Monthly Archives: March 2015

Shubow on AIA’s promo

Posted on March 18, 2015 by David Brussat

Justin Shubow’s latest piece at Forbes.com, “The American Institute of Architects’ Outreach Campaign Is Doomed to Failure,” alerts readers to the multiple levels of hypocrisy that drive the self-promotion of the architects lobby. Like his study of Frank Gehry’s proposal … Continue reading →

Posted in Architects, Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Dump on Seagram Building

Posted on March 17, 2015 by David Brussat

Martin Pedersen, the critic and former Metropolis editor who co-wrote a blistering attack on modernism in the New York Times last December, has loosed an excellent fusillade against the Seagram Building, completed in 1958. Writing in the Fast Company blog, … Continue reading →

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Mark Anthony Signorelli: The poetry of architecture

Posted on March 16, 2015 by David Brussat

Nikos Salingaros, the theorist of architecture’s debt to biology, has sent me an essay by his sometime collaborator Mark Anthony Signorelli. Nikos describes “The Soul in the Temple” as “very insightful and very poetic (well, Mark is a poet!).” I … Continue reading →

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What monuments tell us

Posted on March 15, 2015 by David Brussat

Recently, as museums to remember the stain of slavery in America are under construction in Washington and planned in Charleston, there has arisen the vital question of whether memorials should speak in a traditional language everyone can understand or a … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History, Art and design, Blast from past, Development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Fashion and coquetry, 1807

Posted on March 14, 2015 by David Brussat

My last passage quoted several posts ago from William Hazlitt was followed merely a page later by this passage, which rivals if it does not quite repeat the endlessness of its predecessor. Whereas the prior passage limns the hopelessless (at … Continue reading →

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Embarrassing screen shot

Posted on March 13, 2015 by David Brussat

Above is a screen shot part way down into the online print version of an NPR interview with Renzo Piano, “The Future of Europe’s Cities Is In Their Suburbs.” In it, the interviewer says that “Piano believes it’s the architect’s … Continue reading →

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Frei Otto’s Pritzker: Shhh!

Posted on March 12, 2015 by David Brussat

Frei Otto’s Pritzker exposes the jury to the charge of not having done its homework. True, his work is as ridiculous as anyone looking at it would have to conclude just by looking at it. As such, it lives up … Continue reading →

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Hazlitt’s literary skyscraper

Posted on March 12, 2015 by David Brussat

William Hazlitt, whom I’ve quoted here before on the art of painting, is a writer whose sentences evoke the architecture of English. The one below certainly suggests a skyscraper. He liked to say that he wrote in a “familiar style” … Continue reading →

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New apartments downtown!

Posted on March 12, 2015 by David Brussat

Originally posted on Architecture Here and There:
Upper portion of door surround at 32 Custom House St. Monday evening’s meeting of the Downtown Design Review Committee relieved concerns that one must feel upon news that a graceful old building is…

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New apartments downtown!

Posted on March 11, 2015 by David Brussat

Monday evening’s meeting of the Downtown Design Review Committee relieved concerns that one must feel upon news that a graceful old building is being renovated. Who knows what evil could be afoot. But the applicant, HM Ventures 7, of Brooklyn, … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History, Development, Photography, Preservation, Providence, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments