Institute for Traditional Architecture merges with Classicist group

After four years of trying to get up and running, the Institute for Traditional Architecture (ITA) decided to join with the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America rather than remain a freestanding organization. The merger with the 1,000-member ICA&CA is expected help disseminate traditional building techniques to the country’s designers more effectively. As a result of the merger, the Classical organization has expanded its continuing education courses, introducing planning-oriented classes in urbanism that it is hoped will appeal to professional planners and other current or potential new urbanists. There’s talk that the Classical group may design prototypes of houses to be built by Habitat for Humanity. One of the biggest weaknesses of the nonprofit, volunteer-dependent Habitat for Humanity has been the failure of many of its house designs to look good and to fit well into pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods. Traditional architects and new urbanists such as Ray Gindroz and his Pittsburgh-based Urban Design Associates have become expert at producing pattern books for developers and communities. Now that Gindroz has been named to the ICA&CA’s board, there are hopes that he will help make pattern books more widely available. Non-architects known as “building designers,” who work mainly for custom homebuilders and production homebuilders, have expressed strong interest in obtaining high-quality pattern books. “They need help; they want help,” said Paul Gunther, president of the ICA&CA. The distribution of pattern books to building designers and a larger number of new urbanists could improve the appearance of thousands of new houses. founded by leading new urbanists Gindroz, Arnold “Buff” Chace, Andrés Duany, and Leon Krier helped found the Institute for Traditional Architecture in 1999. Under architect John Massengale, the ITA aimed to fill a void caused by the failure of most schools of architecture to teach designers how to produce traditional buildings. The ITA never got far, however. So over the past several months the organization decided to join the Classicists under what Massengale called “one big tent.” Massengale has also been named to the ICA&CA board, and last fall he began teaching a course under its auspices. He intends to work within the ICA&CA on establishing a “virtual school” of traditional design — one of the unfulfilled objectives of the ITA. The ICA&CA is the result of a merger about a year ago between the ten-year-old Institute of Classical Architecture and the smaller, 35-year-old Classical America. The ICA&CA and its predecessor organizations have dealt with architecture, landscape, design, stone carving, and other arts. The merger, Gunther said, enables the organization to expand into “urban planning and town planning, the urban agenda.” Headquartered in New York, the organization has well-established chapters in Philadelphia, Charleston, South Carolina, and Charlotte, North Carolina, and has a recently formed chapter in Atlanta. Its activities include publishing, education, travel, and awards programs. It has begun working closely with some chapters of the American Institute of Building Designers. This does not mean that building designers and traditional architects will be producing full-blown Classical architecture in the five orders — Doric, Tuscan, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite. New York Classical architect Steve Bass says that at a Classical Council that Massengale organized last June in Alexandria, Virginia, some of the speakers argued that it’s not necessary to adhere to strict Classical methods. Robert A.M. Stern, dean of Yale Architecture School, reportedly told the Council that within the traditionalist and Classicist camps, conflicts can be overcome by embracing “pluralism.” “Classical,” Gunther told New Urban News, is not limited to Greco-Roman architecture, but includes traditional and vernacular styles as well.