
Rather than opposing Impermanence it transcends inertia and stagnation with a permanent
Newness proposing what Buddhism defines as a Continuous Becoming . It is neither conservative,
nor progressive but an eternal becoming.
Early Buddhism declares that in this world there is nothing that is fixed and permanent. Everything is
subject to change and alteration. Decay is inherent in all component things, declared the Buddha
and his followers accepted that existence was a flux, and a continuous becoming. (Wikipedia)

Tradition versus Modernism

The destruction of the natural and built environment, the despoliation of whole regions, landscapes,
cities and villages, and the alienation of communities suggest the monumentality of a failure, a failure
of civilization, it is the failure of modernism. After having enforced compulsive change as the principal
motor of culture, society and economy it has paradoxically achieved a durability of the ephemeral and
a logics of randomness. The permanent revolution of the modernist Avant-Garde has become
mainstream and conservative, it is now the art of the Establishment; the Avant-Garde has become
a Rear-Guard. . Its aesthetics of degradation, deconstruction and arbitrary artificiality pretends to
transcend the crisis of Modernism and produces widely consumable new paradigms of Art, Science
and Technology. It full-heartedly celebrates Parametricism, Deconstructivism and New
Subjectivism in computer-drunken imagery of a clueless future and redundant futurism. The global
scale of spiritual and material pollution reaching deep, both into political, economic and cultural
geology as well as into astral space, etc. not only causes Climate Change, but an erosion of
civilization preluding unpredictable ecological and political tragedies many present, and yet many to
come. Modernism continues battling the specters of Golden Ages in the Classical past, and the
sustainable and ecological potentials of a better future outlined successfully by contemporary
traditional architects and urbanists. It is rattling its skeletons and resuscitating its zombies and
vampires of its incomplete utopias in a vigorous contemporary crusade against beauty, comfort, and
solace.
Modernism as an official culture had, and still has enormous, if not imperial-dictatorial power to
achieve quite pompous aims of industrial, post-industrial or technological Utopia. It benefitted from
unlimited investments and ideal political opportunities to enforce a more beautiful, healthy, equitable
world and foster global solutions of peace, justice and harmony. An objective survey of its results

however reveals a wasteful experiment which has disdainfully set aside the wellbeing of humanity and
proved incapable of building a comfortable, beautiful, and lasting world. The Modernist claim to a
Tradition of Modernism is eventually a contradiction in terms, or maybe more accurately a rather
gloomy and fateful predicament of a lasting cultural disruption. Abstraction, alienation and
fragmentation, and the deliberate and global destruction of traditions have created desolation, chaos
and problems stretching in a far future leaving innumerable challenges for generations to come.
Unknown quantities of nuclear and toxic waste stored or dumped throughout the world, the
irremediable extinction of animal and vegetal species, and the fatal sequence of an industrial
metabolism leading to Global Warming and Climate Change, etc. have all been led in the wake of a
world liberated from Antique or ancestral traditions, unchaining the highest levels of greed, cruelty and
selfishness human civilization has ever experienced. The world seems to be constantly in preparation
of war and in fear of terror, rather than in search of peace; the earth is worn out by the systematic,
massive and universal exploitation and a methodical poisoning and intoxication, and is
metamorphosing from an earthly Paradise into an unliveable hell.

Wild W aters and Full Moon Capriccio, Mixed Media (LS 2008) | Courtesy of Lucien
Steil
Resistances have emerged, Anti-Industrial Movement, Anti-Global, Green Movement, Occupy
actions etc. working in all parts of the world to develop alternative proposals and projects in the context
of a global strategy of emancipation from top-down anti-democratic leadership, social, ethnic,
gender, and economic discrimination, and from mono-cultural indoctrination and globalization.. One
World, Many Traditions, the motto developed by INTBAU (International Network for Traditional
Architecture and Urbanism) headed by HRH The Prince of Wales, is not only a most intelligent and
compassionate claim for diversity and sustainability, but a logical shortcut for cultural democracy at a
glocal dimension. These resistances are deriving increasing support from a genuinely popular
uprising inspired by a militant nostalgia, a nostalgia for a better newness and for a contextual and
consensual modernity. Fortunately this nostalgia, the last fortress against industrial Modernism (cf.
Leon Krier) has reassessed tradition as a frontier rather than as a boundary.

Tradition, a Frontier, not a Boundary!

The resurrection of an eco-logical and humanist-humanitarian tradition will not be an easy task: many
ruins have to be fixed, many wrecks have to be lifted, everything has to be reconstructed, reinvented,
re-imagined. The reconstruction of a sustainable, livable and beautiful world will depend on the
originality, freshness and modernity of a tradition which acknowledges creatively and critically the local
and the universal, and allows for being continuously scrutinized, revised and perfected. Not
surprisingly, neither the evidence of facts, experience and research, nor the intuition of common sense
and appropriateness help making wise and purposeful action any easier.
Men are vexed because truth is so simple. But they should realise that it is not so easy to apply it to
their advantage.(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
The contemporary and militant practice of traditional architecture and urbanism are thus not part of
the resurgence of folklore, but a significant contribution towards the rehabilitation of the theoretical,
metaphysical and practical, eco-logical and economic principles of architecture and urbanism.
Tradition must neither be misunderstood as a static inventory of historical forms and customs, nor
should it be synonymous with a free-wheeling re-interpretation, and playful extrapolation of images,
forms and patterns of the past. The concept of tradition itself derives from the Latin tradere, which
means continuing and handing over; it is a dynamic process; it is a flow; it is deriving from choices,
and is not a fatality as Leon Krier insists in his book Fate or Choice.
Tradition is involved in a rigorous and rational process founded on serious academic, scientific,
philosophical and professional criteria. The concepts of continuity, permanence, as well as change
are inseparable from that of a living tradition. The process of continuity suggests a development
through time and space in which change and permanence, preservation and renewal, decay and

restoration, tradition and modernity, etc. are not contradictory or exclusive, but inseparable and
complementary. A truly living tradition provides a vibrant strand of continuity and creativity and bridges
through all the changes, obstacles, and accidents of history. Tradition generously embraces the
human need for a comfortable, beautiful and permanent world where the permanence of change does
not mean perpetual disorientation and discomfort.

