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Aesthetic Education and Design
  

roger Scruton

In his celebrated letters on the Aesthetic Education 
of  Mankind, Schiller argued that to achieve the sense 
of  order and civic virtue our best recourse in the 
modern world is aesthetic education. Kant had 
marked out a central place for aesthetic pleasure 
in the life of  the rational being, arguing that the 
judgment of  beauty is both disinterested and 
universal in its scope. In aesthetic judgment, Kant 
wrote, we are ‘suitors for agreement’, and it is a 
small step from that idea to Schiller’s view that the 
pursuit of  beauty is a shared enterprise, with civic 
virtue as its goal. In aesthetic judgment we view 
our surroundings as ends in themselves, abstracting 
from the demands of  utility and function. Hence 
aesthetic interest looks for permanent values, rather 
than transitory functions. It is the one sure guide to 
getting things right, not just for the here and now of  
our current interests, but permanently, and for the 
community as a whole. My aim in this paper is to 
outline a form of  architectural education in which 
pattern, composition, and the idea of  fit are given 
a proper place, and in which function and utility 
are regarded as the consequences of  beauty and 
not prior requirements that must be independently 
fulfilled.

Schiller believed that education and high 
culture would release what is best in us, and bring 
about civic virtue without any particular person 
taking charge of  the process. Subsequent history 
has dented any confidence that we might have had 
in such a vision. Indeed, the experience of  the 20th 
century suggests that the greatest changes come 
about as a result of  particular people and their 

Schiller 
argued that 

to achieve 
the sense of 

order and 
civic virtue 

our best 
recourse in 
the modern 

world is 
aesthetic 
education. 

“

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influence, and that the most influential people–the ones who have done 
most to create the world in which we now live–have been mad. 

This is certainly true in the realm of  politics, which was irreversibly 
changed by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Ze Dong, and a host of  lesser 
lunatics. The interesting thing about those madmen is their astonishing 
ability to recruit a following, to march into the future like the Pied Piper 
of  Hamelin, with an ever-growing crocodile of  mesmerised imbeciles 
following them to destruction. The madness exemplified by the ‘great 
leaders’ exhibits their shared desire for a total solution, a transition to 
a new state in which everything has been solved and nothing is left for 
discussion. But this total solution is the answer to no coherent problem. 
Of  course you can invent a problem: the Jews, the bourgeoisie, the ‘enemy 
within’ or (in the case of  ISIS today) the apostate or the infidel. But it is 
clear to the most casual outside observer that the problem is dictated by 
the solution, and not the other way round. It is the desire for the total 
reorganisation of  everything, the total destruction of  all obstacles and the 
total transfer of  power to me, the Leader, that requires the invention of  
a problem that can be solved in no other way. For this reason the most 
frequent tale told by modern politics is the tale of  an enemy within, whose 
destruction will open the way to a new order of  being. It was thus that the 
‘bourgeoisie’ was invented, to play such a remarkable role in the theories 
of  Marx, Sartre, Foucault and the Frankfurt school. 

This feature of  modern politics is replicated by modern architecture. 
Here too the most influential people have been mad, expressing their 
desire for total control in manifestoes and projects that involve destroying 
whole settlements and cities. Like the pioneers of  totalitarian politics, 
Corbusier, Gropius, Lubetkin and their kind wanted a total solution, and 
they hunted the world for the problem that would justify their aim.

Thus Le Corbusier’s total solution for the problem of  Paris north of  
the Seine involved wiping away the great city of  stone and replacing it with 
an array of  concrete towers rimmed by grass verges. As comprehensive a 
solution as could be imagined. But what was the problem? Le Corbusier 
made a few fashionable noises about health, and the conditions of  the 
working class. However, they were improvised around the solution, rather 
than discovered from the facts. The Council of  Paris put a stop to this 
nonsense, causing Le Corbusier to turn his attention to the far more 
vulnerable city of  Algiers, where his plans to wipe this excrescence from 
the map were stopped only by the collapse of  the Vichy government, 
which he had persuaded to adopt him as its architectural advisor.  



