Monthly Archives: March 2017

Gallagher: “If Venice Dies”

Mary Campbell Gallagher, founder of the International Coalition for the Preservation of Paris, has written a review of Salvadore Settis’s If Venice Dies for The New Criterion. Here is a direct link to her fine review, elegantly titled “La Serenissima” … Continue reading

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Postmodernist Edwardians

Kristen Richards, the founder and editor of the indispensable ArchNewsNow, sent me the other day a piece she said would interest me. Well, that was the understatement of the week. “Understanding British Postmodernism (Hint: It’s Not What You Thought),” by … Continue reading

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Rhode Island, circa 1947

Here’s a video of a nine-minute promotional film on Rhode Island, the smallest state in the union – though the state with the nation’s highest per capita production of industrial goods. The grainy black & white photography and the “professional” … Continue reading

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Adam on classical language

Robert Adam in his book Classic Columns addresses a topic many have addressed but at far greater depth of perception.  Few can fail to perceive that classical architecture is a language and that it evolves slowly just as the English … Continue reading

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Minutes in lovely Malta

When I feel like writing a post but don’t have much time I fly to YouTube and its endless city videos. Today, Valletta, the capital of Malta, the island nation just south of Sicily. I visited in the late 1990s … Continue reading

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Adam on history & tradition

I am reading British architect Robert Adam’s collection of essays, Classic Columns: 40 Years of Writing on Architecture,” just published. Chapter 5, “Can restoration be too authentic?,” totally demolishes a longstanding pet peeve of mine – modernist additions to old … Continue reading

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‘Transforming Providence’

Yesterday’s announcement of the publication date of Lost Providence brings to mind that Transforming Providence, by Gene Bunnell, a professor of city planning at SUNY/Albany, has just been published. I am pleased that he has weighed in on the redevelopment … Continue reading

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Pub date for “Lost Prov”!

Feel free to hoist some suds, but this post is not the announcement for a pub crawl. No. Rather, it celebrates the announcement of the publication date for my upcoming book Lost Providence: Monday, Aug. 28.  The news arrived this … Continue reading

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S.J. Perelman in Wash. Sq.

Who hasn’t seen a musical that makes you want, in the spirit of the moment, to leap up and dance down that stone balustrade past the water fountain and into the dappled park, singing a Broadway tune to beat the … Continue reading

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Salingaros’s way forward

Common/Edge may the most edgy design website because of its willingness to engage traditional viewpoints. Most such sites altogether ignore tradition in architecture. One of its editors, Martin C. Pedersen, has assembled an intriguing digital interview with Nikos Salingaros, the … Continue reading

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