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.

Amtrak’s R.I. rural removal

If the description by two Charlestown, R.I., town council leaders of Amtrak’s plan for an alternate route through that town are accurate, the proposal must be stopped. It is no less than “rural removal,” same as the old “urban removal” … Continue reading

Posted in Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Webb and the Zen of craft

I have been remiss in not having shared with readers, until now, the essays of Patrick Webb, the Charleston-based plaster craftsman and classicist, whom I met a couple of years ago at a TradArch conference hosted by the American College … Continue reading

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Videos of London, 1927/2014

Here are two videos side by side of the same scenes in London from 1927 and 2014, courtesy of Big Geek Daddy’s Video of the Day. A week ago I posted “London in 25 hard minutes,” one of Rick Steves’s … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Preservation, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

More music & architecture

The Future Symphony Institute’s newest fellow, the composer John Borstlap, has written the latest in a string of essays that speak of music in ways that bring to mind architecture. Here is a paragraph from “Classical Modernity“: Is there any … Continue reading

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Krier on cities’ skyscraperitis

According to the headline writers at BD magazine, Britain’s leading journal of architecture, the takeaway from Leon Krier’s new essay there is “It doesn’t matter if skyscrapers are designed by world-class architects or hacks – they’re destroying our cities.” I … Continue reading

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Batman’s Penn Station, etc.

Here is my Traditional Building blog post from December, inspired by TB editor Martha McDonald’s expression of intrigue regarding an Architecture Here and There blog post I had written about Batman hiring a modernist architect to redesign Penn Station as … Continue reading

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Rouchell and New Orleans

My post “Nostalgia in New Orleans?” generated some comment among traditionalists on the TradArch list, including Louisiana architect Michael Rouchell. A couple of years ago, he contributed an excellent counterproposal to help my effort to get Rhode Island’s governor to … Continue reading

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Nostaglia in New Orleans?

A decade has passed since New Orleans began to rebuild its flooded neighborhoods after Hurricane Katrina. About all anyone beyond the Crescent City has heard of are the goofy new houses of Make It Right, an organization formed by movie … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Development | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

London in 25 hard minutes

By hard I mean compared with the soft gray focus of the video in my last post, “Fifty soft minutes in Paris.” This is the Rick Steves tour of Britain’s capital. Steves’s voice is mellow enough, and the photography, unlike … Continue reading

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Fifty soft minutes in Paris

Here is Paris, silent, with street noises and children noises, just shots of the City of Light for nearly an hour. Almost a little vacation there. No bad music, no irksome narrator, in any tongue. Just sit back and relax, … Continue reading

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