Category Archives: Books and Culture

Architecture’s debt to Wolfe

Posted on May 20, 2018 by

The possibility exists that someday architecture will shuck its cult status and return to its roots. If that day ever comes, the late writer Tom Wolfe will deserve much credit. His 1981 book From Bauhaus to Our House opened the … Continue reading →

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The rest of Banham’s Wolfe

Posted on April 24, 2018 by

Here is a link to the rest of Reyner Banham’s review of Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House, in the London Review of Books. Readers may pick up where they left off in Banham’s “The Scandalous Story of Architecture … Continue reading →

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Architecture and gossip

Posted on April 23, 2018 by

Gossip makes the world go round, nowhere more so than in the world of architecture. The arrival of #MeToo into architecture by way of modernist Richard Meier brings to mind the classicist Stanford White, who in 1906 was murdered in … Continue reading →

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The special beauty of decay

Posted on February 26, 2018 by

I’ve been trying to decide whether to post the only passage I thought worth quoting from the section on Cardinal Manning in Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, recently read by your peripatetic couch-potato. When I discovered it was not a quote … Continue reading →

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Goldberger & Goldhagen

Posted on October 12, 2017 by

The Nation magazine has a review by Paul Goldberger of a book by Sarah Williams Goldhagen, also a respected architecture critic, called Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives. Goldberger’s review, “A Shimmery Cube,” applauds Goldhagen … Continue reading →

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The architecture of the wife

Posted on August 31, 2017 by

A sonnet would be more romantic, perhaps, but let me try combining, just for today, my blog, Architecture Here and There, and my dear wife, Victoria. Today marks our tenth anniversary. This evening I will be taking her out to … Continue reading →

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Salingaros’s ‘conscious cities’

Posted on August 29, 2017 by

Last night’s Lost Providence book launch concluded with a stimulating series of exchanges regarding the nature of architecture and the allure of cities. I mentioned the work of mathematician Nikos Salingaros at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His … Continue reading →

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“Lost Providence” update

Posted on August 24, 2017 by

Lost Providence will go on sale this Monday, August 28. Symposium Books on Westminster Street in downtown will throw the first book launch that same day, starting at 6 p.m. I will give a short introduction, read a chapter, take … Continue reading →

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What next? Jefferson? D.C.?

Posted on August 15, 2017 by

The statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville should not be pulled down. Or rather, I should prefer that it not be pulled down. There’s a difference. To eradicate every symbol of every political or cultural wrong in this or … Continue reading →

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New “Lost Prov” book page

Posted on August 6, 2017 by

Today marks the official launch of ” ‘Lost Providence’: the book” – a new page on my blog with all the news about the book. It reveals how to buy the book and where its author will speak about the … Continue reading →

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