The Future of the Past
About Us
Steven W. Semes’s new book makes a case for architecture, urban design, and preservation as three specializations within a single discipline inspired by a common conservation ethic. Semes argues that new buildings should pay deference to and respect their surroundings so as to create harmonious compositions. Contiuity and wholeness in the urban built environment should not be held hostage to current theories of "disjunction" and "difference." New traditional architecture practices have recovered bodies of knowledge, methods, materials, and formal languages that allow us to redefine contemporary design in ways more consonant with the built heritage we have inherited from the past. Consequently, our attitudes toward historic cities and buildings must change. The book calls into question current policies in preservation and conservation that uncritically promote contrast between new and old in connection with new construction in historic settings, and asks what a reconceptualized preservation movement might be like in the future.
Steven W. Semes is Associate Professor and Academic Director of the Rome Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. A practicing architect for over thirty years, he has designed buildings of many types for preservation, addition, and new construction. He began his career as Historical Architect in the Technical Preservation Services branch of the National Park Service, reviewing proposed preservation projects for National Register properties. He subsequently worked for several leading architectural firms, including Johnson/Burgee Architects and Cooper Robertson & Partners, both in New York. From 1999 to 2006 he was principal of his own firm in New York. He is the author of The Architecture of the Classical Interior (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004) and a contributor to Elements of Classical Architecture (W. W. Norton & Co., 2001) and Classical Architecture: A Handbook to the Tradition (W. W. Norton & Co., in preparation for 2010). He has published over two dozen articles in such publications as National Trust Forum Journal, Traditional Building, Period Homes, American Arts Quarterly, The Classicist, Architecture Today.com, and Planetizen.org. He is a Fellow Emeritus of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America, where he has taught courses in designing the classical interior.
The author received his undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Virginia and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University. He is a native of Miami, Florida and grew up in Coral Gables. He currently resides in Rome.
Semes has been named as winner of the 2010 Clem Labine Award from Restore Media. The award will be conferred at the Traditional Building Exhibition and Conference in Chicago, October 21-22, 2010. For more information, see the announcement: http://www.traditional-building.com/News/News04-15-10.html
Steven W. Semes is Associate Professor and Academic Director of the Rome Studies Program at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. A practicing architect for over thirty years, he has designed buildings of many types for preservation, addition, and new construction. He began his career as Historical Architect in the Technical Preservation Services branch of the National Park Service, reviewing proposed preservation projects for National Register properties. He subsequently worked for several leading architectural firms, including Johnson/Burgee Architects and Cooper Robertson & Partners, both in New York. From 1999 to 2006 he was principal of his own firm in New York. He is the author of The Architecture of the Classical Interior (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004) and a contributor to Elements of Classical Architecture (W. W. Norton & Co., 2001) and Classical Architecture: A Handbook to the Tradition (W. W. Norton & Co., in preparation for 2010). He has published over two dozen articles in such publications as National Trust Forum Journal, Traditional Building, Period Homes, American Arts Quarterly, The Classicist, Architecture Today.com, and Planetizen.org. He is a Fellow Emeritus of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America, where he has taught courses in designing the classical interior.
The author received his undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Virginia and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University. He is a native of Miami, Florida and grew up in Coral Gables. He currently resides in Rome.
Semes has been named as winner of the 2010 Clem Labine Award from Restore Media. The award will be conferred at the Traditional Building Exhibition and Conference in Chicago, October 21-22, 2010. For more information, see the announcement: http://www.traditional-building.com/News/News04-15-10.html