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Unfortunately the City Council of  Paris has 
no power to match that of  a President, and when 
President Pompidou, whose wife prided herself  
on her advanced aesthetic taste, wished to create a 
monument to himself, a small-scale version of  Le 
Corbusier’s vandalism was carried out, resulting in 
the clearance of  beautiful residential streets in the 
lovely Lutetian limestone, and their replacement 
by a vast fun palace of  scaffolding in playground 
colours, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo 
Piano. This, the Centre Beaubourg, is perhaps the 
greatest eyesore in Europe, if  only because it is 
conceived entirely as an insult to its surroundings. 
It is expressly designed not to fit in, and this has 
been the pattern followed by Richard Rogers in 
all subsequent buildings: to create something 
that stands out from the urban fabric, as though 
dropped from another planet. But ‘fitting in’ is the 
primary goal of  aesthetic judgment, and it is why 
Schiller connected aesthetic education to his ideal 
of  civic order. 

I will return to that point, since it seems to me 
that the art of  fitting things together–both internally, 
within the work you are composing, and externally, 
within the fabric of  a human settlement–is of  the 
essence of  aesthetic education in all its forms. And 
it points us in a certain direction–towards a kind 
of  grammar, repeatability, and the relation of  part 
to part. Before exploring that suggestion, however, 
I want to dwell for a moment on the question of  
madness. 

We should make a distinction, I believe, 
between those conditions, like schizophrenia and 
bi-polar disorder, which stem from a dysfunction of  
the central nervous system, and those conditions in 
which perception, cognition and affective states are 
all normal and functional, but devoted entirely to 
some goal that cannot be moderated or renounced, 
and which is immune to rational argument–by 
which I mean argument that weighs with all of  



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us. It is this second condition that I have in mind, when describing the 
madness of  Stalin, Mao or Le Corbusier: a kind of  inability to give weight 
to any consideration that does not originate in the over-mastering Idea. 
The mad person is the one in the grip of  a vision, who cannot recognize 
the legitimacy of  opposition or adapt his projects to the needs of  others. 
He recognizes no boundaries, and regards reality as a plastic material to be 
shaped according to his aims. His thought is uni-directional, and he cries 
ever ‘Forward!’ in the face of  obstacles. 

Aesthetic education, as I see it, is one part of  the broader practice 
of  humane education–the kind of  education that transmits knowledge 
of  the human world. Its purpose is to teach students how to renounce 
their obsessions, and to learn the ways of  sympathy and compromise. 
It fosters cooperation with one’s kind. Its goal is to transmit a culture 
that embodies shared conceptions of  life and discovered solutions to 
life’s problems, including the principal problem, which is how to live at 
peace with one’s neighbours and competitors, even when you dislike them. 
Art, music and literature are all part of  this culture, embodying pictures, 
stories and dramas that raise the human condition to a dignity that sets 
an example in our daily lives. To transmit such a culture involves teaching 
students to exercise taste, to compare and contrast, to distinguish refined 
from crude perceptions, and in general to understand the distinction 
between products that accommodate our shared humanity and products 
that are to be understood merely as whimsy or self-centred display. The 
goal is to enhance our dignity, our sympathy and our understanding for 
our kind. However difficult it might be to express this goal in words, it 
is straightforwardly manifested in the art, literature and music that we 
have inherited, and apparent to everyone who has learned how to enjoy 
those things. And it is manifest too in our everyday judgments about our 
surroundings and about the behaviour, manners and appearance of  our 
fellows. 

In everything human we distinguish the harmonious from the 
dissonant, the thing that fits from the thing that jars. And even if  there is 
a place for the dissonant and the jarring in the scheme of  things, we know 
that they make sense for us only because of  the context in which they are 
resolved. Aesthetic education teaches us how to avoid or resolve them, 
as we teach children to avoid garish colours, rude language and slovenly 
gestures.

Any philosophical account of  aesthetic judgment must explore its 
roots in the moral life, and in those aspects of  the human condition that 
lead us to search not only for shared rules of  behaviour, but for a shared 



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canon of  taste. Errors of  taste and self-advertising 
defiance of  aesthetic norms can be just as offensive 
as rudeness or public belligerence, and we strive 
to avoid them not simply for our own pleasure’s 
sake, but for the sake of  the community. If  this 
is evident in no other sphere, it is surely evident 
in the sphere of  architecture. From Ruskin’s Seven 
Lamps of  Architecture onwards the question of  how 
our buildings and our cities should look has been 
treated as a moral question, and one on which 
much more depends than we are in the habit of  
supposing. Writers have been conscious that faulty 
aesthetic choices lead to destroyed communities, 
and this is often announced in the very titles 
of  their books–for example Jane Jacobs’s The 
Death and Life of  Great American Cities (1961), and 
Alexander Mitscherlich’s Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer 
Städte: Anstiftung zum Unfrieden (1965). Both those 
writers saw themselves as fighting a war on behalf  
of  common sense against madness–no longer, 
perhaps, the madness of  a single person, like the 
madness of  Gropius and Le Corbusier, but a 
madness that had become programmed into the 
planning system, dictating outcomes that would 
leave no room for negotiation. And if  you look at 
the situation against which Jacobs and Mitscherlich 
were both in rebellion, you will see that it is one from 
which humane education–the only known antidote 
to madness of  this kind–had been abolished. 

