Category Archives: Architecture

Why no windows or doors?

Posted on November 24, 2021 by David Brussat

Not long after neighborhood opposition prevailed over insensitive development proposals for historic Fox Point and College Hill in Providence, a new developer and a different architect have arisen to propose a new house on the vacant land just east of … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Development, Preservation | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

“Dystopia” three years on

Posted on November 21, 2021 by David Brussat

Three years have passed since British architectural historian James Stevens Curl’s masterful Making Dystopia was published by Oxford University Press. Subtitled “The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism,” the book can only have been about modern architecture, perhaps the … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Books and Culture | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Presto chango bus hub idea!

Posted on November 16, 2021 by David Brussat

Seemingly out of the clear blue sky a completely new bus hub idea has suddenly emerged in Providence. The Innovation District Transit Center, it’s called. The reigning notion of shifting most buses from Kennedy Plaza to a pair of new … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Development, Providence | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Update on Mack restoration

Posted on November 12, 2021 by David Brussat

With bigwigs and celebs jetting away at last from Scotland’s global climate summit, what else is afoot in the city of Glasgow? The famous 1909 Glasgow School of Art by Charles Rennie Mackintosh has not been rebuilt after its near … Continue reading →

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

“Conundrum of architecture”

Posted on November 4, 2021 by David Brussat

Below is a long guest post written by Scottish architecture critic David Black, who lives in Edinburgh. Written in light of controversies in the United States over former President Trump’s effort to align the styles of federal architecture with American … Continue reading →

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Mary Campbell Gallagher: RIP

Posted on October 29, 2021 by David Brussat

I was saddened to hear of the passage on Monday, after a year-long illness, of Mary Campbell Gallagher, a leader in the fight against skyscrapers and other modernist architecture in Paris. Mary was best known for her work as liaison … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Your “average life altitude”

Posted on October 21, 2021 by David Brussat

Several days ago I was chatting with a friend and the topic of past residences came up. I recalled a column I’d written in January 2009 for the Providence Journal in which I’d unveiled what I called my “average life … Continue reading →

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Up Fifth Avenue in early ’30s

Posted on October 17, 2021 by David Brussat

Stumbled upon this delightfully informative, well-paced, almost soporific film of Fifth Avenue, taken from the rear window of a motorcar (if they still used that word in the 1930s), at a steady pace except for stops at traffic lights. You’ll … Continue reading →

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

Two visions of New York City

Posted on October 13, 2021 by David Brussat

Two recent panels held by the Empire Station Coalition discussed rebuilding Penn Station in its original 1910 design and growing opposition to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Empire Station Complex, which would clog the area around Penn Station with glass-box skyscrapers. … Continue reading →

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Blake on Corbu’s “furniture”

Posted on October 4, 2021 by David Brussat

Peter Blake, modernist architect, critic and (eventually) apostate, writes about “functional” modernist furniture in his book Le Corbusier: Architecture and Form (1960), which I’m reading as a sort of launching pad to his book Form Follows Fiasco (the best book … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Art and design, Interior Design | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments