Monthly Archives: April 2018

My Jane’s Walk this Saturday

Posted on April 30, 2018 by David Brussat

My fourth Jane’s Walk tour of the waterfront along the Providence River takes place at 4 p.m. this Saturday, May 5. We will meet at the Crawford Street Bridge near Hemenways in the Rubik’s Cube and stroll north, heading west … Continue reading →

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Partying with the Bulfinches

Posted on April 29, 2018 by David Brussat

On Saturday evening the region’s classicists held a big bash at the Harvard Club of Boston, after two lectures by eminent classicists that morning and afternoon. The lectures will soon go onto the website of the New England chapter of … Continue reading →

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Wee wow for Bauwauhauses

Posted on April 27, 2018 by David Brussat

“Mutts-have: Architects create luxury kennels for charity auction” is the headline of this story by Guardian critic Oliver Wainwright. “Mutts-have”? … I’m sorry, that really does not cut the mustard. Mutts-have ≠ must-have. And if you glide down the complement of … Continue reading →

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Fane’s Copycat Point Tower

Posted on April 25, 2018 by David Brussat

The new design for Jason Fane’s Hope Point Tower might be separated at birth from MAD Architects’ Absolute Towers, outside Toronto. But it’s not really a separated-at-birth shot but a before-and-after shot – two buildings in a heightened state of … Continue reading →

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The rest of Banham’s Wolfe

Posted on April 24, 2018 by David Brussat

Here is a link to the rest of Reyner Banham’s review of Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House, in the London Review of Books. Readers may pick up where they left off in Banham’s “The Scandalous Story of Architecture … Continue reading →

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Architecture and gossip

Posted on April 23, 2018 by David Brussat

Gossip makes the world go round, nowhere more so than in the world of architecture. The arrival of #MeToo into architecture by way of modernist Richard Meier brings to mind the classicist Stanford White, who in 1906 was murdered in … Continue reading →

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Don’t make it blight, Brad!

Posted on April 22, 2018 by David Brussat

Actor Brad Pitt’s Make It Right foundation erected several score of goofy homes in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans – poor, depopulated and hardest hit by Katrina in 2005. Pitt brought in squads of modern architects to teach the … Continue reading →

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Pevsner’s archiperversity

Posted on April 20, 2018 by David Brussat

What are the sources of modern architecture? I recently completed Nikolaus Pevsner’s The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design, published by the famous German-turned-Brit architectural historian in 1968. Rarely have so many underlinings arisen in protest against so much dubious … Continue reading →

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Video: Restored in Frankfurt

Posted on April 19, 2018 by David Brussat

Leon Krier has sent a brief video, 57 seconds in all, of the recently completed restoration, in Frankfurt, Germany, of that city’s Huhner Markt area, Almost as pleasing as what the video reveals is what it replaces – in Krier’s … Continue reading →

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M. Laugier’s pilasterphobia

Posted on April 18, 2018 by David Brussat

An Essay on Architecture was published anonymously in 1753 by the Abbé Marc-Antoine Laugier, who soon after quit the Jesuitical order, enabling his name to appear on the next edition. It’s the most amazing book. In Chapter 1, “General Principles … Continue reading →

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