Monthly Archives: April 2015

For Rhode Islanders only

Posted on April 30, 2015 by David Brussat

The trailer for Woody Allen’s movie Irrational Man, filmed on location in Rhode Island, is out. Here it is, released by Sony Picture Classics. Release date is July 24. Let’s see how many places we Rhode Islanders can identify! (Don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Book/Film Reviews, Rhode Island, Video | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A dream to soothe the breast

Posted on April 29, 2015 by David Brussat

Who has not claimed to have said that architecture is music frozen in time? Perhaps music is architecture floating into our ear. Anyway, I was just now introduced to the French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924). A blogger on music whose … Continue reading →

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Boston’s spooky new T entry

Posted on April 28, 2015 by David Brussat

An undercover source in deep infrastructure sent me a surreptitiously snapped photo of the new T entrance at Government Center the other day. The photo was too hot to handle, too ugly even to look at, so I left it … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Art and design, Development, Landscape Architecture, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Lord Jim’s “Skeffonomics”

Posted on April 27, 2015 by David Brussat

Last Friday, when the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission bowed to pressure and let new PawSox owners James Skeffington and Larry Lucchino address the commissioners in public, the wheels of cynicism started spinning furiously. On Monday, when I arrived at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Art and design, Development, Providence, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Bless the landscape architect

Posted on April 27, 2015 by David Brussat

Julie Iovine, the Wall Street Journal’s post-Huxtable architecture critic, has written “The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley.” Her piece on an exhibition of the work of the late Kiley, who died in 2004, earns a place in my collection … Continue reading →

Posted in Architects, Architecture History, Art and design, Books and Culture, Landscape Architecture | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

In the Union Trust we trust

Posted on April 26, 2015 by David Brussat

To celebrate the newly announced plan by Vince Geoffroy, the developer of the ProvidenceG project, to install 60 luxury apartments in the Union Trust Bank Building, here is a column I wrote about it back in 1996.  Restaurant owner Bob … Continue reading →

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Long city planning grind

Posted on April 25, 2015 by David Brussat

James Fallows has written “Nice Downtowns: How Did They Get that Way?” for the Atlantic, about how active city downtowns arise not naturally or organically but are planned. He takes the example of Seattle, which was a hollowed-out reject 50 … Continue reading →

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Join my Jane’s Walk again!

Posted on April 24, 2015 by David Brussat

I will be giving my second annual Jane’s Walk waterfront tour of downtown Providence on Saturday, May 2, at 1:00 p.m. We will meet at the Crawford Street Bridge – the new and beautiful bridge, not the late, unlamented Guinness … Continue reading →

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Kimmelman swoops Whitney

Posted on April 24, 2015 by David Brussat

It took Theodore Dalrymple, an essayist for the Manhattan Institute’s splendid quarterly, City Journal, to pull back the curtain on the operatic vapidity of New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. The latter has written his architectural review of the … Continue reading →

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‘So let’s build 500 Shards’

Posted on April 23, 2015 by David Brussat

I’ve posted about Create Streets before. The London urbanist organization’s Paul Murrain, who once worked with Andrés Duany on downtown Providence, has written a thoughtful and passionate “J’Accuse!” – called “London Deserves Better Than This” on PDF at the website … Continue reading →

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