Monthly Archives: July 2016

Doodles a la Oppenord

Posted on July 13, 2016 by David Brussat

The sketchbook of G.M. Oppenord is offered by architect Joel Pidel, from his library. Joel throws it out for the pleasure of fellow TradArch list members, and someone ill prepared, as I am, to analyze the work between its covers … Continue reading →

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Fallen angel in Charleston

Posted on July 12, 2016 by David Brussat

As mayor of Charleston, S.C., for some 40 years, Joe Riley was a hero to the preservation movement. But lately he has hopped in bed with preservation’s nemesis, modern architecture. An article from 2015 on the website Next Cities, “Southern … Continue reading →

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Slowing Prov’s 6/10 Big Dig

Posted on July 11, 2016 by David Brussat

A state transportation agency used to routinely grabbing buckets of federal money was probably taken aback last week when the U.S. Department of Transportation rejected its bid for a $175 million FASTLANE grant to help it rebuild Providence’s 6/10 connector. … Continue reading →

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Self-driving auto-da-fe?

Posted on July 9, 2016 by David Brussat

Auto-da-fé has come to mean, in common lexicon, the burning of a heretic. Give it more time and the phrase will mean self-immolation. Let me push it along a bit. The recent first death in an accident involving a self-driving … Continue reading →

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The 4th w/out the Overture

Posted on July 8, 2016 by David Brussat

I am still suffering from Tchaikovsky’s Retreat from Providence. Last year the Rhode Island Philharmonic gave a bravura performance of “The 1812 Overture” for the city’s Fourth of July celebration at India Point Park. Not this year. I have no … Continue reading →

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Big bear barely Brunonian

Posted on July 6, 2016 by David Brussat

Just off the Main Green at Brown, a mounted Marcus Aurelius presides over Lincoln Field, now called Simmons Field after the university’s most recent former president. Or at least the Roman general used to preside. And Ruth Simmons is now … Continue reading →

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Less is more … or a bore?

Posted on July 5, 2016 by David Brussat

Happy belated birthday (it was June 24) to Robert Venturi, avatar of the postmodern movement in architecture and the self-appointed rebutter-in-chief to arch-modernist Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his infamous dictum. In the battle of slogans, “Less is more” … Continue reading →

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Independence architecture

Posted on July 4, 2016 by David Brussat

The classicism of the Jefferson Memorial, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, a design beloved of Jefferson, is by John Russell Pope and was dedicated in 1943, during the Second World War. The monument’s classicism was pecked at by modernist … Continue reading →

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Gaudi’s Manhattan tower

Posted on July 3, 2016 by David Brussat

That Gaudi had considered erecting a New York skyscraper is not widely known. William O’Connor writes of it in “Gaudi’s Lost Manhattan Tower” for the Daily Beast. O’Connor prates absurdly of Gaudi’s modernism – more than any other major architect, … Continue reading →

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Who owns Europe’s night?

Posted on July 1, 2016 by David Brussat

Videographer Luke Shepard and a companion traveled through 36 cities in 21 European countries to film “Nightvision: The Brilliance and Diversity of Euoropean Architecture.” It captures buildings of both chief types, old and new, traditional and modernist They are different. … Continue reading →

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