Tag Archives: Chicago

Is Wuhan China’s Chicago?

Posted on April 24, 2020 by David Brussat

Wuhan, the Chinese city where the Wuhan virus originated, is sometimes called “The Chicago of China” for its size (pop. 11.8 million), its central location, its setting on the Yangtze River and its historic buildings and its modern architecture. Here … Continue reading →

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Birds versus the glass box

Posted on January 25, 2020 by David Brussat

The Wexford Innovation Center, completed last year in Providence’s I-195 corridor dedicated to technology, has been killing birds. No, they are not horrified to death by its ugliness; rather, they are disoriented by its reflective plate-glass windows, which birds think … Continue reading →

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Obama Center crisis solved

Posted on June 23, 2019 by David Brussat

Chicago can solve the crisis of its proposed Obama Presidential Center by transferring it from Jackson Park to the nearby Midway Plaisance, the strip of land best known as the sideshows of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. So say … Continue reading →

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Carl Laubin wins Reed award

Posted on February 12, 2019 by David Brussat

The British-American painter Carl Laubin specializes in classical buildings assembled en masse on canvas. I first came face to face with one of his works at the celebration, in 2013, of the Richard H. Driehaus Prize for architect Thomas Beeby … Continue reading →

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A Kunstlerfest in Chicago

Posted on February 20, 2017 by David Brussat

James Howard Kunstler’s magisterial book The Geography of Nowhere lays waste to the ideas that laid waste to America, but his thoughts on suburbia – crudscape and all that – come after the book’s “opening monologue” about the history of … Continue reading →

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Battle of the baseball parks

Posted on October 18, 2016 by David Brussat

Here’s an engaging romp through the history of baseball stadia in a piece by Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne. “Battle of the ballparks: Cubs vs. Dodgers and the lost history of L.A.’s own Wrigley Field.” About that, let … Continue reading →

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Will the real Seagram Building please stand up?

Posted on September 27, 2016 by David Brussat

On Sunday I posted “Tom Wolfe and Henry Reed,” and to my mortification was informed by a reader that the Seagram Building was not the building in the photo I used to illustrate the piece. I plead guilty. Who could … Continue reading →

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Lucas, return to Light Side

Posted on June 30, 2016 by David Brussat

George Lucas, having been rejected in efforts to build a museum with his own money first in San Francisco’s Presidio and then on the lakefront of Chicago, is back in the Paris of the West with a third proposal, but … Continue reading →

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Rybczynski on concert halls

Posted on June 16, 2016 by David Brussat

I have not spared the architecture critic Witold Rybczynski my critique of his dithering on the greatest architectural questions of our time, but his latest piece, “The Concert Hall, Reimagined,” in Architect journal on the removal of concert halls from … Continue reading →

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The vandals own the gates

Posted on May 26, 2016 by David Brussat

Here is sad news from sculptor Walter Arnold, who reports on an act of vandalism in Chicago. He writes: Eric J. Nordstrom continues documenting the destruction of the Charles Sumner Frost-designed Public Life Insurance Building in Chicago. He took this … Continue reading →

Posted in Architects, Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Art and design, Preservation, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments