BEAUTY IS OBJECTIVE:

If God is knowable, then he has a face. So it is also with human beings. But the buildings characteristic of modern architecture do not have faces. Or, if they do, they are best described as still largely functioning to display a kind of facelessness.

Witness the faceless skyscrapers whose façade of windows simply mirrors their surroundings. Rather than offer their own distinctive face to the public sphere, they offer only a kind of obsequious anonymity. They mirror a narcissistic city back to itself.

Moreover, a cult of uniformity prevails, at least insofar as no true architectural plurality flourishes. The lack of individually distinctive faces on modern buildings is what makes us experience them as ugly. At most, they offer gimmicks and flashy forms of the incongruous and the unexpected. But this is merely a variant on the selfishly uniform godlessness that is at the root of their genesis.

What do we see, in contrast, in the classical architectural models? Perhaps it seems doubtful we can find anything in those ancient structures that might teach us how to build today. In particular, what sorts of faces do classical buildings have?

In his new introduction to The Aesthetics of Architecture, Sir Roger Scruton writes: "The Roman building types--arch, aedicule, engaged column, pilaster, vault and dome--can all be seen as attempts to retain the sacred presence of the column, in the full context of civic life."

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