Category Archives: Development

Build McKim’s Penn Station

Posted on May 2, 2015 by David Brussat

Traditional Building has published an important essay, “Rebuilding McKim’s Penn Station,” by the magazine’s eminence gris, Clem Labine, announcing a major plan to reverse one of America’s most egregious civic mistakes. The plan, by architect Richard Cameron, of Atelier & … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History, Art and design, Development, Preservation | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Follies at the CNU in Dallas

Posted on May 1, 2015 by David Brussat

The big buzz at the annual meeting (the “congress”) of the Congress of the New Urbanism, under way in Dallas, is how lame Dallas Morning News architecture critic Mark Lamster was. Anyone familiar with his writing cannot have been surprised. … Continue reading →

Posted in Architects, Architecture, Architecture Education, Blast from past, Development, Landscape Architecture, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Boston’s spooky new T entry

Posted on April 28, 2015 by David Brussat

An undercover source in deep infrastructure sent me a surreptitiously snapped photo of the new T entrance at Government Center the other day. The photo was too hot to handle, too ugly even to look at, so I left it … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Art and design, Development, Landscape Architecture, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Lord Jim’s “Skeffonomics”

Posted on April 27, 2015 by David Brussat

Last Friday, when the I-195 Redevelopment District Commission bowed to pressure and let new PawSox owners James Skeffington and Larry Lucchino address the commissioners in public, the wheels of cynicism started spinning furiously. On Monday, when I arrived at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Art and design, Development, Providence, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Long city planning grind

Posted on April 25, 2015 by David Brussat

James Fallows has written “Nice Downtowns: How Did They Get that Way?” for the Atlantic, about how active city downtowns arise not naturally or organically but are planned. He takes the example of Seattle, which was a hollowed-out reject 50 … Continue reading →

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Join my Jane’s Walk again!

Posted on April 24, 2015 by David Brussat

I will be giving my second annual Jane’s Walk waterfront tour of downtown Providence on Saturday, May 2, at 1:00 p.m. We will meet at the Crawford Street Bridge – the new and beautiful bridge, not the late, unlamented Guinness … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture Education, Art and design, Development, Landscape Architecture, Preservation, Providence, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kimmelman swoops Whitney

Posted on April 24, 2015 by David Brussat

It took Theodore Dalrymple, an essayist for the Manhattan Institute’s splendid quarterly, City Journal, to pull back the curtain on the operatic vapidity of New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman. The latter has written his architectural review of the … Continue reading →

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‘So let’s build 500 Shards’

Posted on April 23, 2015 by David Brussat

I’ve posted about Create Streets before. The London urbanist organization’s Paul Murrain, who once worked with Andrés Duany on downtown Providence, has written a thoughtful and passionate “J’Accuse!” – called “London Deserves Better Than This” on PDF at the website … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History, Art and design, Development, Other countries, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

More new crap at Brown

Posted on April 22, 2015 by David Brussat

Brown apparently regrets its beauty and wants to be among the ugliest schools in the Ivy League. This is the only conclusion that comports with the fact of what it builds on campus. The latest is the Applied Math Building … Continue reading →

Posted in Architects, Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Development, Providence | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

In Boston on Boylston

Posted on April 22, 2015 by David Brussat

I was up in Boston yesterday to attend the chapter board meeting of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Design. I went by train, MBTA, and emerged at Dartmouth Street, lingered to capture the Richardsonian beauty, and headed on down … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History, Art and design, Development, Photography, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , | 2 Comments