Category Archives: Landscape Architecture

Craco, abandoned in 1963

This haunting film depicts Craco, Italy, abandoned in 1963 after landslides rendered it uninhabitable. Ancient ruins are, well, ancient ruins, and their mysteries pull on different chords of our hearts. Craco is a city – granted, an ancient one – … Continue reading

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Poland’s “Crooked Forest”

The curved trunks of this grove of trees known as the Crooked Forest, in Poland, planted in 1930 when the land was in Pomerania, then part of Germany, raises interesting challenges for landscape architects. On the website iflscience.com, Justine Alford … Continue reading

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Krier’s symphony for London

On my first trip to London in 1979 I took in a classical performance of the London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank embankment of the Thames. I felt the hall’s demerits as architecture even back … Continue reading

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6th annual Bulfinch winners

The New England chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art has announced this year’s winners of its Bulfinch Awards, which honor work in classical architecture, urbanism and allied arts. This year for the first time the chapter invited … Continue reading

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Photographs of Lviv, Ukraine

David Mittell, whose essay “Why I love Lviv” ran here on January 26, has sent some photographs to illustrate the various conditions of architecture in Lviv, which he characterizes – truly – as one of Europe’s most beautiful unknown cities. … Continue reading

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Comedia della postal mod

The humorist and fenestration cleanliness engineer Stevenson Hugh Mields has sent along another First Issue envelope with an engraving of not one but two proposed modernist plans, which he has named “Optical Illusion,” and which I have placed for readers’ … Continue reading

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BBC on Mont Saint-Michel

Yesterday, I got an email from the author and director of a documentary on Mont Saint-Michel being produced for BBC France. Denis Sneguirev asked me whether I could provide him with information about the development of the abbey just off … Continue reading

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More on the WWI winner

Yesterday’s announcement of a winner in the open international competition for a national World War I memorial sent me rushing to find out how it had changed since its selection as one of five finalists. And the winner is Joseph … Continue reading

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WWI jury’s memorial error

The jury of an international competition to design a national memorial for World War I has made its choice, overlooking a beautiful classical proposal in order to select a more modest proposal that, perhaps, will ruffle a lot fewer feathers. … Continue reading

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“Suburbia!” – the game!

I added both exclamation points, with full ironic intent. The game Suburbia? How about let’s play another game, Traffic Jam! (exclamation added). There are city-building games already, so why in heaven’s name a suburbia-building game? Maybe it’s a sort of … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Art and design, Books and Culture, Development, Landscape Architecture, Preservation, Urbanism and planning, Video | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments