Author Archives: David Brussat

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About David Brussat

This blog was begun in 2009 as a feature of the Providence Journal, where I was on the editorial board and wrote a weekly column of architecture criticism for three decades. Architecture Here and There fights the style wars for classical architecture and against modern architecture, no holds barred. History Press asked me to write and in August 2017 published my first book, "Lost Providence." I am now writing my second book. My freelance writing on architecture and other topics addresses issues of design and culture locally and globally. I am a member of the board of the New England chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, which bestowed an Arthur Ross Award on me in 2002. I work from Providence, R.I., where I live with my wife Victoria, my son Billy and our cat Gato. If you would like to employ my writing and editing to improve your work, please email me at my consultancy, dbrussat@gmail.com, or call 401.351.0457. Testimonial: "Your work is so wonderful - you now enter my mind and write what I would have written." - Nikos Salingaros, mathematician at the University of Texas, architectural theorist and author of many books.

Musical skyscrapers afloat

Here is a passage from The Nutmeg of Consolation, the 14th volume of Patrick O’Brian’s 20-volume naval novel, set in the Napoleonic era. Capt. Jack Aubrey and his surgeon friend Dr. Stephen Maturin, one evening in the South China Sea, … Continue reading

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Yale’s ‘edifice complex’?

Hartford Courant architecture critic Duo Dickinson has written a fine piece on Yale’s two new residential colleges, under construction in New Haven. Yale’s expenditure of more than half a billion (b) to recapture the work of architect James Gamble Rogers’s … Continue reading

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Library of place in Newport

Ronald Lee Fleming, an internationally recognized expert on placemaking, has a modest cottage on Bellevue Avenue that masks a series of interlocking gardens – each focusing on a “folly” or architectural toy, of no real utilitarian use but to set … Continue reading

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Brexit and architecture

British voters’ startling decision to opt out of the European Union dismayed many British architects. Dezeen found no one to quote supporting Brexit in a story just before the vote. “We love EU, declare UK architects and designers ahead of … Continue reading

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Betsky’s Venice Biennale

Architecture is … more than just pretty buildings. – Aaron Betsky If you follow Aaron Betsky, the chief critic for Architect, the mouthpiece of the American Institute of Architects, to the Venice Biennale, you get to experience the absence of … Continue reading

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Lighting London bridges

Kristen Richards’s indispensable ArchNewsNow.com website today has a cry of outrage (“Are They Serious?”) from a lighting designer who is disturbed by that profession’s exclusion from a panel of judges for a design competition to light up 17 bridges crossing … Continue reading

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Downtown’s apt. bandwagon

The Case-Mead Building, erected in 1859 and one of my favorite buildings downtown, is joining downtown’s microloft bandwagon. The building is still fondly known by some as Paolino World Headquarters, though the Paolino family’s property development company moved out to … Continue reading

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Bridges to Father’s Day

Sunday afternoon my wife Victoria, our son Billy, 7, and I took a delightful tour through downtown Providence on the Proud Mary, the oldest vessel in the fleet of the Providence River Boat Company. Embarking at the Hot Club, we … Continue reading

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The parking meter idiocy

Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza appears determined to serve a single term. How do I know? Just look! He is trying to offend every constituency he can by installing parking meters where they shop. Several neighborhoods on the East Side have … Continue reading

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‘Lost Providence’ and readers

In this digital age, with its mobility and its easy interactivity, I have been trying to imagine how to get readers of this blog interested in helping me write my book Lost Providence, an initiative just now under way. It … Continue reading

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