Category Archives: Books and Culture

Psychitecture? Dig it, baby!

Posted on August 18, 2015 by David Brussat

Psychitecture is one of those coinages enabled by the word architecture. The word psychotecture springs immediately to mind, and there’s a blog called Architorture, which is brilliant, except that it is by a coed, Celina, at Cal Poly San Luis … Continue reading →

Posted in Architects, Architecture Education, Art and design, Books and Culture, Humor | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Sniffing at Corbu and E-1027

Posted on August 16, 2015 by David Brussat

Anthony Flint has an intriguing piece in Architect magazine, “Restoring Eileen Gray’s E-1027.” It’s about restoring the rather Corbusian seaside dacha designed by the Irish furniture designer (and lesbian) Eileen Gray. She had befriended the founder of modern architecture, Le … Continue reading →

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Movie news of the century!

Posted on August 12, 2015 by David Brussat

Return of the White City! World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 recaptured in celloid! Beaux Arts classical architecture writ large as the silver screen! Sex, violence, megalomania and beauty? That too! Nothing excites me more than news from Curbed.com that one … Continue reading →

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Kingsley Amis bags a statue

Posted on August 12, 2015 by David Brussat

The late Kingsley Amis wrote The Old Devils (1988) about a community of old art farts in Wales when one of their old school chums, “media Welshman” Alun Weaver, decides to end his long successful literary career in London and … Continue reading →

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Why can’t we recreate Bath?

Posted on August 4, 2015 by David Brussat

I am cruising through The Architecture of Happiness, wishing I had the time and energy to quote and then rebut its every line. Alain de Botton’s book is a masterpiece, but I have been forced to conclude that it is … Continue reading →

Posted in Architects, Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Art and design, Books and Culture, Preservation, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

“World’s Greatest Buildings”

Posted on August 3, 2015 by David Brussat

Below is an “Infographic” depicting the great structural innovations of architectural history, kindly sent to me by Andrew Sweeny, of Pennywell, a company in Ireland that produces upscale kitchen work surfaces. Sweeny entitles his Infographic “The Greatest Buildings of World … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History, Books and Culture, Development, Humor, Other countries, Preservation | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

De Botton cracks abstract

Posted on August 3, 2015 by David Brussat

Among the most cogent defenses of abstraction in art and architecture comes from Alain de Botton’s The Architecture of Happiness, which I am rereading. How does a building speak? How should people read houses? I have long believed that architecture … Continue reading →

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Just for the Palladiophobes

Posted on July 27, 2015 by David Brussat

Here is a brief quote from Humberto Eco’s Prague Cemetery that might shiver some timbers, or not: And I could tell you about the Knights Templar and Scottish Freemasonry, about the Rite of Herodom, the Rite of Swedenborg, the Rite … Continue reading →

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The satisfactions of Satie

Posted on July 27, 2015 by David Brussat

Erik Satie is a French composer of whom I know little, but am very familiar with one of his pieces, the first of his three “Gnossiennes,” which I suspect most readers will recognize as well. It is the first video … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Art and design, Books and Culture, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The dark caverns of history

Posted on July 26, 2015 by David Brussat

About halfway through Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery I have not stumbled, so far, upon the travelogue sequences I promised to record for readers. But the book has brought us down into the darkest caverns of history, spiced further by … Continue reading →

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