Tag Archives: architecture

Postcard from Providence 1997

Here is the 1992 column mentioned in today’s post “Let’s ruin Kennedy Plaza” in which I suggest merging the plaza with Burnside Park to form a Central Park for Providence. I also placed the bus hub under “Kennedy Park.” On … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History, Art and design, Blast from past, Preservation, Providence, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Let’s ruin Kennedy Plaza

[This is not my weekly column in The Providence Journal. It is a post on my blog Architecture Here and There. I am on a week’s vacation.] * * * For an urban city bus hub, Kennedy Plaza’s intermodal station, … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Development, Providence, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments

My reply to that then

Since we are already in the wayback machine, here is the column I wrote following the publication of Journal reporter John Castellucci’s interview with modernist Derek Bradford back in 1996: The silence of the modernists April 18, 1996 JOHN CASTELLUCCI’S … Continue reading

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Hazlitt on painting

Here is a passage from my favorite writer William Hazlitt’s essay “On the Pleasure of Painting,” written, I think, in the early 1820s. The famous British critic is known most for his essays on Shakespeare and other literature, but his … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Art and design, Books and Culture | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Column: Providence’s long romance with brick

Brick often finds itself in the dog house. Long ago in Providence, architectural historian and local preservation heroine Antoinette Downing, sitting on the design review panel of the Capital Center Commission, is said to have sniggered at one of the … Continue reading

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Washington perceived

A few random shots of our nation’s capital on its birthday (in 2011, actually):  

Posted in Architecture, Photography | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Zaha in Baghdad? Not.

Zaha Hadid’s come from behind victory in the international competition to design the next Iraqi parliament building probably also wins the prize for projects not likely to happen. Zaha somehow received the contract although Assemblage, of the U.K., won for … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Other countries | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Column: No need for preservation veto on 195

Should Rhode Island’s state office of historic preservation have a veto over the design of buildings proposed for the land I once described as a “sandbox for the modernists”? Yes, it should. But no, it shouldn’t. A memorandum of agreement … Continue reading

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No kookhouse for Koolhaas

Speaks for itself: SPIEGEL: Some people say that if architects had to live in their own buildings, cities would be more attractive today. Koolhaas: Oh, come on now, that’s really trivial. SPIEGEL: Where do you live? Koolhaas: That’s unimportant. It’s … Continue reading

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Modernism in retreat?

Here is an e-mail sent by architect Marc Szarkowski to the TradArch listserv’s discussion thread, “CNU is burning,” about modernism being invited further into New Urbanism at its recent conference in Buffalo. Marc disagrees, and though I’m not buying into … Continue reading

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