QUINLAN TERRY
Until recently it was felt that the modern style had come to stay and that architecture should continue to develop along Modernist and technological lines. However, in the past few years more and more people have come to be disenchanted with the appearance and durability of modern buildings and unconvinced by the intellectual arguments which support them. They have therefore tended to look back to see how people made buildings in the past and have suggested that traditional architecture in some form should be a viable alternative to what we see being built all around us today. * — Quinlan Terry
Warrenton Home, Quinlan Terry, architect and draughtsman.
Quinlan Terry (born 1937) is an English architect of the Georgian Palladian School who creates houses that are cousin to our American Georgian homes, Williamsburg to Washington state. Many recognize Quinlan Terry to be foremost among the architects who preserve, who continue Classive civilization’s humane tradition. Terry’s buildings at Downing College, his churches, his hospitals, his urban developments, his renovations at 10 Downing Street are paragons of Classive tradition that lend hope, beauty and sense to the XXI Century.
You will notice that Terry’s houses do not suffer the stiff, pedantic theories of the modern Progressive, that every Terry building is Classively beautiful, new, and friendly to neighbors. Many consider Terry the most important architect in practice today; Sir Roger Scruton refers to Terry’s architectural art, “one long breath of fresh air”. Yes, take a Quinlan Terry home into view and breathe free of the Modernist smoke, be released from the progressive straitjacket, and know that humanity need not inevitably lean toward an ugly, dreary, and scientific future.
Kingswalden Bury, Quinlan Terry, architect.
You will notice that the three beautiful houses shown here will not suffer the squiggly modernist impulse, the derivative progressive tropes, the predictable neweyness of university-taught architects, that Terry’s houses are solid, not dreamy, neighborly, not offensive, new, not modern.
The six sensitive villas of Regents Park, London, bring Nash’s picturesque Park Village into the XXI Century. By stylistic variety, Quinlan Terry expands architectural expression of XXI Century, Classive potentialities. The Veneto Villa is shown, below.
In Kentucky horse country you will find Terry’s influential Abercrombie Residence, a house that influenced the American country house in much the manner that Sir Christopher’s Wren Building influenced much that is Williamsburg.
Ferne Park, Quinlan Terry, architect.
Ferne House, built 2000 to 2002, ushered noble, Classive architecture into the XXI Century. Notice how when seeing the house, your spirit arose, your ambition renewed, notice how you felt a love toward fellow man, generous and Christian.
Perhaps you have heard, perhaps you have suffered the quaint phrase, “not of our Time” and looked to the Progressive Marxist with a kind, compassionate smile. Classives are polite, tolerant of erroneous opinion, and the old-fashioned modernism. Sensibly, Terry ignores pat phrases and modernistic stereotypes to create houses fresh and good and new. At this time, in this moment, Quinlan Terry is creating the house of 2022, proof that in fact “Terry is of our Time, perhaps the foremost architect of our Time, the man who defines our Time by creating houses that we of Christ’s XXI Century choose to name, ‘Home’.”
Quinlan Terry is often honored by recognition and award, including the British Georgian Group’s Best Modern Classical House, the Driehaus Prize, the Philippe Rothier European Prize, et cetera, and Terry was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to classical architecture.
Veneto Villa, Regents Park, London, Quinlan Terry Architects.
To learn more of this Classive architect, you might visit these books:
Richard Economakis, Quinlan Terry: Selected Works, St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
Quinlan Terry (Author and Illustrator) Architects Anonymous, Quinlan Terry, Academy Editions, 1994.
David Watkin, Radical Classicism: The Architecture of Quinlan Terry, Rizzoli, 2006.
David Watkin, (HRH The Prince of Wales, [Foreword]), The Practice of Classical Architecture: The Architecture of Quinlan and Francis Terry, 2005-2015, Rizzoli, 2015.
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Abercrombie House, Quinlan Terry architect and draughtsman.
* From a speech given at the Jan Hus Educational Foundation, Czechoslovakia, October 1989.
Featured image: Richmond Riverside. credit: Darius Smalskys
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