A kind of  depersonalised madness had 
possessed the schools of  architecture and town 
planning in the wake of  the Second World War, 
with Le Corbusier and Gropius constantly invoked 
as heroes, and the curriculum purified of  all 
reference to aesthetic values other than those that 
emphasize originality, innovation, progress and the 
conquest of  space. The ground plan was conceived 
in purely geometrical terms, as was the city plan 
of  which it was a part. The total conception took 
precedence over the individual building, and each 

A kind of 
depersonalised 

madness had 
possessed the 

schools of 
architecture 

and town 
planning in the 

wake of the 
Second World 

War  

“

”



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element was defined by its function. The city itself  was disaggregated into 
zones, with living, shopping, studying and manufacturing each confined 
to its own separate area, and the resulting blocks of  mono-functional 
buildings assembled side-by-side and without a heart. The result can be 
seen in new towns like Milton Keynes, in derelict American cities like 
Detroit, and in the post-war reconstruction of  Germany. I think it is right, 
when witnessing these things, to speak of  madness. For here were massive 
enterprises, producing unwanted and threatening products, but entirely 
unable to adapt to the desires and opinions of  those destined to make use 
of  them. 

Consult the textbooks of  architecture and town-planning then 
employed and you will see this immediately–for example in Siegfried 
Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture (1941), in Pevsner’s Pioneers of  the Modern 
Movement (1936), and the madness has been replicated in the many recent 
manuals devoted to curtain wall construction. (Take a look at the current 
textbooks: for example Keith Boswell’s Exterior Building Enclosures: Design 
Process and Composition for Innovative Facades, or Alija Aksamija’s Sustainable 
Facades: Design Methods for High Performance Building Envelopes.) Here once 
again are the total solutions without the problems, the comprehensive 
plans without the human beings who are supposed to require them. And 
for the most part the education advanced by the schools of  architecture 
and planning either avoids discussion of  aesthetic values, or subdues them 
with the all-justifying ideas of  progress and innovation. The fact that the 
‘sustainable facades’ and ‘exterior building enclosures’ are to be inserted 
into the fabric of  a living city, in which the aesthetic of  the street, the 
house and the façade has been followed for centuries, is not mentioned. 
For the madman the ‘total solution’ involves the destruction of  all that is.

In the face of  such madness it seems to me that our first duty is to 
reaffirm the fundamental principles of  the moral life. These principles, 
I maintain, include the following three: that the other is more important 
than the self, that conflicts are to be resolved by negotiation, and that 
opposition must be treated with humility. Those principles are of  universal 
application, since they make it possible for people to live at peace, 
regardless of  their individual differences. Their relevance to architecture 
and planning can be seen at once, when we compare the traditional street 
with the modern housing estate. The high-rise estate, largely the invention 
of  Gropius, came to dominate housing projects between the wars and 
subsequently, since it was a perfect expression of  the comprehensive plan. 
It involved tearing down the streets over a large area, making way for large 
structures standing in open spaces, which could be designed geometrically 



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as ground-plans, and then raised up to the height 
desired by isometric drawings. No need to worry 
about fitting part to part, of  finding the appropriate 
window surrounds and doorways, about creating an 
acceptable façade on a public street: all traditional 
aesthetic constraints had been abolished. There 
were to be no more streets, and windows would 
be distant apertures, many of  them hundreds of  
feet in the air, which had no special relation to the 
observer outside the building, and with no special 
relation to the lines and forms of  the doors below. 

Furthermore, the high-rise estate was the 
expression in architecture of  a new kind of  politics– 
the politics of  total control, in which large projects, 
initiated by the state and its favoured experts, were 
imposed on the rest of  us without seeking our 
consent. Of  course this was the outlook that gave 
such scope to madmen in politics too–and the near 
impossibility of  mounting effective resistance was 
the same in both cases. History favoured the new, 
progressive and total solutions, over the random 
chaos of  the old. So we were taught, and so it was 
believed.

