Category Archives: Development

Capt. Hook’s Moat Brae

Here are three images of the modernist plan for Moat Brae, in Dumfries, Scotland, whose garden inspired Neverland. It is now threatened with fairly typical additions in an unsympathetic style. I was unable to get my hands on these images … Continue reading

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Hope for Emmett Square

Years ago, the Miami architecture and planning firm DPZ, led by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (his wife), came to Providence again and again to help plan the revival of its downtown. Its last charrette, or brainstorming session, was in … Continue reading

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Column: Help save history and Peter Pan

Winchester, a city 68 miles southwest of London, was the seat of government in England until the 12th century, and the center of its trade in wool. The town figures as Kingsbridge in Ken Follett’s novel “The Pillars of the … Continue reading

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Column: New campus for Brown engineering?

Brown University’s School of Engineering is the oldest engineering program in the Ivy League, begun in 1847, and the third oldest in the country. Brown plans to build a new main engineering building on College Hill, in Providence. The university … Continue reading

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Engineering at Brown

In the misty past I would cue readers of this blog – or was that its predecessor? – that my Thursday column was coming up. For some obscure reason I’ve decided that’s appropriate for tomorrow’s column about the School of … Continue reading

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Shooting WaterFire!

Here are some shots of WaterFire, created and operated by artist Barnaby Evans of Providence. For readers unfamiliar with the phenomenon, the installation has played out on the city’s three intimate downtown rivers for, I think, 15 years now, every … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Art and design, Development, Photography, Providence, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Brown engineering virus

Brown University’s proposed new engineering school on Hope Street is to be designed by the modernist firm that designed the abominable new U.S. embassy in London, Kieran Timberlake. This is almost surely a disaster in the making, but not certainly … Continue reading

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Column: Halt this attack on the people’s plaza

[This is my weekly column in The Providence Journal, a revised version of the post “Let’s ruin Kennedy Plaza” on my blog Architecture Here and There, written on vacation the day before the July 15 groundbreaking for this unfortunate project.] … Continue reading

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Trad building conference 3

Two recent phrases are new to me: Lean Architecture and Makers Space. Lean architecture seems to be what it sounds like, traditional work performed by the most simple methods that can be contrived, but that embrace tradition and ornament. The … Continue reading

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Greater Kennedy Plaza

Here is a column I wrote last year about the nice proposal being frog-marched out of the picture: A greater Kennedy Plaza, yet again April 25, 2013 On Monday morning, my bus was at least 20 minutes late. Tired of … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Blast from past, Development, Providence, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments