Allan Greenberg

Last updated

Dupont Hall-Portico detail.png

Allan Greenberg (born September 7, 1938) is an American architect and one of the leading classical architects of the twenty-first century, also known as New Classical Architecture. [1]

Contents

He was the originator and leading practitioner of "canonical classicism," one of many design responses to postmodernism emerging in the mid-1970s. [2] According to Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New York Times, Greenberg's “life’s work has been a mission to establish the validity of classicism as an architectural language in our time.” [3] In addition to his architecture, Greenberg’s articles, teaching, and lectures have exerted a strong influence on the study and practice of contemporary classicism. In 2006, he was the first American to be awarded the Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture in recognition of his major contributions to architectural design and scholarship. The prize is awarded annually "to a living architect whose work embodies the principles of traditional and classical architecture and urbanism in contemporary society and creates a positive, long-lasting cultural, environmental, and artistic impact." [4] George Hersey, author and professor of Art History at Yale University, wrote:

Greenberg is the most knowing, most serious practitioner of Classicism currently on the scene in this country. . . . Greenberg belongs in the succession of Charles Follen McKim, Daniel Burnham, Henry Bacon, John Russell Pope, and Arthur Brown. And above all he belongs to the succession of Greece and Rome, of Vignola and Sanmicheli, of Vanvitelli, Ledoux, and Labrouste, to the visionary company of those who play the great game of Classicism. [5]

Biography and career

Aaron Burr Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, USA (2003-2005) Aaron Burr Hall.jpg
Aaron Burr Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, USA (2003–2005)

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Greenberg was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he studied classical, Gothic, and modern architecture. He attributes his thorough grounding in architectural history to the rigors of his study there. Professors required students to memorize and draw the plans of famous buildings at will. Following a short working career in South Africa, Greenberg moved to London with the intention of studying there, and briefly considered taking a job with Le Corbusier. After a short stay in England he left for Denmark to work in the studio of the leading Scandinavian modernist architect Jørn Utzon during the design of the Sydney Opera House. He subsequently took a job in Helsinki with Viljo Revell, perhaps the best known Finnish architect after Alvar Aalto, whom Greenberg admired greatly.

In 1963, the architect moved his Danish wife and young family to America. He was admitted to the demanding architecture program at Yale, headed by the Brutalist architect Paul Marvin Rudolph. [6] Like fellow foreign students Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, Greenberg sought a fresh approach to Modernism in a country that was advancing faster than Europe in technology and architectural theory. After receiving his Master of Architecture degree from Yale University in 1965, he spent two years in the City of New Haven’s Redevelopment Agency and later served as Architectural Consultant to Connecticut’s Chief Justice from 1967 to 1979. He taught at Yale under deans Charles W. Moore and Herman Spiegel, watching the student upheavals of the late 1960s, and helped to develop the school's undergraduate major in architecture. It was during the early 1970s that Greenberg became disillusioned with orthodox Modernism, turning instead to postmodernist critiques offered by Yale colleagues Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

Greenberg's work in the mid-1970s was influenced both by the American "grays" (Moore, Venturi, Robert A.M. Stern, et al.) with whom he became associated, and by modern classicists such as Edwin Lutyens and Mott B. Schmidt. But as he came to better understand the achievements of these 20th-century masters, he increasingly pushed his work toward a more traditional vocabulary. His breakthrough projects came in the early 1980s with his design of a large country house for Peter and Sandra Brant in Greenwich, Connecticut (a commission wrested from Venturi), and George Shultz's extensive classical suite at the State Department in Washington, D.C. After their publication Greenberg's office flourished, and many students interested in traditional design came to New Haven to work with him. No architect in America has had a more profound influence on the younger generation of traditional architects who are practicing today.

Greenberg has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the Division of Historic Preservation at Columbia University, and the University of Notre Dame. Greenberg received his U.S. citizenship in 1973. He is married to the painter Judith Seligson, his second wife.

