Architecture in an Age of Uncertainty

School of Architecture

Available on-demand

Liam O’Connor, 2025 Richard H. Driehaus Prize Laureate, explores how the timeless principles of traditional and classical design focused on enduring beauty, quality of craft, and integration with the landscape offer a crucial anchor for collective memory and cultural expression.

Speaker: Liam O’Connor, 2025 Richard H. Driehaus Prize Laureate, Principal of Liam O’Connor Architects and Planning Consultants

Liam O’Connor’s discourse is an essential defense of classical architecture, framing it as a stabilizing force in an environment increasingly hostile to historical precedent. By articulating an alternative to the aesthetic “chaos” encouraged in many contemporary schools, O’Connor positions the classical tradition as a universal language capable of providing order when social structures feel most fragile.

The Climate of Uncertainty

O’Connor critiques a contemporary architectural landscape bombarded by “negativity” and a “militancy against the past.” He specifically challenges a pedagogical failure in modern schools: the instruction of students to reflect social uncertainty through fragmented design. O’Connor argues that architecture should not merely mirror societal strife but should instead strive for “nobility and universality.” Drawing parallels to the Renaissance, he notes that Palladio and Michelangelo pursued the sublime even amidst cataclysmic civil strife, proving that classicism is a resilient pursuit of beauty regardless of external disorder.

The Tectonic Reality: A Moral Safeguard

For O’Connor, the “so what” of architectural practice lies in the physical act of making. He argues that the modern divorce between design and construction—where architects provide “vague images” to executive teams—leads to “vague facsimiles” of buildings. O’Connor views tectonic integrity as a moral and professional safeguard against “value engineering.” By returning to solid, load-bearing stone without the modern crutch of reinforcement and utilizing the “Lewis pin” for traditional lifting, his firm reclaims the architect’s authority. His insistence on producing thousands of full-size hand drawings ensures that the intentionality of the entablature and the profile of the stone remain under the architect’s direct oversight.

The Pedagogy of Observation

His mastery is rooted in “measuring buildings” to reverse-engineer architectural wisdom. This is best exemplified by his research-driven re-attribution of the Kensington Palace Orangery. Through meticulous physical measurement and comparison to the Codrington Library, O’Connor identified the hand of Nicholas Hawksmore in a building previously attributed to Wren or Vanbrugh. This methodology uncovers “delightful surprises”—such as unfinished surfaces or ancient tool marks—that digital screens cannot replicate, allowing the architect to “imbibe the sensibility” of a historical typology.

Civic Freedom and the Monument

In his major commemorative works, O’Connor emphasizes that monuments must remain open, unfettered spaces. He resists gating his sites, viewing the ability to walk through a memorial at night as a “metaphysical sense of freedom.” For the Bomber Command Memorial, he achieved tectonic poetry by crafting the roof from recycled aluminum from a Halifax aircraft shot down in 1944. Whether creating an “isle of the dead” at the flooded Armed Forces Memorial or a minimalist courtyard in Normandy, his designs prioritize a deep, structural relationship between architecture, landscape, and shared cultural memory.

Q1: Why is the physical measurement of historical buildings superior to studying them via digital media? O’Connor asserts that physical measurement brings the architect to the “heart of what architecture is.” It uncovers the “unfinished bits” and the human marks of the builders, revealing the tectonic ontology of a structure. This tactile engagement allows an architect to “plunder a vast well of truth” that books and screens simply cannot communicate.

Q2: How can architects reclaim their authority from developers who prioritize “value engineering”? The strategy is early involvement and absolute technical control. By being “first on the scene” and producing exhaustive full-size drawings, O’Connor streamlines “intentionality.” He argues that demonstrating a single point of technical oversight creates efficiency and prevents the design from being diluted into a compromised facsimile.

Q3: How does O’Connor define the relationship between beauty and modern “uncertainty”? He views the pursuit of beauty as a stabilizing response to chaos. He believes architecture’s role is to provide a sense of order and permanence, referencing historical precedents where the pursuit of the “unending traditions of classicism” continued unabed through military and civil catastrophes.

Q4: How can a new monument achieve a feeling of being “familiar yet fresh”? This is achieved through a rigorous analysis of precedent-driven scale. For the British Normandy Memorial, O’Connor studied courtyard scales from Pompeii to 12th-century Normandy. By juxtaposing familiar proportions with fresh, specific detailing, the work gains architectural authority while remaining contextually rooted.

Q5: What is the lasting legacy of Leon Krier on modern classical practice? O’Connor credits Krier with calling into question the “validity of how our cities look” and resisting “false pluralism.” Most provocatively, O’Connor notes that even Zaha Hadid—a student of Krier—shared this lineage. Despite her divergent aesthetic, her shared foundation in Krier’s universe demonstrates the universal reach and intellectual clarity of classical principles.

It has very little impact on the power and strength and conviction of the people at this school to drive forward the kind of unending traditions of classicism into the future.” — Liam O’Connor
“The joy of actually making something that you’ve designed and seeing it done with a certain kind of authenticity and physical power… is in my view an essential component of building.” — Liam O’Connor
“How things are made must be integral to your intentionality of design.” — Liam O’Connor
“That experience of being able to walk into a monument at night is a true expression of civic freedom… we maintain that slightly metaphysical sense of freedom.” — Liam O’Connor
“There’s no one precedent in any building… it’s a vast well of truth to plunder as an architect and make sense of it.” — Liam O’Connor