Duncan Stroik’s New Classical Architecture is cropping up in churches around the country
Duncan G. Stroik is committed to bringing beauty back to church buildings. A graduate of the University of Virginia with a master’s degree in architecture from Yale University, Stroik worked in the office of Allan Greenberg before joining the Notre Dame School of Architecture, where he helped design a new curriculum of classical architecture. He is the founder of the Institute for Sacred Architecture (and its journal, Sacred Architecture) as well as the author of The Church Building as a Sacred Place: Beauty, Transcendence and the Eternal.
Working in the tradition of New Classical Architecture, Stroik has many projects to his credit. Among them is the first classical chapel to be built on a college campus in the United States — Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity at Thomas Aquinas College in Ojai, California — and the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which is considered the grandest classical church built in decades.
Currently, Stroik is working on a $28 million, 1300-seat chapel for a college in Michigan that will include a masonry dome, interior limestone columns, and two world-class organs.
Stroik just became this year’s winner of the prestigious Arthur Ross Award — the oldest award for classical architecture in the United States.
All renderings in this article are by Duncan G. Stroik Architect, LLC. Special thanks to Caroline Cole of Duncan Stroik Architects for her assistance with this piece.
