A house designed by Ben Pentreath in Moscow. (Ben Pentreath Ltd.)

I believe I first heard of architect Ben Pentreath from a video called “Three Classicists” in which he, along with George Saumarez Smith, and Francis Terry drew, in 2010, a classical scene on the walls of the Kowalski Gallery, in London. It was videotaped in stop action, or time-lapse, shrinking the time of drawing to about three minutes. They first remove some bad art from the gallery wall, and when finished drawing they chat together while someone paints over their drawing. The architects are accompanied by a cellist.

Well, Ben Pentreath has just been awarded the Richard H. Driehaus Prize for 2023. The jury citation reads: “As a luminary within a rising generation of architects, his work encompasses what the prize celebrates most: beauty, durability and commitment to place.”

All three architects in the “Three Classicists” video are among the young architects associated with classicist Quinlan Terry (Francis Terry is his son), who are now among the leading classical architects in Britain. Pentreath, no doubt along with his two fellows, has had commissions at Poundbury, the new classical town founded by Prince Charles (now King Charles III).

The Pentreath citation continues:

The designs unerringly establish a sense of place, whether new or in the transformation of the existing. The durable construction, arrangement of interior spaces to take advantage of natural lighting and ventilation and placement and siting in mixed-use, walkable cities and towns and villages offer alternatives to the current notions of green architecture which typically rely solely on technological solutions.

Not to mention that the green architecture is almost uniformly ugly.

Pentreath is to be congratulated for his prize (which brings $200,000, as compared with a $100,000 award for the notorious Pritzker Prize). Also to be congratulated is this year’s winner of the Henry Hope Reed Award ($50,000), which was bestowed by the Notre Dame jury on Adele Chatfield-Taylor, who directed the American Academy in Rome for 25 years. She has been steadfast in her stewardship of preservation and the classical revival. I wrote a paean to her work and her beauty before she spoke at the Providence Preservation Society in 2016. My devilish post is here.

Also to be congratuated and, in addition, blessed are the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame, which has continued to bestow the Driehaus Prize in the wake of the death, in 2021, of the late Mr. Driehaus. Whether the Driehaus Foundation is behind this continuation, or the School of Architecture has taken up its financial as well as its administrative burden, I have no idea. Bless them both. Bless them all.

My 2015 post on the “Three Classicists,” mentioned also a website founded by Charleston, S.C., classicists Jenny Bevan and Christopher Liberatos. I signed up for their “Vision for Civic Conservation.” It is still there and you can still sign up, but whether there has been action on the site I am not sure. It’s worth checking out, at least for the engaging videos in its collection. Visit the site in celebration of Ben Pentreath and Adele Chatfield-Taylor.

The American Academy in Rome, designed by McKim, Mead & White.