Allan Greenberg, Architect, LLC was established in 1972 and had offices in Alexandria, Virginia and New York City before Greenberg retired in 2021. The firm's work covered a broad range of buildings in the United States and overseas. Projects included master plans, feasibility studies, new construction, renovations, restorations, and interior and furniture design for academic, institutional, religious, commercial, residential, and retail clients.

Greenberg wrote both scholarly and popular books and articles on the dynamic and enduring qualities of traditional architecture and design. His extensive body of published work includes the books George Washington, Architect (1999), The Architecture of Democracy: American Architecture and the Legacy of the Revolution (2006), and Lutyens and the Modern Movement (2007). A monograph of his work appeared in 1995. His new monograph "Allan Greenberg: Classical Architect" is published by Rizzoli and was released on Oct. 1, 2013.

Major projects

Selected bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Venturi</span> American architect

Robert Charles Venturi Jr. was an American architect, founding principal of the firm Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and one of the major architectural figures of the twentieth century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis Kahn</span> Estonian-American architect (1901–1974)

Louis Isadore Kahn was an Estonian-born American architect based in Philadelphia. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935. While continuing his private practice, he served as a design critic and professor of architecture at Yale School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957. From 1957 until his death, he was a professor of architecture at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Roche</span> Irish-born American architect (1922–2019)

Eamonn Kevin Roche was an Irish-born American Pritzker Prize-winning architect. He was responsible for the design/master planning for over 200 built projects in both the U.S. and abroad. These projects include eight museums, 38 corporate headquarters, seven research facilities, performing arts centers, theaters, and campus buildings for six universities. In 1967 he created the master plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and thereafter designed all of the new wings and installation of many collections including the reopened American and Islamic wings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin Lutyens</span> English architect (1869–1944)

Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memorials and public buildings. In his biography, the writer Christopher Hussey wrote, "In his lifetime (Lutyens) was widely held to be our greatest architect since Wren if not, as many maintained, his superior". The architectural historian Gavin Stamp described him as "surely the greatest British architect of the twentieth century".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gordon Bunshaft</span> American architect

Gordon Bunshaft,, was an American architect, a leading proponent of modern design in the mid-twentieth century. A partner in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Bunshaft joined the firm in 1937 and remained with it for more than 40 years. His notable buildings include Lever House in New York, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the National Commercial Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 140 Broadway, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Branch Bank in New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Postmodern architecture</span> Architectural style that emerged in the late 1950s

Postmodern architecture is a style or movement which emerged in the late 1950s as a reaction against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, particularly in the international style advocated by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. The movement was introduced by the architect and urban planner Denise Scott Brown and architectural theorist Robert Venturi in their 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas. The style flourished from the 1980s through the 1990s, particularly in the work of Scott Brown & Venturi, Philip Johnson, Charles Moore and Michael Graves. In the late 1990s, it divided into a multitude of new tendencies, including high-tech architecture, neo-futurism, new classical architecture, and deconstructivism. However, some buildings built after this period are still considered postmodern.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert A. M. Stern</span> American architect

Robert Arthur Morton Stern, is a New York City–based architect, educator, and author. He is the founding partner of the architecture firm, Robert A. M. Stern Architects, also known as RAMSA. From 1998 to 2016, he was the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collegiate Gothic</span> Architectural style

Collegiate Gothic is an architectural style subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture, popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries for college and high school buildings in the United States and Canada, and to a certain extent Europe. A form of historicist architecture, it took its inspiration from English Tudor and Gothic buildings. It has returned in the 21st century in the form of prominent new buildings at schools and universities including Cornell, Princeton, Washington University, and Yale.

