A new book from the director of the Studio for art, faith & history:
Making School Beautiful:
restoring the harmony of place
Available now from Classical Academic Press
The “Look Inside” feature includes all of the Introduction and chapters 1 and 2.
In addition, a designated webpage provides full-color captioned photographs
of the dozens of works of art found in gray-scale in the book itself.
John Skillen’s new book is addressed in particular to the growing community of classical-Christian schools. However, the principles of design explored in Skillen’s book are relevant for any group of people who wish their built surroundings to reflect their mission and purpose.
As the publisher states in the blurb for the book:
In Making School Beautiful, Dr. Skillen draws out principles of campus design from the very liberal arts—rhetoric in particular—that shape our curriculum. His argument is that the rich intellectual, literary, and artistic heritage can inform not only what we teach but where we teach. From the campus layout to thoughtful design of rooms, buildings, and selected art, students and teachers can cultivate a love of learning, a care for their neighbors, and a desire for God.
The idea itself comes from the great architects of the tradition. From Vitruvius, who wants the architect to be “instructed in geometry, know much history, [and] have followed the philosophers with attention.” From Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti, who is explicit about the parallels between rhetoric and architecture and states that the architect should “take the same approach [to the art of building] as one might toward the study of letters.”
The organization of Skillen’s book follows Alberti’s three aspects of architectural decorum: every room should be fitting for its place in the building as a whole; every decorative element in a room to the room’s role in the building; and the building as a whole to its place in the surrounding townscape and landscape.
Central to classical rhetoric is its concern for decorum, for fittingness, for what is appropriate. Good orators must be consciously adept at suiting the manner and formal organization of their speaking to the capacity and identity of the audience, to the purpose of the discourse, and to the place and occasion of its delivery.
During the classical-medieval-Renaissance epoch the rhetorical skills of the orator were understood to mark, in parallel fashion, the good visual artist. The painter or sculptor was expected to be consciously adept at suiting the manner and formal organization of his work to the identity of the audience and to the place and purpose and occasion of its work. The work of art was rhetorical: to articulate, illustrate and inspire the attitudes and activities which particular places were designed to house and to foster. (This is the subject of Skillen’s book Putting Art (back) in its Place [Hendrickson Publishers, 2016].)
St. Benedict the architect: building twelve new monasteries. One panel in the cloister of Monte Oliveto monastery, southern Tuscany, painted by Sodoma, 1490’s. (Photograph credit Tisha Thompson)
Moreover, both in the classical world and in the recovery of classical principles by Renaissance figures such as Leon Battista Alberti, the terms of rhetoric and the norms of decorum were applied not just to the artistic decoration in a building but to the architecture itself: to the Art of Building. An edifice was beautiful when its formal design and its decoration was everywhere harmoniously tuned to the purpose of the building, to the mission of the people gathered under its roof, to its setting in the city, the country and the social landscapes.
Such harmony is exhibited in three dimensions: the overall harmony of whole building; the decorum of the interior design and decoration of each room in the building; and the fittingness of the school’s presentation of itself to the surrounding community which it intends to serve.
How fitting it would be if classical-Christian schools more consciously and astutely put to work the principles of classical learning (suffused by the norms and truths of scripture) not only in how they design the curriculum but in how they design the settings in which this curriculum is enacted.
Table of Contents
Introduction: the dissolving of decorum and the leveling of place
Part 1: Rhetoric and the Design of Place
Chapter 1: Rhetoric and Decorum
Chapter 2: Rhetoric, Decorum and Painting
Chapter 3: Rhetoric and Decorum in Architecture
Part 2: Applying the Principles to School Design
Chapter 4: Fitting school design to mission and curriculum
Chapter 5: Fitting every room’s design and decoration to the purpose of the place
Chapter 6: Fitting the school to its larger location