Category Archives: Architecture Education

Remansioning a Back Bay mansion

Posted on February 16, 2014 by David Brussat

The Ames-Webster Mansion, on Dartmouth Street in Boston’s Back Bay, will soon be renovated. A press release forwarded to me by John Margolis, president of the New England chapter (on whose board I sit) of the Institute of Classical Architecture … Continue reading →

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More on the modernist coup d’etat

Posted on February 15, 2014 by David Brussat

John Massengale, head of the New Urbanists in New York and a classicist who often writes in to TradArch to note that modernism is at least as popular as traditional design in the cafes and restaurants of the Big Apple, … Continue reading →

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More Semes on modernist “coup d’etat”

Posted on February 15, 2014 by David Brussat

[This post is the second part of two beginning earlier this morning here.] In response to my recent post on the fecklessness of an editorial in the January edition of Pencil Points about the new modern architecture, Steven Semes sent … Continue reading →

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Why Britannica missed the “storm clouds”

Posted on February 15, 2014 by David Brussat

Following my recent post of the concluding paragraphs of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s articles on architecture in its 11th (1910-11) and 12th (1922) editions, architectural historian Steven Semes, who teaches at Notre Dame’s architecture program in Rome, sent along some detailed … Continue reading →

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Wandering into Pencil Points

Posted on February 13, 2014 by David Brussat

Yesterday I opened my Princeton selection of reprints from Pencil Points, the journal for architectural draftsmen, to an editorial from the January 1925 issue on the new modern architecture, entitled “Living Architecture.” Here are a couple passages from it: When … Continue reading →

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Past blast: Video homage to Penn Station

Posted on February 10, 2014 by David Brussat

Tonight I watched a PBS “The American Experience” presentation on the rise and fall of Pennsylvania Station, which I will preview for Thursday’s column and which will broadcast to the public next Tuesday. To gin readers up for that, enter … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Blast from past, Book/Film Reviews, Old Video, Preservation | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

No lampooning Lampoon Castle

Posted on February 8, 2014 by David Brussat

Among the most charming and beloved buildings in Cambridge is the old Lampoon Building (Lampoon Castle), where Harvard’s famous yuk-yuk club, the Harvard Lampoon, graduated, years ago, the founders of National Lampoon magazine. The building, designed by Edmund Wheelwright, a … Continue reading →

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“The Monster-Builder” – the trailer

Posted on February 2, 2014 by David Brussat

Nikos Salingaros, the University of Texas mathematician and architectural theorist whose thought has influenced Amy Freed – the playwright who wrote “The Monster-Builder” – has sent me a trailer of the play now being performed at the Artists Repertory Theatre … Continue reading →

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Britannica on architecture, c. 1911

Posted on January 31, 2014 by David Brussat

I dragged out my 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. My edition is actually the 12th edition, which is the 11th plus an appendix updating, in 1922, various important subjects, many of which had seen their articles in the famous … Continue reading →

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Blast from the past: America’s got architecture!

Posted on January 30, 2014 by David Brussat

In my weekly column, called “Architecture critic, heal thyself!” and posted this morning, I referred to the elephant in architecture’s living room. That is the fact that most Americans prefer traditional to modern architecture. Among other evidence for this is … Continue reading →

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