Category Archives: Architecture

For readers in Portugal

Readers in Portugal and elsewhere who are enjoying my post about the Coach Museum in Lisbon might also enjoy the post published after it on styles of the two horse-racing trophies won yesterday, and the two previous posts: “7 brides … Continue reading

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A tale of two trophies

American Pharoah won the Triple Crown today, the first horse in 37 years to sweep the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, and only the 12th to do so in the history of the Sport of Kings. What, … Continue reading

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Lisbon’s coach catastrophe

Malcolm Millais, author of the explosive Exploding the Myths of Modern Architecture (2009) sends sad news from Portugal. Lisbon’s delightful and elegant Coach Museum, long the nation’s most popular museum, had been housed in a perfectly lovely building of impeccable … Continue reading

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7 brides for 7 buttheads

A breathtakingly gargantuan amount of balderdash was published by the New York Times today in “Seven Leading Architects Defend the World’s Most Hated Buildings.” The architects have all talked to Alexandra Lange. The first is the hardest sell – the … Continue reading

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Allan Greenberg’s classicism

While the contagion of “global architecture” today dilutes the individual character of our cities, turning them into bland collections of interchangeable buildings, we now have voices offering a fresh choice: classical architecture based on local traditions and ideals. With the … Continue reading

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Parsing historic and historical

Many older cities greet drivers with highway signs that say, for example, “Entering Historic Providence.” The capital of Rhode Island was founded in 1636, and the state’s youngest municipality, West Warwick, celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2013. Every city and … Continue reading

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Enigmatic at Bletchley Park

My ongoing investigation of the alleged widespread dislike of Victorian architecture at some point in the past – which I dispute – led me to this passage from Enigma, by Robert Harris, a novel about the quest to decipher the … Continue reading

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Garden party in Providence?

Enjoyed giving a tour of Providence to Gibson Worsham and family this morning, before the rain set in. My son Billy and I awaited the Worshams, Gibson and Charlotte, of Richmond, and their son Steve (“Bubba”), a first-year grad at … Continue reading

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A monument to courage

A newly proposed memorial, called the Monument to the Courage of Those Who Suffered During the Atlantic Slave Trade, was the project for students in Prof. Nathaniel Robert Walker’s Architecture of Memory course in the Art and Architectural History Department … Continue reading

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Up, up, up in time and space

Get on the elevator to the observatorium at 1 World Trade Center and you’re in for the ride of your life. Up, up, up – ascending not just through space but through time. An animated display on the walls of … Continue reading

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