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The antithesis of the new and the old, from the point of view of architectural history, is the antithesis of traditional and innovative architecture, classical and modern, avant-garde one. Classical architecture itself contains this juxtaposition of antiquity and the Middle Ages. The frame system of the Gothic cathedral is something radically new in comparison with the rack-and-beam system of the Greeks. "Classics" and "avant-garde" permeate the entire history of architecture.

In architectural creativity, this antithesis in its untamed form has given rise to two opposing approaches to design. In Soviet architecture, I. Zholtovsky was a prominent advocate of the growth of new forms based entirely on the experience of past architecture. Such architects as K. Melnikov, I. Leonidov stood for principal innovation. So, "Leonidov had a strongly negative attitude towards architects, for whom the creative process is the use and processing of some forms and details that have already been created by other architects. He did not even recognize them as genuine architects, because, in his opinion, they do not understand the meaning of the architect's work, they make architecture purely externally, and not from the inside, which is not real creativity. They take something ready-made and put things together from it. Leonidov considered I. Zholtovsky to be an architect of this type, therefore, he was highly critical of his talent and creative style. Leonidov was convinced that beauty cannot be composed of elements of ready-made beauty, but must be created anew. In this, he really radically disagreed with the creative concept of Zholtovsky, who saw in the legacy (that is, in the works created by others) an inexhaustible source of compositional ideas, forms and details.37"

Already in our time, Frank Gehry spoke vividly about the role of the past: "You can learn from the past, but not continue to be in the past. I can't look my children in the eye if I say I don't have any more ideas and have to copy the past. It's like giving up and saying they don't have a future anymore.38"

In order to keep in touch with the past and at the same time make a move into the future, in order to ensure the historical comprehensiveness and full value of the architectural form, it is necessary to combine both approaches in design. An example of such a synthesis is the work of St. Petersburg architect Igor Yavein. "A thoroughly erudite man, Yavein knew well and studied the history of world architecture throughout his life <…>. But when he started designing, he didn't use special literature: he kind of started everything from scratch, without any prototypes or sources.39"

The history of architecture knows attempts to synthesize the "old" and the "new" at the level of entire trends. One of them is "a unique and little-studied movement of the 1920s and 1930s – Art Deco. It was a phenomenon of architecture of the "integrating type". Based on the innovations of the pioneers of new architecture, Art Deco did not break with history." But "it was, to a certain extent, a continuation of eclecticism," 40according to Yu. I. Kurbatov, and therefore did not last long. Any eclectic combination is short-lived due to the external nature of the conjugation of different forms. Dialectics directs us towards combining the very principles of classical and avant-garde form creation into new synthetic principles.

It should be noted that "an analysis of the means and techniques of artistic expression of the new architecture shows that much of them not only has a continuity with the past, but also does not go beyond the established stereotypes.41" This suggests that despite the visual gap between the old and the new architectures, they have a lot in common at deeper levels, which gives additional reason to assert the possibility of their synthesis.

The concept of history is not identical to the concept of continuity. History is broader than continuity. History is an interweaving of evolutionism and leaps. In the sphere of historical space, we discover the same dialectic of continuity and discontinuity as in the field of physical and architectural spaces.

Examples of historical combinations in modern architecture are new buildings next to old ones. Due to their spatial proximity, these different structures effectively emphasize each other's uniqueness by contrast. "The true effect lies in the sharp opposition; beauty is never so bright and visible as in the contrast" 42(N. V. Gogol).

A striking example of the synthesis of traditional and new architecture is the work of the Japanese architect K. Tange. Le Corbusier's student transformed old Japanese traditions into ultra-new architectural solutions.