How Palladian was Palladio?

Palladio’s Villa Rotonda

Andrea Palladio was the most influential architect in Western history. This week Paul Goldberger, in The New Yorker magazine, provides a crisp critique that describes Palladio as "a modern architect, not a copyist. It was the new ideas that mattered." It is not often that Palladio is described as a modernist. But, Goldberger defends this idea, by claiming that Palladio's designs went beyond any known style. Here's the link for your reading pleasure. (Please note: Sorry, a commercial "dashboard" may cover the article. Just click the "close" button.).

Happy 500th Palladio!

Villa Barbaro (click for larger image)

The Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio is celebrating the 500th Anniversary of the birth of Andrea Palladio. The exhibition opened 20 September 2008 and will close 6 January 2009 in, of course, Vicenza, Italy. The curators are attempting to tell the story of a remarkable life and to solve the mystery of how a humble stone cutter became the world's unrivaled master of building design.

Anthony Lambert of The Independent, in London, offers helpful survey of Palladio's influence. The celebration is running during the peak of the Venice Biennale , which this year celebrates architecture. Some jealous souls have coined this year's Biennale the Zaha-GaGa!, because of the larger than life presence and appreciation of the great modern architect Zaha Hadid. But surely, a "Palladio-GaGa" will arise with the opening of this exhibition of his extraordinary life and accomplishments. The ArtDaily.org offers this refreshing slant on the exhibit:

Departing sharply from the usual Classicist black and white interpretation, here Palladio is shown in a new light, as a creator of images, an inventor of new forms or innovative solutions required to overcome the difficulties of irregular sites.

Especially in his late years, by employing colour, giant orders and façades like stage-sets, Palladio strove to design buildings that would move people.

If you believe in the power of architecture to move people and create harmony in communities and living spaces, and you believe in the power of architecture to improve the world we live in, Palladio's your guy. He's certainly ours.