UpDate - Vol. 14, No. 39, Page 3
August 17, 1995
The classical style; Renowned architect to design addition to Mall

     Internationally known architect Allan Greenberg, who has been
selected to design the new campus classroom building, loves the
classical style of architecture that graces the University's Mall.
He's devoted his professional life to it.
     University President David P. Roselle said Greenberg was selected
over other architects because members of the University's Visiting
Committee on Architecture felt he could design a building that would
blend in perfectly with existing structures at the heart of the
campus.
     The committee, appointed by the Board of Trustees, is chaired by
the architectural historian of the U.S. Capitol, Bill Allen, a 1972
graduate of the University.
     "The goal is to have a building of beauty and grace-envisioned
nearly a century ago for this spot on the Mall-that visitors will see
and think has always been here," Roselle said. "We believe Allan
Greenberg can handle that assignment."
     Greenberg is perhaps best known for his design of a suite at the
U.S. Department of State, where he worked to attain the character of
rooms in which Thomas Jefferson would feel at home.
     That project, done at the request of then Secretary of State
George P. Schultz, included conversion and renovation of diplomatic
reception rooms, renovations to the office of the secretary of state
and deputy secretary of state and work on the Treaty Ceremony Room,
its antechambers and reception rooms.
     Other public buildings designed by Greenberg include Tercentenary
Hall, now under construction at the College of William and Mary campus
in Williamsburg, Va.; interior renovations to the Blair House in
Washington, D.C.; an addition to the Miller Center of Public Affairs
at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville; the Simon & Schuster
executive offices in Rockefeller Center in New York City; and design
or renovation work of several courthouses, churches and other public
buildings, including the Space Satellite Tracking Station in
Homestead, Fla. In the 1980s, one of his projects included unifying
the facade of the expanding Bergdorf Goodman department store on Fifth
Avenue in New York City.
     Greenberg also has completed many private residential projects in
New England, Connecticut, New York, the District of Columbia and
Virginia.
     In a monograph devoted to his work published earlier this year by
Academy Editions, Greenberg wrote an essay entitled "What is Modern
Architecture? An American Perspective." In it, he said: "Classical
architecture has remained viable-and classical buildings endure for
centuries-because it is not a style; it is a comprehensive language of
architectural form with a grammar and vocabulary to articulate form
and meaning.
     "The classical language of architecture is always modern because
it is rooted in the physiology and psychology of the individual human
being," he wrote. "In this context, to be modern means more than
responding to some particular circumstances of the moment-that is
simply being fashionable. To be truly modern means finding the dynamic
balance between eternal human values and the specific demands of the
present.
     "Classical architecture provides the means to achieve this
balance because it is the most comprehensive architectural language
that human beings have yet developed," Greenberg said. "Three
millennia of Western architecture demonstrate how successfully this
classical language has responded to building needs in diverse
political realms, cultures, climates and geographies.
     "I maintain that classical architecture is still the most potent,
the most appropriate and the most noble language to express the
relationship of the individual to the community in a republican
democracy," he wrote.
     In the monograph's foreword, architectural historian Carroll
William Westfall calls the architect's work "expressive and
instructive architecture, producing dynamic effects... An enjoyment of
his work is immediately available to all, for it requires no tutoring
to sense a building's warmth, comfort or intimacy, or to respond to
its dignity, decorum or grandeur.
     "Greenberg's works speak of great learning and of more," Westfall
said. "They embody joyous, sensuous form, an underlying coherence of
formal organization, and a wide range of references made fresh with
intelligible and intelligent departures from expectations."
     A native of South Africa who became an American citizen over 20
years ago, Greenberg, 56, received a bachelor of architecture degree
from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1961, and he
earned his master's degree in architecture from Yale University in
1965.
     He began his architectural career in Denmark and Sweden and
established a private practice in 1972. He has been a member of the
faculty at Yale Architectural School, Yale Law School, the University
of Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts' Department of Architecture and
the Columbia University School of Architecture and Planning,
Department of Historic Preservation. He also has been a visiting
professor at numerous colleges and universities, including Notre Dame
and Illinois.
     Greenberg is a member of the Jeffersonian Restoration Design
Committee at the University of Virginia and the Board of Directors of
the Yorktown Foundation in Yorktown, Va., among others.
     He is a sought-after lecturer and widely published author.
                                                          -Beth Thomas