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.

History of Maya Lin’s Wall

Maya Lin’s Wall on the Mall, dedicated to Vietnam’s fallen warriors, has long struck me as being less than the optimal commemoration of a national tragedy. Its gash in the Mall looks as if it symbolizes a loss in conflict … Continue reading

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Le era (er, error) de Corbu

Here is what Alistair Horne has to say about Le Corbusier in his book Seven Ages of Paris. It is on page 330. In my opinion, he lets the guy off too lightly. … [A]fter 1919 most new building shifted … Continue reading

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Chace plans downtown digs

When it was announced several years ago that Providence developer Buff Chace would purchase the Journal Building and the parking lot across from it on Fountain Street, he expressed the hope of erecting a new building on the latter site. … Continue reading

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More from ‘7 Ages of Paris’

Here are a couple more passages from Alistair Horne’s Seven Ages of Paris: The first two are from his section on the Second Empire: With so much borrowed from the past, was there (leaving aside the new apartment blocks) any … Continue reading

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Yale lecture: Krier on Speer

Léon Krier does not seem to dislike modern architecture as much as I do, but he may dislike it with much more passion. The architectural theorist, master planner of Prince Charles’s new town Poundbury, and practitioner of his own edgy … Continue reading

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Haussmann’s urban removal

Preservationists and architects should be enemies: the preservation of any old building postpones work designing a new building to replace it. Baron Haussmann’s demolition and rebuilding of much of old Paris in the third quarter of the 19th century created … Continue reading

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Modernist fundamentalism

Soon after I posted “General Motors’ America” yesterday, I yearned for a deeper understanding of the reason why GM so avidly embraced modernist concepts of design and planning. So it was good to receive from architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros a … Continue reading

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General Motors’ America

How did modern architecture boot classical architecture from its control of the design and planning establishments in America so quickly? After all, it took only about 30 years from the time modernist design hit the streets and the time, about … Continue reading

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Elusive ‘why’ of preservation

The Hotel Pennsylvania, in Manhattan, is said to be at risk of demolition again and of replacement by a building sympathetic to the current Penn Station. The old hotel, designed by McKim, Mead & White and opened in 1919, is … Continue reading

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Bobby Burns’ Edinburgh

Aside from a quick nip past Scotland’s poor modernist parliament building, this video of Edinburgh focuses on the delights of the architecture of the Athens of the North. The narrator’s gentle brogue lifts the heart, even becomes a sort of … Continue reading

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