In the end, of  course, madmen lose their 
following, and this is beginning to be true in 
architecture too. The real question that we confront 
today is that of  restoration: how to return to the 
genial traditions that endowed our cities with 
their hearts, and which made them into durable 
settlements where generations have been at home. 
Sometimes this has been achieved with the help 
of  a comprehensive plan, as at Bath. But on the 
whole the fabric of  a city, even if  it adapts to a plan, 
has another source than planning. It is the result 
of  cooperation over many years, between people 
whose goals may not be shared, but who recognize 
the boundary between public and private space. 

The most important feature of  the Gropius 
housing estate, one that is copied by all the 
modernist schemes from Corbusier to Koolhaas, 



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is the dissolution of  the boundary. The street disappears, as does the 
façade that presses against it. Walls cease to be private faces onto a public 
realm, and become featureless curtains between undefined areas, hung on 
invisible frames. Buildings grow upwards indefinitely, with no boundary  
between the building and the sky. (For that is how we should think of  the 
sky-line, the most precious and vulnerable of  the city’s many edges.) Doors 
and windows are no longer ceremonial thresholds, but simply functional 
apertures, cleaned of  their liminal character. And around every building is a 
blank space, a no-man’s land of  discarded rubbish and stunted vegetation, 
from which the towers rise sheer and formless as though washed up by 
some primordial flood.

Among the factors lending themselves to this result–as Mitscherlich 
points out–are the forms of  social ownership instituted by the German 
cities. But even where private property is supposedly sacrosanct, as in 
America and Britain, governments have made use of  Eminent Domain 
(America) or ‘compulsory purchase’ (Britain) in order to embark on the 
large scale clearances that the housing estates require. Hand in hand with 
this kind of  presumption has been the revised image of  building, the image 
forced on us by Le Corbusier in Vers une architecture, and gleefully endorsed 
by Libeskind, Foster and Piano today. For such practitioners the architect 
has no need of  aesthetic education since his comprehensive plan issues 
from an integral artistic idea. He is inspired and led by the same ‘genius’ 
that guides the poet, the composer and the painter. Thus is perpetuated 
the illusion of  architecture as a ‘fine art’ rescued by the demands of  genius 
from the obligations of  daily life. 

If  we are to understand the role of  aesthetic education we must 
recognize, however, that most buildings are the work of  ordinary people 
who strive to accommodate what they do both to the purpose in hand 
and to the desires and tastes of  their neighbours. Genius has no part to 
play in their decisions, and nothing is more disruptive than the illusion 
that they possess it. Many of  the most agreeable parts of  our cities, their 
centres in particular, depend on an urban fabric knitted from humble 
and unpretentious façades that show the mark of  style only here and 
there and often in their pre-fabricated parts, such as doors and window 
frames. The ordinary vernacular street may have little to recommend it 
to those, like Libeskind and Koolhaas, who prefer to violate its outline 
rather than to conform to it, but there is no denying that the traditional 
street illustrates the first principle of  aesthetic education, which is the 
principle of  fittingness. The houses in a street must fit side by side along 
its edge, and in doing so define the boundary between the public and the 



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private. They may be of  different heights, and using 
different materials and different pattern-books. But 
if  each façade is internally coherent, and shares the 
overall posture of  other houses in the street, then 
each house might fit to its neighbour, and play its 
own particular part in creating the shared boundary 
which is the edge of  the public realm.

Two observations should be made concerning 
the relation of  fit. The builder who is fitting a house 
into a street is not looking for the form that fits 
a particular function. He is fitting a form into its 
context, regardless of  the function. His reasoning 
is not ‘instrumental’ reasoning, but an assessment 
of  how things look. Ever since Louis Sullivan’s well 
known adage that ‘form follows function’ architects 
have felt free to allow the use of  a building to 
dictate its appearance, to build as though there 
were no aesthetic constraints, and that their task 
was simply to find the forms best suited to the end 
in view. Hence the emergence of  the windowless 
warehouse as an architectural type. However, no 
ordinary builder, and certainly no person building 
or arranging something as part of  his own habitat, 
thinks in that way. The aim is always to make 
things fit together as they should, with the function 
conceived as a result and not as a premise of  the 
exercise. 

