Category Archives: Architects

Classicism in Newport News

Calder Loth, a Virginia architectural historian, provided TradArch with good grist for chewing when he offered up a photo of a newly completed chapel, among the atest of a series of classical buildings on the new main campus at Christopher … Continue reading

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Rip facade off mod angst

Very interesting chat in the Guardian, “Should Britain’s ‘worst building’ be torn down?” with its art critic Jonathan Jones and Design Museum director Deyan Sudjik debating the future of the recent winner of the Carbuncle Cup, the Walkie-Talkie building, and … Continue reading

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Style vs. form balderdash

Justin Shubow, the provocative head of the National Civic Art Society, has posted a segment from a 1996 book review by the late Paul Malo of Roger Scruton’s The Classical Vernacular: Architecture in a Time of Nihilism, which I recently … Continue reading

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First critique in Pawtucket

Here is one of my earliest columns about a design competition, in this case to renovate an old department store into a visitors center for the City of Pawtucket. *** Promoting a Peerless Pawtucket December 4, 1992 IN PAWTUCKET, the … Continue reading

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Carbuncle Cup conundrum

In Britain the Carbuncle Cup goes to the ugliest building of the year. The name recalls Prince Charles’s famous and much-beloved line, “a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-beloved and elegant friend,” that he applied to a proposed … Continue reading

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The Salon des Refuses

The topic has come up of a “Salon des refusés” for the classical entries that did not make it into the first two rounds of the competition for a national memorial to World War I. More than 350 entries were … Continue reading

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Catesby Leigh’s WWI faves

The Washington critic Catesby Leigh has an excellent write-up of the World War I memorial designs in the National Review, “National World War I Memorial: The Judges Got It Wrong.” He mentions two proposals that were entered but for various … Continue reading

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Corbu, Paris and Pinceau

Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Le Corbusier, founding villain of modern architecture and to this day still its leading hero. He died in a swimming accident off the Mediterranean coast where he had vandalized the seaside … Continue reading

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Visiting beautiful Guatemala

Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza recently visited Guatemala at the invitation of the Central American nation’s commerce secretary. Elorza – whose family hails from Guatemala – hopes to have persuaded the national airline to schedule regular flights to T.F. Green State … Continue reading

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Children and architecture II

A commenter, reading in a recent post (“Children and architecture,” Aug. 8) on this blog an excerpt from a column I wrote for the Providence Journal in early 2001, asked to see the rest of the column, so here it … Continue reading

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