Neoclassicism vs Stripped Classicism
新古典主義 / ストリップト・クラシシズム
Neoclassicism comes from Historical Styles and Stripped Classicism from Modern Architecture. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Neoclassicism
A movement that turned back to ancient simplicity, prompted by the excavations at Pompeii and reacting against the decorative excess of Rococo. Contours are hard, color is held down, and the subjects preach civic virtue. States of the revolutionary period chose this style as their own face.
Stripped Classicism
The manner of government and memorial building in which classical architecture is shorn of ornament, leaving only proportion, axis and the rhythm of the columns. That it still reads as classical without ornament made it a cheap means of speaking authority. Important as a case in which the minimal and the intimidating live together.
| Neoclassicism | Stripped Classicism | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1760s–1830s | 1920s–1950s |
| Family | Historical Styles | Modern Architecture |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Hard, clear contour lines / A restrained number of colors / Ancient subjects and dress / Shallow, stage like space | The rhythm of columns stripped of ornament / A strong axis and symmetry / Smooth planes of stone / Walls without large openings |
| Best used for | Showing public purpose and discipline by cutting ornament away · Making a scene that borrows historical legitimacy | Institutional identity for courts, banks and archives, where permanence has to be signalled with almost no elements · A cautionary reference in brand work: the devices that read as timeless minimalism are the same ones that read as state power |
| Type | Inscriptional capitals, letterspaced wide. | Incised roman capitals, widely spaced, centred on the axis and stated once only. |
| Composition | Let the horizontal work hard and place elements symmetrically. | Bilateral symmetry with the entrance on the axis, a tall base, an unbroken wall and a heavy uninterrupted cornice line. |
| Material | The white of stone and plaster, with gold kept to key points. | Large ashlar limestone or granite, honed flat, with joints fine enough that the wall reads as one continuous surface. |
| Caution | Do not mistake simplicity for dullness. Hard contour and tense composition are both required at once. | Reaching for it because it looks austere and expensive: the symmetry and the blank wall make a claim of authority whether or not you intended one. |