In fact there are good utilitarian reasons for 
not thinking in a utilitarian way. A building that is 
construed purely as the means to a present purpose 
will not survive the extinction of  that purpose: it 
will be an un-adaptable feature of  the environment, 
destined for demolition as soon as its function 
expires. From such buildings no permanent 
townscape can be constructed, and their ugliness 
is a vivid symbol of  their impracticality, of  the fact 
that there is nothing to be done with them once 
their present function has gone. This is the principal 
cause of  the dereliction of  city centres – namely 
that they are not centres, but merely the casing 

If we are 
to understand 

the role of 
aesthetic 
education 

we must 
recognize, 

however, that 
most buildings 
are the work 

of ordinary 
people 

“

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around activities that have ceased. Detroit is an eloquent illustration of  
this. Much of  the city of  London is moving in the same direction, and you 
see, now, a vivid contrast between the functional blocks already marked 
out for destruction, and the noble buildings constructed according to 
aesthetic principles which have survived the loss of  their original use–like 
the Royal Exchange building, now a meeting place and restaurant. 

This utilitarian argument against utilitarian thinking goes to the heart 
of  our topic, and tells us something about why aesthetic education matters. 
In a world dominated by instrumental thinking many people imagine that 
they have made advances in rationality, that they are no longer hampered 
by irrelevant goals which have no purpose but themselves, that the life 
of  frills and ornaments has at last been left behind. But it is such people 
who are irrational, since they are denying the kind of  reasoning that would 
enable them to envision the fruition of  their projects.  

Let me take a simple illustration of  this: the electricity transformer 
station. When transformer stations were first introduced the instinct of  
our ancestors was to find an architectural casing for them that would fit 
in to the surroundings, whether urban or rural. This was not a denial of  
the great benefits brought to us by electricity, but a way of  humanizing 
those benefits, of  making them part of  a life lived for its own sake and 
not just for the sake of  consumption. Nowadays, under the impact of  
the instrumentalised worldview, transformer stations are left exposed, 
hostile, surrounded by barbed wire, outposts of  the gulag, whose only 
meaning is their function. At the heart of  Islington, London, stands one 
of  the original transformer stations, built in 1905 and modelled on George 
Dance’s design for Newgate Prison, which had just been demolished. 
Now, after several changes of  use, it is a popular arcade of  shops and 
restaurants. Here is a building designed for a use, but designed also as an 
end in itself, and therefore as something that can form the hub of  social 
sentiments in the place where it stands. As a result it has survived the loss 
of  its original use, and been incorporated into the enduring fabric of  the 
city. 

I don’t say that the Islington Transformer Station is a masterpiece: on 
the contrary, its not being a masterpiece is one reason why it is so much 
liked. This is not a building designed to stand out, but one designed to fit 
in. No genius took charge of  creating it, or conceived it as the expression 
of  his individual soul. It is the work of  the London County Council’s 
design department, which at the time was composed of  unassuming 
people who had received an aesthetic education of  a broadly classical kind, 
based in drawing, proportion and the Orders–people who took delight in 



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the appearance of  buildings, and in the way that 
buildings are composed from matching parts. And 
it has lasted, because it is more valuable than its 
original function.

One very obvious feature of  the Islington 
transformer station 
is that it has firm 
boundaries –
indeed, it consists 
of  boundaries, 
carefully modulated 
and composed 
boundaries which 
define both the 
public space 
outside them and 
the reserved space 
within. The modern 
transformer station 
does not have 
boundaries in that sense–certainly not boundaries 
in which the transition from public to private is 
articulated or given ceremonial presence. It is 
surrounded by wire fences whose only message is 
‘keep out’–not ‘look at me’ or ‘here I am’ or ‘come 
stand in my shadow’ but ‘go away!’ 

Reflecting on boundaries, I believe, is a very 
good way of  grasping the significance of  aesthetic 
education generally. In every sphere we depend upon 
boundaries. We are protected from domination 
by our rights, which in a civilised society create 
a sphere of  sovereignty around every individual 
member. We are protected from prurient curiosity 
by our clothes, which we also use in order to signal 
the various degrees of  approachability that seem 
appropriate. We are walled round by manners and 
conventions that bring safety and certainty in the 
otherwise intimidating life among strangers. Some 
of  our boundaries are permeable and expressly 
designed to offer a welcome, when the welcome has 

FIGURE 1:  Islington           

Transformer Station



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been earned: so it is with manners and courtesies. Other boundaries are 
firm rebuttals, such as those created by the law. These distinctions have 
their counterpart in the language of  architecture. Walls can be forbidding, 
inviting, permeable or semi-permeable. Doorways may be ceremonious or 
perfunctory. Exteriors can be accommodating or severe. And the language 
here is integral to the way in which a building fits to its neighbours. In this 
way the art of  the boundary, through which we learn to accommodate our 
desires and places to those of  our neighbours, is replicated in the sphere 
of  architecture, and illustrates the way in which aesthetic education and 
moral education are rooted in the same human need–the need to live in 
harmony with others, and to reconcile individual ambition with a shared 
sense of  home.

