Quinlan Terry and the Origins of Classical Architecture
Quinlan Terry is one of the world’s preeminent architects. Born in 1937, he began his career working under Raymond Erith, who at the time was virtually the only architect in England designing classical buildings. Terry thus began his career as a classical architect at a time when modernist architecture was totally dominant and classical architecture was scorned. The architectural historian David Watkin describes Terry’s work thusly: “Quinlan Terry has attempted more completely than any other architect in Britain to pull the rug from beneath the false certainties of Modernism.” Despite the forces for many decades set against a revival of classical design, he has been very successful. It is now the case that classical architecture—though still not without detractors—is thriving. John Simpson, Leon Krier, Robert Adam, William Curtis, Russell Windham, Hugh Petter, Quinlan Terry’s son Francis, and many others exemplify this welcome change over the last half-century or so.
Terry has been commissioned to work on many prestigious projects, including the design of Richmond Riverside, a restoration of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate church, a refurbishing of 10 Downing Street while Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, and extensive work at Poundbury in Wales, which was an urban development project of King Charles III’s (while Prince of Wales) under the auspices of the Duchy of Cornwall. In fact, it is routinely noted that Terry is King Charles’ favorite architect, Charles himself being an avid supporter of classical architecture.
I suppose it is a sad commentary on the quality of artistic work produced by contemporary Christians, but I was surprised several years ago to discover that Terry, in addition to his renown as an architect, is also a committed evangelical Christian. In this interview with his son Francis, he describes how he was converted early in his career under the ministry of Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Interestingly, it was a prominent modernist architect (himself a Christian) who took Terry to Westminster Chapel in London to hear Lloyd-Jones. Terry, however, was in the process of rejecting the stifling moralism of modernist architecture, which he describes in the interview with his son as “almost like a religion. You had to believe in this new way of building.” Terry then goes on to recount how “I could hear Lloyd-Jones preaching and I thought, you know, this is far more interesting. And you know, if you are going to be religious, have something worthwhile. And if you’re not, just get on with architecture. Architecture is not a religion. It’s a way of building.” Thus, Terry simultaneously came to reject both modernist religion and modernist architecture and was set on the path of his future work.
A few years ago, Terry wrote a book entitled The Layman’s Guide to Classical Architecture. The book, with an introduction by Charles III, is an excellent introduction to the classical orders that are foundational to all subsequent design in the classical style, with a focus on the specific types of columns (Doric, Ionic, Tuscan, and Corinthian) that undergird all such building. In chapter 6 of this book, Terry presents a fascinating argument that he first put forward in major architectural journals in the early 1980s. Building on the 18th century work of John Wood, Terry contends that “architecture has a symbolic formation representing the aspiration of mankind and the wisdom of God, and that the principles of architecture were revealed by God to Moses and David, and from then on were debased by Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Romans” (p. 127). This is not the kind of argument one typically expects to find in major academic journals of architecture, and yet it comes from one of the most qualified and eminent architects of the 20th and 21st centuries.
In brief, Terry’s argument unfolds as follows. The columns, or pillars, in the tabernacle and temple, as described in the Old Testament, are of three sorts. The first grouping of pillars is those that provide access into the outer courtyard of the tabernacle and temple. These were the simplest of the three sets and correspond roughly with the Doric columns of later Greek usage. The second set was at the entrance to the holy place, which “could have been ornamented with some form of volute to remind worshippers of the ram’s horns for sacrifice” (p. 128), and are similar to Ionic columns. The third set of pillars opened into the holy of holies and “would have been the most ornamental with gilded leaves” (p. 128), which, as 1 Kings 7:15–22 reveals, are strikingly similar to the ornate acanthus leaves on the capital of a Corinthian column.
Terry, following John Wood, then speculates that when the treasures of the temple in Jerusalem were carried off into Egypt, and later Assyria and Babylon, “the surrounding nations copied the architectural details on the temples that they erected . . . as can now be seen in Persepolis and the Greek Temples of the fourth and fifth centuries BC” (p. 134). Toward the end of his chapter (p. 140) Terry quotes John Wood on this point:
That the Pagans, finding the parts of the Jewish structures coincided with the matters contained in the history of the Israelites, they soon copied those very parts, and applied them to their own idols in the temples they erected to them; which, on this account, they held so sacred, that a profanation of them was punished with present death. That those Pagans, not satisfied with this application, in process of time, assumed these things to be their own invention, and then traduced the Jews with being blasphemers and deriders of the Divinity; those people, by neglecting the real part of the Law, having forgot the symbolical, nor could they tell to what divine matters the various parts of their sacred edifices referred.
Wood’s (and Terry’s) argument is a kind of architectural version of the claim in the early church that the great Greek philosophers like Plato learned their wisdom from Moses, an argument found, for example, in the writings of Justin Martyr. One would need to read Terry himself to understand all the details of his argument, and he himself admits that it is speculative, but there is something that strikes me as correct and important about his argument: while there are very many ways in which buildings can be designed, and each nation and people has its own distinctive architectural idioms, there are also many objective principles of building that transcend individual cultures. To name just a few: the way in which beautiful buildings adhere to the golden ratio or Fibonacci sequence, the precise proportions of first and second stories of houses, the fact that curved residential streets—versus those in a rigid straight line—are much more desirable places to live. . . the list is long. These objective features of pleasant and beautiful buildings and cities have been recognized throughout history by very diverse observers. They are part of the “timeless way of building” recounted in detail in Christopher Alexander’s seminal book of the same title, in which he argues further that “it is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way.” Some might try to argue that this is simply an aspect of the structure of the human mind, and to a degree, that is true. But this is only the case because God designed the human mind as such, in order that it might recognize objective beauty, proportionality, and other features when it encounters these facets of design.
In the end, what I find most striking about Terry’s argument is that it helps make sense of why classical architecture is so striking and beautiful. Beautiful buildings, rather than being mere superfluities and extravagances (as so many evangelicals believe), are objective reflections of the beauty and majesty of God. In the end, we do not have in this age “a lasting city.” Therefore, we are compelled with the saints of old to look to the heavenly state for “a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb 11:10 KJV), the verse Terry closes his chapter with. This verse, Terry insists, rather than teaching Christians to disdain beautiful architecture as worldly, should lead us to see that such buildings (as with all truly beautiful art and music), display the consummate and exquisite craftsmanship of the Supreme Architect.
It is of this divine craftsmanship that Terry has written so beautifully in another work:
The atheist Richard Dawkins holds the world view that ‘The universe we observe has precisely the properties we would expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference … no rhyme nor reason, nor any justice.’ If that is our world view, it is bound to affect the way we live and work. We will probably want to make as much money as possible, regardless of how this affects other people, because we have nothing better to look forward to. But that is not my world view. As I observe the universe, I see the opposite of Richard Dawkins. I see beauty, symmetry, order, harmony, amazing mathematical precision, and humility; which convince me that the universe is all the work of the Supreme Architect. If we think like this it is also bound to affect the way we live. Now, how that works out in practice is open to debate and we all make many mistakes, but to me it would include three things: In architecture: humility to learn from the works of our forefathers and see how they constructed buildings for thousands of years. In life: a passion for beauty, symmetry, order, and harmony in all our relationships. And above all, a desire to know that Supreme Architect better; who is not some man-made god, but the One who became flesh, died and rose again for us, even Jesus Christ our Lord. (“Swimming Against the Tide,” in Phillip James Dodd, The Art of Classical Details: Theory, Design, and Craftsmanship, pp. 60, 63)
Remarkably, Terry wrote these words in a mainstream book on classical architectural design. Perhaps this might motivate Christians engaged in artistic endeavors to recognize that the reason they may be unable to find satisfying ways to express their faith within their vocations is that they have not first attained to the utmost excellence in their fields in the way Quinlan Terry has. It is one thing to superficially tack on Christian slogans or themes to substandard art. It is quite another thing to so excel in one’s field that everyone will be happy to let you speak as you please, even about the Lord Jesus Christ and his saving work, something I’ve heard Terry mention numerous times in public lectures and interviews.
*Image Credit: Quinlan Terry Architects. Ferne Park, Wiltshire.
