Architecture made from wood, stone, and brick doesn’t have to be reactionary.

Last week, a pair of videos circulating on social media caught my eye. “Monumental Labs is developing the infrastructure to build highly ornamented classical structures on a mass scale,” the mission statement reads, “and to create extraordinary new architectural forms.” Springut’s thesis is that we have lost the ability to build the kind of buildings people like best—ornate ones. The new British king, Charles III, has made the revival of pre-modern architecture his life’s work—he even built a whole town of old-fashioned buildings. And the hope of the old ways is that stone, wood, and brick can build a city that’s more pleasant, lasting, and ecologically sound—whatever the architectural style. That’s why people love stone bridges, castles, solid-timber Russian churches.” He divides European architecture along the familiar tomato-potato, olive oil–butter, Catholic-Protestant line—but between the continent’s resources of timber and stone.