Tag Archives: London

Scruton’s first beauty volley

Posted on November 23, 2018 by David Brussat

As I mentioned in “Sir Roger’s hunt for beauty,” Roger Scruton has been appointed chairman of a commission to promote beauty in British housing policy. Naturally, all those who are opposed to beauty in architecture are on the warpath against … Continue reading →

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Wee wow for Bauwauhauses

Posted on April 27, 2018 by David Brussat

“Mutts-have: Architects create luxury kennels for charity auction” is the headline of this story by Guardian critic Oliver Wainwright. “Mutts-have”? … I’m sorry, that really does not cut the mustard. Mutts-have ≠ must-have. And if you glide down the complement of … Continue reading →

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Battering Battersea Station

Posted on March 15, 2018 by David Brussat

Owen Hatherley has denounced a large development around the historic Battersea Power Station, in London. I cannot read his piece because it is behind the paywall of The Architects’ Journal. But I do have the next best thing – its … Continue reading →

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London perceived, tortured

Posted on November 26, 2017 by David Brussat

By torture, we’re not talking pins under fingernails, the Iron Maiden or Philip Glass, but how else to describe what the leadership of London has done to the city of London in the last several decades? If a city is … Continue reading →

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Beauty vs. elegance of cities

Posted on November 17, 2017 by David Brussat

My former colleague at the Providence Journal, Froma Harrop, who has a syndicated column and a website called This East Side (about that side of Manhattan; she also lives partly on that side of Providence), recently asked me to contribute … Continue reading →

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Carbuncle Cup victor of 2017

Posted on September 12, 2017 by David Brussat

This year’s Carbuncle Cup, awarded annually (three years now) to the worst new building in Britain, goes to a development called Nova Victoria, so called because it is what you see when you emerge from the Victoria Station tube stop. … Continue reading →

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Tragic London tower lesson

Posted on June 25, 2017 by David Brussat

The Grenfell Tower that burned in London, costing several score of lives, offers lessons that we can and will again fail to heed. No building can be perfectly fireproof, and no ladder truck can reach beyond 20 stories anyhow. If … Continue reading →

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London bridges standing up

Posted on June 4, 2017 by David Brussat

Yesterday’s terror attack on London Bridge follows by about two and a half months a similar attack on Westminster Bridge, four bridges east of London Bridge. Thirty-three bridges span the River Thames in Greater London. The most famous is Tower … Continue reading →

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Inside Drabble’s developer

Posted on May 3, 2017 by David Brussat

Margaret Drabble’s 1977 novel The Ice Age is supposedly about Britain and its existential angst during the ’60s and ’70s, but I just started reading it. For a few pages near the outset, at least, it concerns the career of … Continue reading →

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Rampant peeping-Tomism

Posted on May 2, 2017 by David Brussat

With all the glass residential towers going up with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the hotshot cities of the world, the global market for binoculars and telescopes must be going haywire. But not everyone wants to be caught in the two-ring circus … Continue reading →

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