Category Archives: Architecture

Column: Providence’s long romance with brick

Posted on July 10, 2014 by David Brussat

Brick often finds itself in the dog house. Long ago in Providence, architectural historian and local preservation heroine Antoinette Downing, sitting on the design review panel of the Capital Center Commission, is said to have sniggered at one of the … Continue reading →

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Dish Dallas kitsch

Posted on July 9, 2014 by David Brussat

Mark Lamster writes about architecture for the Dallas Morning News, which owns, at least for now, my employer, the Providence Journal (for sale by A.H. Belo, which also owns the Morning News).* So I was predisposed to be generous in … Continue reading →

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Traditional Building confab

Posted on July 7, 2014 by David Brussat

Boston hosts the latest Traditional Building Conference next week. The event, on Wednesday and Thursday, July 16-17, will feature a range of panels, and some are sure to tickle the fancy of fanciers of traditional architecture. Several of these traditionalist … Continue reading →

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Washington perceived

Posted on July 4, 2014 by David Brussat

A few random shots of our nation’s capital on its birthday (in 2011, actually):  

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Architecture’s slap in Charleston’s face

Posted on July 3, 2014 by David Brussat

Last week, Charleston, S.C., gave Clemson University the city’s official blessing to poke a stick in its own eye. Unless blocked in court, a school of architecture, modernist in design, will be built amidst the city’s historic district. In the … Continue reading →

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What are you trying to hide?

Posted on July 2, 2014 by David Brussat

I spent much of yesterday and today trying to get permission from an architect to run an image of his work. Easy-peasy, right? Well, today, having stretched my deadline, I got a “no” from Allied Works Architecture, of Portland, Ore., … Continue reading →

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Architectural ‘myopia’

Posted on June 29, 2014 by David Brussat

Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros – respectively a design consultant and a mathematician/architectural theorist – wrote a piece for Guernica magazine in 2011 called “The Architect Has No Clothes.” It delves deeply into the phenomenon probed often in this blog … Continue reading →

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Zaha in Baghdad? Not.

Posted on June 28, 2014 by David Brussat

Zaha Hadid’s come from behind victory in the international competition to design the next Iraqi parliament building probably also wins the prize for projects not likely to happen. Zaha somehow received the contract although Assemblage, of the U.K., won for … Continue reading →

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Blast: Ah, the sandbox!

Posted on June 27, 2014 by David Brussat

Ah, here is that long lost column, from July 1996, in which I mentioned to a friend that a sandbox for the modernists might be an appropriate thing for her neighborhood, whereupon she kicked sand in my face. Someone just … Continue reading →

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Blast: Seeking the sandbox

Posted on June 27, 2014 by David Brussat

Yesterday’s column referred to the “sandbox for the modernists,” notifying readers that I had once promised Providence modernists a sandbox they could play in on that distant tomorrow when land vacated after Route 195 was relocated would be vacant and … Continue reading →

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