Tag Archives: Chicago

Video: ‘Windy City Nights’

Posted on March 15, 2016 by David Brussat

This splendid video from Vimeo by Max Wilson of chicagotimelapse.org, called “Chicago: Windy City Nights,” shows off Chicago in much (if not all) of its glory. Chicago is the city of my birth and is considered a mecca amongst architects, … Continue reading →

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More on form and function

Posted on December 31, 2015 by David Brussat

Here is the first lengthy passage in which Louis Sullivan, writing in his Autobiography of an Idea, unpacks “form follows function,” which has become a mantra of the modernist movement. It had to be misinterpreted for that to occur. So … Continue reading →

Posted in Architects, Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Art and design, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Diss the Chicago Biennial!

Posted on November 19, 2015 by David Brussat

Architectural personages have been mulling the Chicago Architectural Biennial. It is the first such extravaganza to be held in the World Capital of Architecture. Chicago is also the Windy City. That comment is an example of “deep structure,” or meta … Continue reading →

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Staff surrounds Eiffel Tower

Posted on September 19, 2015 by David Brussat

Unforgettable forgotten moments from the past are pictured in this romp called “Unrocognizable Paris: The Monuments that Vanished,” on the blog MessynessyChic.com. The well-illustrated piece recalls when the Champ de Mars was filled with monuments made of “staff,” a mixture … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History, Art and design, Old Video, Other countries, Photography, Preservation, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Figurative statue at Loyola

Posted on August 23, 2015 by David Brussat

Walter Arnold’s sculpture of Father Arnold Damen, S.J., has just been installed at Loyola University, in Chicago, and the sculptor reports that returning students are already taking selfies with it, which he considers a sign of a work’s success in … Continue reading →

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Movie news of the century!

Posted on August 12, 2015 by David Brussat

Return of the White City! World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 recaptured in celloid! Beaux Arts classical architecture writ large as the silver screen! Sex, violence, megalomania and beauty? That too! Nothing excites me more than news from Curbed.com that one … Continue reading →

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Kunstler’s City Beautiful

Posted on March 20, 2015 by David Brussat

James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere and The World Made by Hand, and coiner of the word “crudscape,” knows all too well what we as a civilization have wrought since we won World War II. In many … Continue reading →

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Potent rowhouse poetics

Posted on January 17, 2015 by David Brussat

The three sets of rowhouses that I posted in “Survey: Your preferred row” a couple of days ago elicited from William Carroll Westfall among the most evocative lines I’ve read on the differences among types of architecture. He refers to … Continue reading →

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Film of Charleston in 1934

Posted on January 12, 2015 by David Brussat

Here is a film of Charleston, S.C., taken three years after the city passed its landmark preservation law, first of its kind in the world. Its streets today are much more as they were then than in the recently posted … Continue reading →

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Film of Chicago in 1940s

Posted on January 7, 2015 by David Brussat

Here’s a wonderful film of Chicago from the 1940s, discovered by film editor Jeff Altman at an estate sale on the South Side of the Windy City. A good portion of the film was taken from their air, courtesy of … Continue reading →

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