Building Beautiful: an Interview Series

Architecture and urbanism were among Roger Scruton’s central interests, and he devoted the final year of his life to chairing the British Government’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. Scruton championed the enduring relevance of traditional ways of building, studying the ways in which architecture can humanise or dehumanise the places in which we live, and interrogating the modernist charge that traditional architecture today must be an inauthentic ‘pastiche’.

Through the work of Scruton and many others, traditional architecture and urbanism have strengthened steadily in recent decades, returning from a point of near-extinction in the mid-twentieth century. Until recently, however, they were restricted chiefly to residential architecture for private clients. This is beginning to change. There is now widespread interest in many features of traditional cities, including their walkability, their popularity, their density, and their positive effects on health and wellbeing. This offers traditional architects and urbanists the opportunity to break back into the mainstream, vindicating traditional practice not as a boutique style of private villas, but as a way to build the cities of the twenty-first century.

As we seek to continue exploring Scruton’s contributions to architecture and urbanism, the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation is pleased to announce the first instalment of a new online event series titled, Building Beautiful.

Over a series of eight evenings, Scruton’s former research assistant and the Foundation’s Senior Fellow in the Built Environment Samuel Hughes will interview the leading figures in traditional architecture and urbanism today. They will discuss both timeless questions about the nature of traditional building, and urgent questions about the challenges and opportunities it now faces. Why did traditional architecture vanish during the twentieth century, after flourishing for so many centuries? What are its prospects of renewal? How does its predicament vary across the world? Through eight discussions with an international range of practitioners, we will develop a unique overview of one of the most important themes of our day.

The series begins with Nicholas Boys Smith on September 28.  Boys Smith is the founding director of Create Streets, a non-partisan social enterprise that fosters traditional, street-based urbanism. In just a few years, Create Streets has had an enormous impact on urbanism in the United Kingdom, working closely with both the national government and with numerous local authorities of both left and right, and transforming public discourse on how we should build our cities. Scruton asked Boys Smith to serve as a Commissioner on the Building Beautiful Commission, and during Scruton’s illness in the latter part of 2020 they worked together as Co-Chairs: Scruton described Boys Smith as ‘a wonder, a force of nature’. In his work, Boys Smith stresses the empirical arguments for traditional urbanism, from its demonstrable popularity, through its effects on health and wellbeing, to effects on the natural environment.

You can find more information and register for the first interview of Building Beautiful through the button below.

To stay up to date with the latest announcements from the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation, follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our newsletter.