Join the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello for a virtual Fellow's Forum with Linda Binsted, Architect and Architectural Historian.
Click here to join us on Zoom on Tuesday, September 21st, 2021 at 4:00 p.m. ET!
Thomas Jefferson’s international travels took him to the cities and countryside of England and France but not to Italy, the birthplace of Palladian design. However, his travels never took him to Rome and its classical buildings, nor did he see any works by Palladio firsthand. Yet, through architectural treatises, the prevalent pattern books of the 18th century, visits to architecturally significant structures in America, England and France, and the intellectual thoughts of the day, he came to produce some of the most influential Palladian designs in the still young United States.
Palladio’s villas are visions of smooth planar beauty, crisp whiteness in the Italian piedmont sun. Jefferson’s Palladian work in the Virginia piedmont – Monticello, Poplar Forest and the University of Virginia – are clothed in molded red brick and striped with sand mortar. Other builders and architects of the era studied the same sources as Jefferson and used the same materials to produce worthy Palladian-inspired plans and volumes; however, their detailing of the façade merely replicated the prevalent Georgian and Federalist manner. This presentation examines the pathway Jefferson travelled and the methods he employed to purify the brick edifice to better attain the planar volumes depicted in Palladio’s folios.
About the Speaker
Linda Binsted is a practicing architect working in Washington, DC. Her architectural designs have garnered design awards and appeared in local and national publications. She has conducted seminars focused on the intersection of the design, technology and history of building materials including brick and concrete as well as mid-century urban renewal at American Institute of Architects (AIA) conferences including AIA Washington Chapter’s