Making School Beautiful: Restoring the Harmony of Place

“The parts [of a building] ought to be so composed that their overall harmony contributes to the honor and grace of the whole work, and that effort is not expended in adorning one part at the expense of all the rest, but that the harmony is such that the building appears a single, integral, and well-composed body, rather than a collection of extraneous and unrelated parts.” —Leon Battista Albert, On the Art of Building The rapid growth of the classical Christian education movement means that hundreds of recently established schools enjoy a basic solidarity of purpose. They can also seize the opportunity to think together about how the architecture and design of their schools can best suit their identity and location. In Making School Beautiful, Dr. Skillen draws out principles of campus design from the very liberal arts—rhetoric in particular—that shape our curriculum. His argument is that the rich intellectual, literary, and artistic heritage can inform not only what we teac