Creating and managing boundaries is one part of  it. Just as important 
is the art of  fitting one thing to another so that it looks right. ‘Looking 
right’ does not mean ‘looking right to me’: in this judgment, as Kant made 
clear, we open ourselves to criticism. We are ‘suitors for agreement’, aware 
that what we do is of  interest to others, and that we are creating something 
that is shared–whether or not with any specific person. Grasping this point 
has always seemed to me to be the most crucial step in understanding the 
place of  the aesthetic in human life. It is a point that Wittgenstein, in his 
own idiom, makes central to his all-too-brief  lectures on aesthetics, and 
it is a point that can be illustrated in a way of  which Wittgenstein would 
surely have approved, by studying the ‘natural expression’ of  aesthetic 
choice in the faces and gestures of  children. Ask children to lay a table 
or to arrange a room, and at once they begin to attend to the way things 
look, and to the meaning of  the way things look–the meaning for others. 
Is it right to put the napkin on the plate or should it be by the side of  it? 
The emphasis on ‘getting it right’, rather than beauty, is easily understood 
from examples of  this kind. So too is the connection between getting it 
right and fitting in. 

The ability to match things to each other is hard to reduce to any more 
primitive capacity, but it seems to be fundamental to what we are, and to 
our ways of  negotiating our way through social and visual complexities. 
And it has two aspects. We match one thing to another of  the same broad 
category–for example knife to fork in a given pattern, or a certain style of  
porcelain to a certain kind of  napkin. But we also match objects to moods, 
life-styles, ways of  being and feeling, and in this way make the most far-
reaching connections between aesthetic judgment and the moral life. 

The ‘matching’ process can be educated. When a choice is exposed 
to judgment, the search for reasons begins. We can ask the child why she 



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put the spoon to the right of  the bowl, and she 
might well have an answer: because that is what is 
done, because it looks right, because then you have 
a nice straight line and a circle. We can teach her 
to make comparisons–which style of  spoon looks 
best, for example, and why. Inevitably the ‘why?’ 
question, even if  it peters out in the declaration 
that there is nothing further to be said, commits 
us to comparative judgments, to finding meaning 
and emotion in the objects that we choose, and to 
developing a repertoire of  forms that go easily and 
unquestionably together. Style is precipitated out 
from judgment, since it is what gives purchase to 
a reasoned answer to the question ‘why this, given 
that?’ 

Style is not the same as syntax, and if  we refer 
to the classical style in architecture we are not, 
literally, referring to a grammar,–that is, a system 
of  rules for generating complex meanings from 
meaningful parts. All kinds of  misleading analogies 
arise at this point, and the analogy with language 
is perhaps the most dangerous of  them, since it 
seems to imply that the rules of  style are arbitrary in 
the way that the grammatical rules of  a language are 
arbitrary. Although styles are many and varied, they 
are rooted in features of  the human condition that 
influence how we perceive and respond to shape, 
colour, form and mass. No stylistic convention can 
make a vast featureless hulk like the new Linked-In 
building in San Francisco look anything but 
oppressive and at odds with its surroundings. No 
stylistic convention can endow one of  Libeskind’s 
knife-like assaults on a traditional building with a 
humane meaning when we are ineluctably led to see 
the result as a species of  architectural murder. 

This does not mean that the idea of  grammar, 
used as a metaphorical summary of  something 
that we expect a building to exhibit, is entirely 
inappropriate. On the contrary. It reminds us of  
the fact that order and harmony, here as elsewhere 

No 
stylistic 

convention 
can endow one 

of Libeskind’s 
knife-like 

assaults on 
a traditional 
building with 

a humane 
meaning 

“

”



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in our lives, come about through composition. It is because significant 
parts are matched to significant parts that we sense the emergence of  
order in architecture, and forms that elide all parts into a single molten 
flow as in so much post-modernist ‘gadget’ architecture offend against a 
primary need. The case is comparable to that of  music, which has evolved 
as an art-form largely through quasi-syntactical conventions, governing 
key relations, voice-leading and harmonic progressions, and in which we 
have acquired the pronounced feeling for the ‘wrong note’ and the ‘wrong 
chord’. If  you compose while ignoring those conventions then you risk 
producing music in which nothing sounds wrong, because nothing sounds 
right. 

