Category Archives: Architects

Shubow on AIA’s promo

Posted on March 18, 2015 by David Brussat

Justin Shubow’s latest piece at Forbes.com, “The American Institute of Architects’ Outreach Campaign Is Doomed to Failure,” alerts readers to the multiple levels of hypocrisy that drive the self-promotion of the architects lobby. Like his study of Frank Gehry’s proposal … Continue reading →

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Dump on Seagram Building

Posted on March 17, 2015 by David Brussat

Martin Pedersen, the critic and former Metropolis editor who co-wrote a blistering attack on modernism in the New York Times last December, has loosed an excellent fusillade against the Seagram Building, completed in 1958. Writing in the Fast Company blog, … Continue reading →

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Embarrassing screen shot

Posted on March 13, 2015 by David Brussat

Above is a screen shot part way down into the online print version of an NPR interview with Renzo Piano, “The Future of Europe’s Cities Is In Their Suburbs.” In it, the interviewer says that “Piano believes it’s the architect’s … Continue reading →

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Frei Otto’s Pritzker: Shhh!

Posted on March 12, 2015 by David Brussat

Frei Otto’s Pritzker exposes the jury to the charge of not having done its homework. True, his work is as ridiculous as anyone looking at it would have to conclude just by looking at it. As such, it lives up … Continue reading →

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The architecture of dessert

Posted on March 7, 2015 by David Brussat

The resurgence of interest in Nathaniel Robert Walker’s essay on food and architecture, called “Architecture and food,” which ran here on Jan. 8, and the host of comments and, it seems, new followers of my blog it has inspired, has … Continue reading →

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“Clock ticking” for brutality?

Posted on March 5, 2015 by David Brussat

So says the New York Times’s Michael Kimmelman in “Clock Ticks for Rudolph’s Orange County Government Center.” By the time you read this, the bye-bye birdie may well have chirped its demise. I had not realized that demolition was still … Continue reading →

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More modernist parents stuff

Posted on March 4, 2015 by David Brussat

Prof. Jan Michl, of Oslo, saw my post “My Modernist Parents,” with its trailers of a short Norwegian animated film Me and My Moulton, which was up for an Oscar this year for portraying the trials and tribulations of being … Continue reading →

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Perfect critique, then … pfft!

Posted on March 3, 2015 by David Brussat

There is almost nothing that I could disagree with or add to in “Empty Gestures: Starchitecture’s Swan Song,” a critique by Peter Buchanan in the Architectural Review. Nothing, that is, except that after so much striking perception, Buchanan does not … Continue reading →

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Criticism of criticism of …

Posted on March 2, 2015 by David Brussat

That’s the title of a famous H.L. Mencken essay called “Criticism of Criticism of Criticism” about the convolutions of critical theoretics. An article by Mark Minkjan in one of my favorite blogs, Failed Architecture, is called “ArchDaily and Architecture Criticism.” … Continue reading →

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Bygone architecture criticism

Posted on March 1, 2015 by David Brussat

Here, reprinted in Architectural Review, is a long essay of architecture criticism of a sort that we never see anymore – detailed critique of a set of buildings by a famous architect, in this case Edwin Lutyens. The essay, “New … Continue reading →

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