Evento

"Louis Sullivan Reconsidered" with Steve Bass, ICAA Fellow

5:30 Reception
6:30 Lecture

New York Architect Steve Bass puts the practical and theoretical work of early twentieth century American architect Louis Sullivan in the context of the Platonic tradition. We will look at the famous maxim 'Form follows Function' and understand it does not necessarily mean what is has typically been taken to mean, but is rather a contemporary restatement of a Platonic cosmological vision. We will additionally look at Sullivan's book on ornament and find that far from hardheaded reductionism and functionalism, Sullivan calls overtly for a magical approach familiar to ancient and Renaissance esotericism. This presentation relocates Sullivan within the classical tradition rather than as the modernist martyr he is presently taken to be; a link in a great chain of aesthetic wisdom rather than a radical romantic bent on destroying the old for the sake of the new. His work connects us to the oldest, highest Western values rather than forming part of an unbridgeable historical gulf forever cutting us off from the classical ideal.

ICAA Fellow Steve Bass was born in 1947 and grew up in New York City. He studied architecture at Pratt Institute and Traditional Arts at the Royal College of Art, London. He has maintained a modest personal practice in architecture for almost forty years. Steve has taught at the University of Notre Dame, the Institute for Classical Architecture and Art, the New York Open Center and other venues. He has written for ICAA's journal 'The Classicist', for 'Traditional Building' magazine, and for 'American Arts Quarterly'. His book, 'Beauty Memory Unity - A Theory of Proportion in Architecture and Design' is currently in preparation by Lindisfarne Books.