The features of  aesthetic education that I am trying to bring to mind 
are well illustrated by the Classical Orders, and especially by those aspects 
of  the Orders that have rubbed off  on vernacular architecture down 
the centuries. We should see the Orders as summaries of  a long process 
of  matching, through which the post and beam structure–the prima 
materia of  functional building–has been embellished and humanised. The 
textbooks, from Vitruvius through the Renaissance manuals to Chambers, 
provide rules of  proportion and detail, which have all the appearance of  a 
grammar: if  you do this, you must do that, and so on. But as with treatises 
of  tonal harmony, the imperative mood is misleading. The real speech-act 
is not prescriptive but descriptive: these manuals tell us what has been 
done, with a vague exhortation to respect it. 

The study of  the Orders was a training in the matching of  parts, 
and in understanding what constitutes a part rather than a chunk or a 
section. They taught proportion, by teaching the student how to perceive 
it. Proportion is not a purely geometrical idea. It arises from the relation 
between measures, and measures exist only where there are parts that begin 
and end, and the edges that close them. Hence proportion is perceivable 
only where there are boundaries, divisions, and significant details. A 
building like the Linked-In Building that I referred to earlier can never be 
seen as proportionate or harmonious, since it has no details. Nothing on 
the visible surface of  this building, is ‘between’ one place and another. No 
line has closure, no surface detail stands out and nothing begins, ends or 
moves to a conclusion. 

In the Tuscan Doric Order the column is wrapped by an astragal 
just below the capital: a semi-circular moulding which has the effect of  
tempering the upward thrust of  the column, and also introducing a kind 
of  ambiguity as to whether the section of  column above the astragal is part 
of  the capital or part of  the column. This ambiguity endows the vertical 



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with a kind of  elasticity, as though it were actively 
changing places with itself  in its determination 
to push from below. Just focusing for a while on 
this moulding is an education in itself: it illustrates 
the point that proportion needs measure and 
measure needs the edge; it exemplifies the idea of  
a meaningful part, and also shows the way in which 
such a part is not stuck on like the metopes in the 
frieze but grows 
from within the 
structure–it is an 
efflorescence of  
the stone. And it 
illustrates the way in 
which lines, edges, 
and boundaries in 
architecture are 
not made of  hard 
materials, but of  
light and shade. 
A boundary is 
perceivable only if  it 
casts a shadow, and 
there is shadow only 
where there is light. 
The study of  the 
Orders was a study 
of  the fall of  light 
on a work of  stone, 
and of  the ways 
in which the life 
of  the stone could 
be coaxed into the 
surface. Students of  the Beaux-Arts school would 
be required to draw the shadows on a Corinthian 
Capital, as these were cast during the divisions of  
the day. This education is reflected in all successful 
forms of  architecture, from the ordinary use of  
beading in window and door surrounds, to the 
supreme refinements of  the Gothic mouldings, 
as lovingly set out in F.A. Paley’s Manual of  Gothic 

FIGURE 2: LinkedIn building



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Mouldings, 1841. 

Among the many radical changes that divide modern from traditional 
architecture two in particular should be noted: the replacement of  the 
vertical by the horizontal as the axis of  emphasis, and the disappearance of  
mouldings. Traditional buildings were arranged in a vertical axis, and this 
is exactly what the Orders were used to teach–a vertical section that could 
be repeated again and again so as to create an upward vector uniting the 
whole façade. And the edges were folded over, wrapped around shadows 
and emphasized with parallels, so that vectors came steadily to closure 
rather than ceasing abruptly. Those two features shape the background 
expectations of  building not only according to the Orders but in almost 
all traditional styles. Their loss is associated with the rise of  the ground 
plan and isometric drawing, both made possible by curtain wall structures, 
steel frames and the replacement of  the arch and the beam by continuous 
girders of  steel or reinforced concrete. These innovations in engineering, 
however, were accompanied by no comparable developments in aesthetic 
education, so that architects entered a realm of  aesthetic ignorance, 
exemplified by the Linked-In Building discussed above. For a while, it is 
true, the ordinary architect attempted to pin the vertical order and moulded 
edges to the façade of  a steel frame buildings–as in the wonderful street 
assemblages of  downtown Manhattan. Even Louis Sullivan worked in 
that way. But then came Mies van der Rohe, the multi-storey tower block 
in glass and alloy, and the final abolition of  light, shade and significant 
detail. Many praised the result as the sign of  a new aesthetic; but ordinary 
opinion has never been at ease with it, for all the reasons that are implied 
in my present discussion.

