-
Click for more on book
Recent Comments
HQ2 twofers and Prov… on R.I.’s Amazon HQ2 b… Michael Airhart on R.I.’s Amazon HQ2 b… theprogfather on The Trumpster’s Roark petervanerp on Sir Roger’s hunt for… David Brussat on Sir Roger’s hunt for… steve bass on Sir Roger’s hunt for… Sir Roger’s hu… on Review: ‘Making Dystopia… Elan Spreiser on Committee’s Fane flip-fl…
Tag Archives: Modern Architecture
Sir Roger’s hunt for beauty
Sir Roger Scruton, the British philosopher and advocate of classical beauty and architecture, has been named chairman of a commission called Building Better, Building Beautiful to advise Britain’s government on issues of beauty in housing policy. This is fabulous news. … Continue reading
Review: ‘Making Dystopia’
[Review by David Brussat of Making Dystopia, by James Stevens Curl. Oxford University Press. 592 pages. U.S. publication date Oct. 23, 2018.] *** Modern architecture has hoaxed the world for well over half a century. Charlatans bred the founding modernist … Continue reading
‘Dystopia’ on sale in U.S.
On Monday, Making Dystopia, by British architectural historian James Stevens Curl, officially went on sale in the United States. I am mere pages away from its completion and will review it soon. It offers a comprehensive study of a monstrous … Continue reading
Europe as museum for rich?
The late Walter Laqueur, who died last week after a long career cataloguing the sins of communism, terrorism and the Holocaust, was quoted in his New York Times obituary asserting that the “possibility that Europe will become a museum or … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Urbanism and planning
Tagged Bistros, Cities, Fane Toiwer, Modern Architecture, New York Times, Paris, Providence, Roger Scruton, Sam Roberts, Urbanism, Venice, Walking, Walter Laqueur
7 Comments
Science and architecture
Some perverse mental hiccup recently tricked my mind into picturing the Stata Center, designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 2004 to house the science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Woe was me, briefly, until my natural defensive … Continue reading
Mies edits van der Rohe
Most people know that one of the three world-historical founders of modern architecture, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, changed his name at age 33 to Le Corbusier (the crow). Not until I got to page 126 in James Stevens Curl’s Making Dystopia did … Continue reading
Bayley on Curl’s “Dystopia”
Stephen Bayley, critic for The (U.K.) Spectator, has written “Modernist architecture is not barbarous – but the blinkered rejection of it is,” the second review (that I’ve seen so far) of James Stevens Curl’s Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and … Continue reading
Rome: Who are those guys?
Who are those guys? Good question. But first, I must point out that indecipherable notes on a recent lecture force me to leapfrog a topic I’d intended to address today and grab a quicky topic instead. I’ve chosen to simply … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Photography, Uncategorized
Tagged Beauty, Cities, classical architecture, Europe, Modern Architecture, Preservation, RIBA, Rome
4 Comments
Beyond translation indeed!
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
Lovely town main streets
Architectural Digest has posted “The 30 Most Beautiful Main Streets Across America,” and they are beautiful. I examined each photo and saw no buildings identifiable as modern architecture. For while civic beauty is primarily the presence of lovely old buildings; … Continue reading
