The famous trilogy of commodity, firmness, and delight provides conditions we expect a building to satisfy. But are they enough?

Built in 1656, the Mayhew-Hancock House on Martha’s Vineyard is a one room structure 15x14 feet with a dirt floor, a thatched roof and walls of waddle and daub.

Using the APT Building Technology Heritage Library.

There is nothing like Bastille Day to conjure up images of political unrest by crowds. But it is 2020 in the United States, and we don’t need to look back to Europe for such imagery; it is with us today.

The statues of Confederates that are targets of revised judgments about their subjects often occupy important places in our urbanism, which calls attention to the importance of urbanism in what we build.

Magazine subscriptions, newsstand sales, website traffic, online education attendance, e-cast open rates, social media engagement are all up as much as 100% year-over-year.

The Building Technology Heritage Library is a free, online research library of pre-1964 architectural trade catalogs, house plan books, and builder’s technical guides.

With no place to go but home, I've attended to several projects around the house and yard, which I'd not gotten around to. These projects include: reading back issues of our Home Group magazines; sorting through the junk mail; planting new trees and shrubs in my garden; power washing the back porch and cleaning out the attic.

Three memorable and familiar cities use their buildings and urbanism in ways that reveal their very different purposes, sacred, secular, and horrifically vile.

A philosophically informed consideration of the craftsman's progression from apprenticeship to mastery.

“Maintenance is Preservation.” Hugh Miller, FAIA

Opinion On Executive Order for the Classical Style in Federal Buildings

The most important buildings are built of masonry, stone if available, or brick often stuccoed to look like stone. Either way classical components suit the material best.

“Wellness” is the design solution de jour. Not long ago, our “design matters” solutions were energy efficiency, community, sense of place and identity, resilience, safety, security, convenience, much of it aided and abetted by new technology. When we roll all these benefits together in the buildings we design, it makes us feel relevant. Design does matter and so do we.

Having previously considered Metaphysics and Epistemology, this essay deals with the final of the three branches of Classical philosophy: Ethics. In this essay I delve into our relation with Aesthetics—how things ought to appeal to the senses as well as Morality—how ought we be disposed to ourselves, other people, nature and the craft itself.

Ceilings do more than top off rooms. Some let us look into Heaven and others display technology at work.

Tradition carries the experience of the past into the present where innovations make it applicable to current circumstances. This reciprocity protects our liberty, and it guides the design of buildings that serve and protect that liberty.

The World Architecture Festival Building of the Year. And a brewpub.

Columns, piers, and walls traditionally have celebratory toppings. The capitals of the three canonic Greek and two Roman additions are the most familiar, but local variations abound, such as these in Chicago and in Richmond, Virginia.

Having previously considered Metaphysics, this essay deals with the second of the three branches of Classical philosophy: Epistemology, that is to say what constitutes real knowledge for the traditional craftsman.

The Haywood Street Fresco resides in a Central Methodist Church, a sturdy brick building downtown which looks west at the Blue Ridge Mountains.

"Materials and Methods: Windows & Exteriors," the third Traditional Building Conference of 2019 took place at Graylyn Estate in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Traditional architecture serves the public, common good by using a vestibule to make a clear connection between the public and private realms.