Tag Archives: Language

Bad language/bad buildings

Posted on June 14, 2021 by David Brussat

There is a difference between language and architecture. Language, to riff off the saying attributed to Talleyrand, aims to disguise the absence of thought; whereas architecture aims to express the thoughtlessness of fatuous design. The critic Theodore Dalrymple, a retired … Continue reading →

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Not an April Fools post

Posted on April 1, 2021 by David Brussat

A few days ago a correspondent asked me whether I’d seen modernist architect Jean Nouvel’s latest building in Lyon, France’s third largest city. Finished in 2019, it is an apartment building called Ycone, and looks like a work in pickup-sticks. … Continue reading →

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“Modern” or “modernist”?

Posted on February 10, 2019 by David Brussat

Occasionally I am urged to stop using “modern architecture” and use “modernist architecture” instead. The complaint, which issues from some of architecture’s top thinkers and makes considerable sense, is that the word modern normally means “of today” or “up to … Continue reading →

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Beyond translation indeed!

Posted on August 13, 2018 by David Brussat

It takes an act of will to make it all the way through a passage of hilariously sublime bureaucratese – quoted from a university prospectus – sent recently by architectural historian James Stevens Curl to a group of his friends … Continue reading →

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Our pushy American tongue

Posted on June 27, 2017 by David Brussat

As a proud owner of one of the several editions of H.L. Mencken’s The American Language, I was tickled to see him cited in an essay about how, after a battle of centuries, American English has conquered English English. The … Continue reading →

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Adam on classical language

Posted on March 28, 2017 by David Brussat

Robert Adam in his book Classic Columns addresses a topic many have addressed but at far greater depth of perception.  Few can fail to perceive that classical architecture is a language and that it evolves slowly just as the English … Continue reading →

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“Strikingly modern” house?

Posted on July 23, 2016 by David Brussat

On Saturdays, when the “House of the Week” beckons in the Providence Journal, my wife and I guess its asking price. Victoria is usually closer. This week, the house at 346 Claypool Dr., an appealing traditional house built in 2007 … Continue reading →

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Pollan deconstructs design

Posted on July 22, 2016 by David Brussat

Michael Pollan’s A Place of My Own (1997) is the story of how a successful author of well-known books on food tries to free himself from the grip words had on his life by building a cabin for himself by … Continue reading →

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I’ll second that emotion!

Posted on April 12, 2016 by David Brussat

The collection of parents who wait for their kids’ school bus every morning and afternoon at our corner on Hope Street testifies to the greatness of the Vartan Gregorian Elementary School in Fox Point. This afternoon the line “I’ll second … Continue reading →

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Surprised and astonished

Posted on September 11, 2015 by David Brussat

One of the pet peeves of Michael Gross in his Rogues’ Gallery, a history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is how long it took its board’s stuffed shirts to accept modern art into its collection. Here is an amusing … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History, Art and design, Books and Culture, Humor, Urbanism and planning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments