Category Archives: Architecture

Architecture of love’s prose

Posted on April 5, 2017 by David Brussat

Reprinting this long passage from Richard Steele’s essay No. 113 in The Spectator of Monday, July 10, 1711, is meant to amuse readers who might have become bored with the plain prose about architecture that is the meat and potatoes … Continue reading →

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Memorial news & views

Posted on April 4, 2017 by David Brussat

George Weigel, the religious philosopher, replays the sad saga of the proposed memorial for Dwight Eisenhower in his essay “Ike Memorial No-Brainer,” from the National Review. Weigel urges Congress to dump Frank Gehry’s “Memorial To Myself” design that has already … Continue reading →

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C. of C.’s new trad degree

Posted on April 3, 2017 by David Brussat

The College of Charleston is to be congratulated for instituting the first classical program of architectural education in the South. Starting this fall, its new master of arts program in Community Planning, Policy and Design will instruct students in progressive … Continue reading →

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The Huxtable joke’s on us

Posted on April 1, 2017 by David Brussat

It may sound like an April Fool’s joke, but I recently started to read Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard? Turns out the joke’s on us. The book’s author, the late Ada Louise Huxtable, was, as most readers of this … Continue reading →

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Gallagher: “If Venice Dies”

Posted on March 31, 2017 by David Brussat

Mary Campbell Gallagher, founder of the International Coalition for the Preservation of Paris, has written a review of Salvadore Settis’s If Venice Dies for The New Criterion. Here is a direct link to her fine review, elegantly titled “La Serenissima” … Continue reading →

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Postmodernist Edwardians

Posted on March 30, 2017 by David Brussat

Kristen Richards, the founder and editor of the indispensable ArchNewsNow, sent me the other day a piece she said would interest me. Well, that was the understatement of the week. “Understanding British Postmodernism (Hint: It’s Not What You Thought),” by … Continue reading →

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Rhode Island, circa 1947

Posted on March 29, 2017 by David Brussat

Here’s a video of a nine-minute promotional film on Rhode Island, the smallest state in the union – though the state with the nation’s highest per capita production of industrial goods. The grainy black & white photography and the “professional” … Continue reading →

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Adam on classical language

Posted on March 28, 2017 by David Brussat

Robert Adam in his book Classic Columns addresses a topic many have addressed but at far greater depth of perception.  Few can fail to perceive that classical architecture is a language and that it evolves slowly just as the English … Continue reading →

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Minutes in lovely Malta

Posted on March 27, 2017 by David Brussat

When I feel like writing a post but don’t have much time I fly to YouTube and its endless city videos. Today, Valletta, the capital of Malta, the island nation just south of Sicily. I visited in the late 1990s … Continue reading →

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Adam on history & tradition

Posted on March 26, 2017 by David Brussat

I am reading British architect Robert Adam’s collection of essays, Classic Columns: 40 Years of Writing on Architecture,” just published. Chapter 5, “Can restoration be too authentic?,” totally demolishes a longstanding pet peeve of mine – modernist additions to old … Continue reading →

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