by ArchitectureWeek

In an age when modern and "post-modern" buildings compete for attention, a London-based architect has made a name for himself designing buildings that might have come down from antiquity.

Demetri Porphyrios, both a practicing architect and a theorist, is known for his design of traditional and classical forms. He has recently been awarded the second annual Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture from the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture.

The firm Porphyrios Associates has brought classical sensibilities to buildings and urban projects in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. Porphyrios is author of several books including Classicism Is Not a Style.

"A work is classical," he says, "not because it is immutable, eternal, and sacred but because it continually searches for and brings out the new. Classicism is not a style. Classicism is not a doctrine; it is philosophy of life. It is the philosophy of free will nurtured by tradition."

In the monograph "Porphyrios Associates: Recent Work," Oswyn Murry writes: "Porphyrios is a master of the engagement with time; and it is this which provides a theoretical context and a justification for his allusions to history and context. His architecture situates itself in the interplay between history as accident and history as changing function. The very ludic quality of his engagement with time, the sense in which he is playing with it and lures us into it, derives from his fascination with and respect for the importance of time in architecture."   >>>

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The new auditorium at Magdalen College, Oxford University, by contemporary architect Demetri Porphyrios, who has received the Richard H. Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture from the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture. Photo: Porphyrios Associates Whitman College, Princeton University, by Porphyrios Associates. Photo: Porphyrios Associates   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.