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.

Rob Krier wins his Driehaus

The architect and urban theorist Rob Krier is this year’s Driehaus Prize laureate. The first Driehaus Prize winner, two decades ago, was his brother, architect and urban theorist Leon Krier, who was also born in Luxembourg and is about eight … Continue reading

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Bob Stern and Bill Brussat

A book unexpected and unannounced arrived on my doorstep today: Robert A.M. Stern’s Between Memory and Invention, which I immediately mistook for an update of an earlier volume of his, Tradition and Invention in Architecture (2011). That has inhabited my … Continue reading

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Mittell: Strategy for Ukraine

This is another guest post from David Mittell, my former colleague from the Providence Journal. He has agreed with my desire to point out that his two guest posts (and maybe more) are published as a favor to a dear … Continue reading

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Christopher Alexander, R.I.P.

The great architectural and computer design theorist Christopher Alexander, born in Vienna and of British and American citizenship, died at his home in Binsted, Sussex, U.K. this past week after a long illness. He was 85. His more than 200 … Continue reading

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Mittell: Diplos, return to Kyiv

This is a guest post by David A. Mittell Jr., a veteran of many visits to Lviv, whose beauty he described vividly in a guest post in 2016, which I recently republished. In today’s post he admonishes the U.S. ambassador … Continue reading

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More shots of lovely Ukraine

Today I had to kill a post because because it contained a major mathematical error that could not be corrected. Fortunately – or unfortunately – I am able to substitute for it a post featuring more photographs of poor Ukraine, … Continue reading

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College Hill settings preserved

Three battles pitting neighbors and applicants for new construction on Williams and John streets appear, after recent meetings of the Providence Historic District Commission, to have been preservationist victories. What? How can three new houses (one actually a new addition … Continue reading

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A somber look at brave Kyiv

I feared last night that in posting photographs only of Lviv, and for describing Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv as a “mixture of old and new” (in my book, a quasi-dismissal), I might be properly rebuked, and so I have been. … Continue reading

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Holding our breath for Lviv

My friend and former colleague on the Providence Journal editorial board, David Mittell, once wrote me a guest post called “Why I love Lviv,” a city he has visited dozens of times and hopes to visit again, even though he … Continue reading

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Andres Duany at TAG 4.2

The architect and planner Andrés Duany, who was a founder of the Congress of the New Urbanism back in the 1990s, gave the final lecture at the fourth session of TAG 4.2, this year’s gathering via Zoom of classicists, now … Continue reading

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