Monthly Archives: August 2014

Mayor Riley in Providence

Posted on August 29, 2014 by David Brussat

To celebrate my discovery of A Vision of Civic Conservation, I have resurrected a column from 2007 in which I report on the visit of Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley to Providence for the annual meeting of the Providence Preservation Society, … Continue reading →

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Capt. Hook’s Moat Brae

Posted on August 28, 2014 by David Brussat

Here are three images of the modernist plan for Moat Brae, in Dumfries, Scotland, whose garden inspired Neverland. It is now threatened with fairly typical additions in an unsympathetic style. I was unable to get my hands on these images … Continue reading →

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Three Classicists

Posted on August 27, 2014 by David Brussat

This time-lapse video, called “Three Classicists,” shows three British classicists, including Quinlan Terry’s son, sketching a classical scene on a blank wall in about three minutes, to the dear strains of a dulcet cellist. It is several years old but I … Continue reading →

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UNESCO urbanicide?

Posted on August 26, 2014 by David Brussat

DOMUS, a magazine about cities and culture, has published an infantile essay, “Urbanicide in all good faith,” excoriating UNESCO’s World Heritage program as an assassin of cities. The author, Marco D’Eramo, doesn’t call a spade a spade. Only briefly does … Continue reading →

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Hope for Emmett Square

Posted on August 26, 2014 by David Brussat

Years ago, the Miami architecture and planning firm DPZ, led by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (his wife), came to Providence again and again to help plan the revival of its downtown. Its last charrette, or brainstorming session, was in … Continue reading →

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Bad news from Paris

Posted on August 23, 2014 by David Brussat

Mary Campbell Gallagher, of SOS Paris, reports that the new mayor of Paris is working to undermine the already weakened legal stuctures that protect the beauty of the City of Light. There was a pro-beauty, anti-skyscraper candidate in the March … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Other countries, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

How to capture territory

Posted on August 22, 2014 by David Brussat

The classical revival has been expressed, in numerous threads over several years on the TradArch listserve discussion of classical architecture, as a matter of “recapturing territory” captured by modernism from classicism decades ago. Andres Duany, rightly famous for successfully leading … Continue reading →

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Column: Help save history and Peter Pan

Posted on August 21, 2014 by David Brussat

Winchester, a city 68 miles southwest of London, was the seat of government in England until the 12th century, and the center of its trade in wool. The town figures as Kingsbridge in Ken Follett’s novel “The Pillars of the … Continue reading →

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Plecnik revisited

Posted on August 17, 2014 by David Brussat

WordPress offers bloggers, among many other things, a list every day enumerating which posts get read by how many readers. I am continually amazed at how many posts from long ago (well, months) keep getting hits in drips and drabs. … Continue reading →

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Tennessee sky scrape

Posted on August 16, 2014 by David Brussat

Continuing with A History of the Future, here’s what happens to skyscrapers after nobody can afford to keep them juiced. The passage begins in Nashville, with the protagonist’s first view of the former Capital of Country Music. Every American city … Continue reading →

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