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.

Video of pencil sculptures

A marvelous minute of video portrays a virtuoso hand at sculpting the lead out of a pencil. Click on “Art on the tip of a pencil” to view a minute of how Salavat Fidai gets the lead out. More can … Continue reading

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Homage to Penn Station

Tonight I watched a PBS “The American Experience” presentation on the rise and fall of Pennsylvania Station, which I will preview for Thursday’s column and which will broadcast to the public next Tuesday. To gin readers up for that, enter … Continue reading

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Songs of electric car silence

One of the endearing features of electric and hybrid cars is the silence of their engines. So of course that feature is about to meet its maker. U.S. and E.U. regulators are calling for noisemaking electric engines for safety reasons. … Continue reading

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The real Minette de Silva

Sometimes it seems like open season on female architects as long as they are in cahoots with the roving eye of Le Corbusier, one of the founding fathers of modern architecture. There is the recurrent hullaballoo over Eileen Gray, whose … Continue reading

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Bad Mad Men

See them (the bad mad men) lurking in the background? Please don’t remove the foreground (the bad mad, often angry, women)! So here’s Dan Bishop, production designer for Mad Men, describing (I think in Dwell magazine, as my source seems … Continue reading

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Gone fishin’; back soon, II

On Tuesday I go under the knife for an aortic valve replacement, and I deeply thank all who have wished me well, both the first time (the operation was originally scheduled for Dec. 17) and this time. Nobody wants his … Continue reading

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Birds versus the glass box

The Wexford Innovation Center, completed last year in Providence’s I-195 corridor dedicated to technology, has been killing birds. No, they are not horrified to death by its ugliness; rather, they are disoriented by its reflective plate-glass windows, which birds think … Continue reading

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Daum: Four days in Berlin

This essay was written by Eric Daum, founder of the firm Eric Inman Daum, Architect, who traveled with his wife, Beth Niemi, to Berlin in November. Beth had been to East Berlin in 1986, and this essay is accompanied by … Continue reading

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Driehaus for Thai architect

The 2020 Driehaus Prize for Thai architect Ong-ard Satrabhandhu recalls my dinner today. I have just returned from a restaurant called Sawadee, where I continued my quest for an acceptable pad Thai after the closure, last month, of my favorite … Continue reading

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The future of Providence

Dire. That’s a good word for the bad future of Providence if the erosion of its historic character continues at its current pace. In “Say no to ugly buildings,” an Oct. 28 oped for the Providence Journal, I listed the … Continue reading

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