Category Archives: Books and Culture

‘Dream of Venice in B&W’

Posted on July 24, 2018 by David Brussat

JoAnn Locktov, the editrix and impresaria of photographic essays of Venice in book form, sends me another of her beautiful works: Dream of Venice in Black and White, the third in her “Dream of Venice” series, published by Bella Figura … Continue reading →

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Our downtown writers’ club

Posted on July 23, 2018 by David Brussat

The other day I was invited to the What Cheer Writers Club to look around the premises and sign my book, Lost Providence. The club was on the second floor of 160 Westminster St., a muted classical building that sits … Continue reading →

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Hazlitt magazine: a mystery

Posted on June 30, 2018 by David Brussat

This is not about architecture. Unlike some off-topic posts I write, there is no way to fabricate a link to this post’s normal subject matter. So far as I know, William Hazlitt, the critic of early 19th century London, friend … Continue reading →

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Architecture’s debt to Wolfe

Posted on May 20, 2018 by David Brussat

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 David Brussat

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 David Brussat

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 David Brussat

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 David Brussat

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 David Brussat

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 David Brussat

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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