Classicism is a style that is grounded in Greco-Roman antiquity.

Classicism is a style that is grounded in Greco-Roman antiquity. Since it’s inception, it has been popular in different places across the globe as a modality of architecture that can communicate a myriad of meanings: historicity, empire, “englightenment”, rationality, order, authoritarianism, control, harmony, luxury and beauty. Classicism has broadly used as an inspiration style to draw from and/or copy from for now over two millenia, and is still all around us in the architecture we experiecne today.

This assignment asks you find an element of classical architecture in a building that was constructed after classical antiquity ended in the 5th Century CE. It could be a building you see and interact with in your own life, or a modern or historical building that you find online.

TEACHER’S EXAMPLE:

Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas Nevada, First Opened 1966.

Caesar’s Palace is a postmodern phantasmagoria of sumptuous and hedonistic classical appropriation. From the “Garden of the Gods” pool area, to the Colosseum concert venue, to the Forum Shops featuring a mock “Fontana di Trevi” and a bar called “Cleopatra’s Barge”, everything about this resort hotel is meant to evoke classical grandeur, luxury, pleasure, and glamour. Classical architecutral elements like, columns, pediments, metopes, corinthian capitals, dentilated string courses, and coffered domes are everywhere, producing a spectral pastiche of antiquity gone wild. Real and faux marble, countless copies of antique sculpture, and even a three story statue of the goddess Fortuna all conspire to encourage the visitor to depart with the “Roman coins” in their wallets. Perhaps today it is best conceived as a temple to capitalism, excess, and bourgeois leisure. A statue of Athena Nike “Victory” has adorned the entrance since 1966 whispering the eternal Las Vegas city promise, “you too could be the lucky one.”