The New York Five was a group of architects based in New York City whose work was featured in the 1972 book Five Architects. The architects, Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk, and Richard Meier, are also often referred to as "the Whites". Other architects and theorists have been associated with the group, including Werner Seligmann, Kenneth Frampton, Colin Rowe, and Gwathmey's partner Robert Siegel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yale School of Architecture</span> Architecture school of Yale University

The Yale School of Architecture (YSoA) is one of the constituent professional schools of Yale University. The School awards the degrees of Master of Architecture I, Master of Architecture II, Master of Environmental Design (M.E.D), and Ph.D in architectural history and criticism. The School also offers joint degrees with the Yale School of Management and Yale School of the Environment, as well as a course of study for undergraduates in Yale College leading to a Bachelor of Arts. Since its founding as a department in 1916, the School has produced some of the world's leading architects, including Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Maya Lin and Eero Saarinen, among others. The current dean of the School is Deborah Berke.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Notre Dame School of Architecture</span>

The University of Notre Dame School of Architecture was the first Catholic university in America to offer a degree in architecture, beginning in 1898. The School offers undergraduate and post-graduate architecture programs.

Jaquelin Taylor Robertson, FAIA, FAICP, informally known as "Jaque," was an American architect and urban designer, working at Cooper Robertson. He was a representative of New Urbanism and New Classical Architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Driehaus Architecture Prize</span> Award

The Driehaus Architecture Prize, fully named The Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame, is a global award to honor a major contributor in the field of contemporary traditional and classical architecture. The Driehaus Prize was conceived as an alternative to the predominantly modernist Pritzker Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Izenour</span> American architect

Steven Izenour was an American architect, urbanist and theorist. He is best known as co-author, with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, of Learning from Las Vegas, one of the most influential architectural theory books of the twentieth century. He was also a principal in the Philadelphia firm Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates.

Richard Sammons is an architect, architectural theorist, visiting professor, and chief designer of Fairfax & Sammons Architects with offices in New York City, New York and Palm Beach, Florida. The firm has an international practice specializing in classical and traditional architecture, interior design and urban planning. Sammons was instrumental in the reemergence of classical design as a major movement in America through his designs as well as his work as an instructor at the Prince of Wales Institute in Britain in 1992-3 and as a founding member of the Institute of Classical Architecture in 1991. From 1996 to 2004, the Fairfax & Sammons office also served as the headquarters for the noted American architecture critic Henry Hope Reed Jr. (1915) and Classical America, the organization he founded in 1968. In 2013, Fairfax & Sammons received the Arthur Ross Award for Lifetime Achievement in Architecture, an award created to recognize and celebrate excellence in the classical tradition.

Mark Alan Hewitt is an American architect, preservationist and architectural historian, known for his work on architectural history and the history of architectural drawing "as a medium of thought."

Thomas H. Beeby is an American architect who was a member of the "Chicago Seven" architects and has been Chairman Emeritus of Hammond, Beeby, Rupert, Ainge Architects (HBRA) for over thirty-nine years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Classical architecture</span> Postmodern classical architectural movement

New Classical architecture, New Classicism or Contemporary Classical architecture is a contemporary movement in architecture that continues the practice of Classical architecture. It is sometimes considered the modern continuation of Neoclassical architecture, even though other styles might be cited as well, such as Gothic, Baroque, Renaissance or even non-Western styles – often referenced and recreated from a postmodern perspective as opposed to being strict revival styles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David M. Schwarz</span> American architect and designer (born 1951)

David M. Schwarz is an American architect. He is the President & CEO of Washington, D.C.-based David M. Schwarz Architects, Inc. and serves as the chairman of the Yale School of Architecture's Dean's Council.

Warren Jacob Cox is an American architect and a co-founder of Hartman-Cox Architects in Washington, DC in 1965. He is the son of Oscar S. Cox, a prominent Washington, D.C. lawyer from Portland, Maine and Louise Black Cox of Bryson City, North Carolina. His parents moved to Washington, D.C. from New York City in 1938.

References

  1. "Greenberg, Allan". Grove Art Online. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t2094302 . Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  2. Leland M. Roth, American Architecture: A History (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003): 500-501.
  3. Paul Goldberger, “A Classical Showpiece.” The New York Times Magazine 135 (May 1986): 78-83, 91.
  4. "Driehaus Prize // School of Architecture // University of Notre Dame". School of Architecture.
  5. Hersey, G.L. “Allan Greenberg and the Classical Game.” Architectural Record 173 (October 1985): 160-61.
  6. "Art and Architecture Building |". New Haven Modern Architecture - New Haven Preservation Trust.