The kind of  aesthetic education that I have been associating with 
the Orders is the property of  all who seek to build for others. It is not 
addressed to the genius, still less to the madman. It is addressed to those 
humble civil servants who designed the Islington transformer station, to 
the builders of  our pattern-book towns, and to those who produced the 
pattern books. But here we come up against a great difficulty, which is 
that contained in the concept of  genius. The genius is to a great extent a 
creation of  the Romantic Movement, which presented us with a new idea 
of  the aesthetic endeavour. For Kant and Schopenhauer genius defined 
the distinctive condition of  the artist, who was not conceived as a diligent 
craftsman whose endeavour is to find a place for his art in the existing 
culture. He was the one with a unique capacity to transcend the rules 
and conventions that govern lesser mortals, and to put before them his 
inner life in all its shining and redemptive perfection. He was the one 



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with the beautiful soul, to use Hegel’s language: the 
soul distinguished by its sublime and unclassifiable 
apartness.

Appealing though that idea might be, when 
considering the great works of  poetry, painting 
and music, it fits ill with the so-called ‘useful’ arts 
of  architecture, clothing and decoration. There 
are two reasons for this. Frist, by the very fact that 
it is useful, architecture involves pursuing a non-
aesthetic aim. Even if  it is true, as I have argued, 
that the aim will expire before the building, so that 
we must make a building that is adaptable to the 
changes in human interest, and even if  it is true that 
prioritising aesthetic values is the only reliable way 
to do this, nevertheless the surrender to a purely 
aesthetic approach, in which nothing matters save 
the expressive nature of  the design, is a kind of  
denial of  architecture. 

But there is a second and more important 
reason for disallowing the Romantic idea of  genius, 
which is that works of  architecture are public, 
observable to, and imposed upon, all who move in 
their vicinity. You can escape from the poetic genius 
by not opening his book, and from the musical 
genius by keeping clear of  concert halls. But you 
cannot escape from the architectural genius. Our 
cities are being everywhere littered with gadgets 
whose aggressive refusal to fit in is amplified by 
their un-composed character, so that they do not 
fit in even with themselves. Yet, we are assured, 
they are works of  genius, innovative gestures that 
challenge our expectations, forge new paths into the 
future, break free from the stultifying constraints of  
etc. etc.

It is precisely the public nature of  architecture 
that demands aesthetic education. And the goal of  
that education is not to open the way to the genius, 
but to civilize the manners of  the ordinary builder, 
who is no more likely to be a genius than Rem 
Koolhaas, even if  somewhat less likely to behave 

It is 
precisely 

the public 
nature of 

architecture 
that demands 

aesthetic 
education

“

”



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as one. This is not to say that there is not such a thing as architectural 
genius. But it is manifest most of  all in the inspiration that finds new ways 
of  fitting things together, and producing adaptable solutions to aesthetic 
problems. In this connection it is surely right to commend the genius 
of  Vignola, Palladio, Borromini and more recently Lutyens, whose war 
memorials showed how to make plain stone arches stand to mournful 
attention above the dead. And the inspiration of  those modest architects 
can be felt even in the most modern forms, such as Aldo Rossi’s City Hall 
at Borgoricco, which as it were reaches back to the Palladian serenity, while 
eschewing the classical grammar.

I have outlined the way in which aesthetic education plays a part in 
architecture, teaching ordinary builders how to fit part to part and building 
to building. This process of  fitting is what we mean, or ought to mean, by 
settlement. All durable cities bear witness to this–not just long-standing 
cities like Siena and Florence, but modern cities too. New York has the 
air of  a durable settlement in part because the iron frame vernacular, with 
its street-friendly facades, and the early sky-scrapers which hovered above 
genial doorways on the street, created an adaptable city, one in which 
buildings have been preserved because their aesthetic qualities make 
them more valuable than their initial purposes. Compare Detroit, Tampa 
or Buffalo, in which aesthetic indifference, combined with gargantuan 
schemes executed by people without aesthetic education, have created 
‘built deserts’, at vast expense, financially, aesthetically and ecologically. It 
is surely reasonable, in the wake of  recent experience, to hope for a new 
kind of  architectural education, which is not simply a matter of  teaching 
how to hang panels onto frames, or to transfer computer-designed doodles 
onto the townscape, but which begins from inculcating an understanding 
of  the true raw materials of  architecture, which are light and shade.


