-
Click for more on book
Recent Comments
Category Archives: Urbanism and planning
Still attacking Kennedy Plaza
A sensible plan to renovate Kennedy Plaza attractively without evicting public transit from Providence’s central square – by far its most logical location – was submitted in 2013, designed by Union Studio. In 2015, this plan was frog-marched out of … Continue reading
R. Crumb & Klaus’ urbanism
Klaustoon’s Blog has been on my blog roll for years. His intricate sketches satirize the inside baseball among the modern architects, such as one he did on the Pritzker Prize of 2015, which I discussed in “Klaustoon pricks Pritzkers.” I … Continue reading
New England’s “Windy City”
Boston is the Windy City of New England partly because of its proximity to the North Atlantic but also its funnels of street gusts caused by its dreadfully metastasizing skyscrapers. Wind tunnels are raising eyebrows (and skirts) in the Hub, … Continue reading
Unify in the fight for beauty
The draft executive order to encourage classical architecture for federal buildings in Washington and elsewhere has shifted the world of architecture on its axis. Patrick Webb, a teacher of ornamental plastering at the American College of Building Arts in Charleston, … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Urbanism and planning
Tagged American College of Building Arts, classical architecture, Donald Trump, Draft Executive Order, Hitler, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Making Dystopia, Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again, Modern Architecture, Nazis, Patrick Webb, The Man in the Glass House, Third Reich, TradArch
7 Comments
Keep Kennedy Plaza central
The master planners of Providence and Rhode Island have figured out how to screw up Kennedy Plaza again. In 2015 they removed its four elegant, Art Nouveau-inspired waiting kiosks, replacing them with sterile plasticky kiosks. Now they want to dig … Continue reading
Reverse landscape of despair
Understandably, an overlooked part of the debate about architecture is the ease of moving back to tradition in building cities and towns. My blog on Friday, “Modern architecture is killing us,” quoted extensively from James Howard Kunstler’s essay “The Landscape … Continue reading
How modernism is killing us
In my post on Tuesday, “Alien spaceship in Alberta!,” author and iconoclast James Howard Kunstler tagged Edmonton’s new Deconstructivist library as August’s “Eyesore of the Month.” (The name pegs the style as accurately as that of Brutalism.) Well, as they … Continue reading
How to create great streets
Headquartered in London, Create Streets seeks to teach Britons and their place-making institutions how to make better cities and towns. Its mission does not hesitate to include beauty in its remit. Its founder, Nicholas Boys Smith, is now co-chairman (along … Continue reading
For one- or two-way streets?
On a recent sojourn in (and above) Manhattan, Steve Mouzon sparked a Facebook conversation about the merits and demerits of one- and two-way streets. It unfolded at such a high level of thoughtfulness about streets (of either ilk) from so … Continue reading
