Category Archives: Urbanism and planning

Column: Nameless building on Dorrance Street

Posted on September 11, 2014 by David Brussat

Last week’s column, “The mathematician vs. the modernists,” was my last hurrah as an employee of the Providence Journal. I didn’t know that as I finished writing it around 9 on Tuesday morning. Otherwise I might have written something decked … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History, Providence, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

WTC blues

Posted on September 8, 2014 by David Brussat

The Guardian has published a lengthy article, “1 World Trade Center: How New York Tried to Rebuild its Soul,” by Jason Farago. He bemoans the lost opportunity of the World Trade Center. But he does not mention what that lost … Continue reading →

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The Cotton District

Posted on September 5, 2014 by David Brussat

Not sure how this place eluded my classical radar, but Starkville, Mississippi, home of Mississippi State, has a neighborhood called the Cotton District, between the downtown of the city of 23,000 and its university campus. Wikipedia calls it the nation’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Development, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments

Three Classicists

Posted on August 27, 2014 by David Brussat

This time-lapse video, called “Three Classicists,” shows three British classicists, including Quinlan Terry’s son, sketching a classical scene on a blank wall in about three minutes, to the dear strains of a dulcet cellist. It is several years old but I … Continue reading →

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Hope for Emmett Square

Posted on August 26, 2014 by David Brussat

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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Bad news from Paris

Posted on August 23, 2014 by David Brussat

Mary Campbell Gallagher, of SOS Paris, reports that the new mayor of Paris is working to undermine the already weakened legal stuctures that protect the beauty of the City of Light. There was a pro-beauty, anti-skyscraper candidate in the March … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Other countries, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Tennessee sky scrape

Posted on August 16, 2014 by David Brussat

Continuing with A History of the Future, here’s what happens to skyscrapers after nobody can afford to keep them juiced. The passage begins in Nashville, with the protagonist’s first view of the former Capital of Country Music. Every American city … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Books and Culture, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Knockdown knockabout

Posted on August 14, 2014 by David Brussat

Many years ago, no later than the mid-90s, I was invited by Providence Preservation Society director Arnold Robinson to sit in on a meeting of the facilities planning staffs of Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. By … Continue reading →

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Shooting WaterFire!

Posted on August 8, 2014 by David Brussat

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

Column: Halt this attack on the people’s plaza

Posted on July 24, 2014 by David Brussat

[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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