Traditional Architecture is not a Style

Homage to Seaside, Mixed Media (LS 2011) | Courtesy of Lucien Steil

Traditional architecture is guided by the universal ideals of Classicism and fostered by the timeless
heritage of vernacular cultures. Besides the formal, constructive, technical and tectonics, it is
thoroughly interested in the ethics of building practice. The moral, spiritual, cultural as well as the
ecological dimensions of building are its predominant concerns.
Classical architecture is not a style, as brilliantly elaborated upon by Demetri Porphyrios in Classical
Architecture, and his comments on Classicism as a tradition are the most insightful as they
transcend the usual historiographical classifications and style debates.

Classicism is not a style, but a tradition that has evolved from and co-existed with the vernacular. It
is a living tradition open to adaptation and interpretation, and responsive to region, climate, nature and
culture. - Demetri Porphyrios

Promenade on the Canal, Adriatic Sketchbooks, (LS 2012) | Courtesy of Lucien Steil
Traditional architecture in its Classical, and its Vernacular expression is not antagonistic to an
architecture of modernity as it contributes substantially towards a global ecological reconstruction
(cf. Leon Krier) of the contemporary world. Rather than being turned towards the past it addresses
mainly the future as HRH The Prince of Wales repeatedly stressed: My concern is the future, and he
continues We have to work out how we will create resilient, truly sustainable and human-scale urban
environments that are land-efficient, use low carbon materials and do not depend so completely on
the car.
Tradition is, and always has been, rooted in a harmonious equilibrium between man and nature, home
and universe, body and mind, intellectual and manual culture, arts and crafts. Traditional architecture
gives essential expression to the very ecological metabolism between man and nature. It also
constitutes a perpetually contemporary endeavor re-formulating architecture in relation to what it has

always been, acknowledging, both history and myth, memory and imagination, and thus defining and
reassessing its constant and universal principles, as well as its parameters of change and adaptation.

Seafront Promenade, Adriatic Sketchbooks (LS 2011) | Courtesy of Lucien Steil

Traditional architecture is not concerned with historical styles, but with historical principles; not with
classifications, but with cultural and professional seriousness and integrity; not with academic quarrels
and polemics, but with the conscientious study of time tested ,built and unbuilt precedents, designed,
envisioned and tectonically, culturally, artistically vetted and assessed ; not with abstract and academic
discourse based on arbitrarily constructed and imposed knowledge , but with projects and evidence
based on the reality of tradition. If tradition is concerned with progress and modernity, it would be in a
sense of authentic contemporaneity as defined by Hassan Fathy:
Now, if we are to reconcile time with the architects definition of contemporaneity, we must say that
to be relevant to its time, to be contemporary, a work of architecture must fulfil these conditions: it
must be part of the bustle and turmoil, the ebb and flow of everyday life; it must be related harmoniously
to the rhythm of the universe, and it must be consonant with mans current stage of knowledge of
change. (Hassan Fathy)
The practice of architecture remains essentially a pursuit of ideals. Architecture and city-building are
necessarily imbedded in a desire of building; they encompass physical and moral changes in the built
environment of human societies and propose the materialization of design visions. Architectures main
purpose is to conceive in a consistent way good buildings and good cities in a perspective of
preservation, perfection, construction and reconstruction of a beautiful, solid, comfortable and durable
Patria.

City Blues, Adriatic Sketchbooks (LS 2013) | Courtesy of Lucien Steil

Fundamental Principles of Traditional Architecture

o

Use of natural materials and eco-logical approach to natural resources.

Intelligent and appropriate use of materials as regards their natural properties, qualities and
limitations.

Respect for local context in terms of materials, craftsmanship and architectural culture.

Building methods based on the intelligent and creative synthesis of intellectual and manual skills,
artistic and technological excellence, and a passionate commitment to environmental and bioecological responsibility.

Geometric, logical and complex forms and spaces allowing the building of harmonious,
comfortable, identifiable and well-articulated formal, spatial structures and places.

Agreeable proportions, harmonies and scalar complexity developed from the analysis of the most
successful traditional buildings, cities and places, as well as from the most updated scientific
evidence on the mathesis of the universe.

Natural proportions derived from the study of the human body and from the study of nature in a
context of Imitation of Nature.

Imitation of time-tested models, patterns, typologies and morphologies, and constructive and
decorative details.

Creative, inventive and undogmatic, but logical and correct use of the permanent elements of
architecture as they have been defined in the history of architecture, such as wall, column,

entablature, cornice, roof, window, and door, and house, palace, monument, colonnade, arcade,
passage, street, square, block, quarter and city, etc.

Sleeping City, Table-Set Sketch, Cesenatico (LS 2012) | Courtesy of Lucien Steil

Written by Lucien Steil