> Maybe the author likes that style because it subconsciously makes them feel safe and protected by the power of the empire in an uncertain and rapidly changing

> Maybe the author likes that style because it subconsciously makes them feel safe and protected by the power of the empire in an uncertain and rapidly changing world, that would track with conservative appeal for a lot of folks. You may wish to re-read the article. Perhaps disable the loading of images so you're not biased by the very first image. Yes, the author mentions 'classical' styles, but is not about building things 'like they used to', but rather in taking evolutionary steps to past designs instead of wholesale tabula rasa thinking espoused by Le Corbusier et al. The author explicitly calls out the work of Kligerman as having both traditionalist and modern elements: * https://kligermanad.com/portfolio https://kligermanad.com/portfolio I find it hard to believe that, given the above reference, and the designs involved, the author is espousing "dominant imperial power". The author also writes: > Similarly, when Louis Kahn produced the sublime skylit vaults of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, his ingenious solution was highly praised, but it was never repeated. As a result, instead of a considered evolution, modern architecture has been marked by a succession of fresh starts, some real and many false. I do not personally get the impression of "dominant imperial power" by the design of said museum: * https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&as_q=Kimbell+Art+Museum https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&as_q=Kimbell+Art+Muse... It is very 'modernist' / brutalist in style, which the author is not against per se, but rather the author is against new-ness for new-ness's sake. And as the author points out, there is no one "classic style" (dominant imperial or otherwise), with variations between ancient times and things that have been built even in the last two centuries: > But as my friend the Greek architect Demetri Porphyrios pointed out years ago in an influential essay, “classicism is not a style.” The mannered classicism of Michelangelo was very different from the earlier classicism of Bramante or the later classicism of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The Prussian classicism of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Altes Museum in Berlin (1830) was more different still, as was the stripped classicism of Paul Philippe Cret’s Federal Reserve Board Building (1937). A reason that classicism takes different guises, apart from the unstoppable imagination of architects, is that despite its ancient Greek and Roman roots, it inevitably reflects the taste of its own time. Schinkel was affected by his interest in Gothic buildings, just as Cret was influenced by the art deco movement, and even by the International Style. Could one imagine a 21st-century classicism that broadens its language to incorporate elements of the modernist past? That’s a tall order in our bifurcated time, when architectural correctness mandates that you belong to one camp or the other.