Tag Archives: Modern Architecture

‘Five hundred or more workers’

Posted on March 1, 2014 by David Brussat

That’s more lives than have been lost in some wars! How can “500 or more” migrant workers, mostly Indians, perish in the construction of a stadium? That is the cost, according to news reports, of work on Zaha Hadid’s soccer … Continue reading →

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Shocking! Le Corbusier nude!

Posted on March 1, 2014 by David Brussat

Pictured at left is founding modernist Le Corbusier in the nude, painting at the home of fellow modern architect Eileen Gray, in the south of France, a house she is said to have designed. (Though some say Corbusier actually designed … Continue reading →

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Column: Modern architecture’s coup d’etat

Posted on February 27, 2014 by David Brussat

How did modern architecture suddenly replace the traditional architecture that, by the 20th century, offered a wide variety of joyful styles to house human activity? Why, in just three decades, were three millennia of beauty replaced so entirely by ugliness … Continue reading →

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Ignore Rem Kookhouse

Posted on February 22, 2014 by David Brussat

Rem Kookhouse. That is his Dutch name translated into English. In my last post I took a leap of faith and landed, well, awkwardly to say the least. I urged readers to consume an interview of Rem by Andrew Mackenzie … Continue reading →

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What Rem has to say

Posted on February 21, 2014 by David Brussat

There should be a question mark after the headline because I haven’t yet read this interview in Architectural Review (by Andrew Mackenzie) with Rem Koolhaas. But he is always interesting, and what he says usually redounds with a crash upon the … Continue reading →

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More on the modernist coup d’etat

Posted on February 15, 2014 by David Brussat

John Massengale, head of the New Urbanists in New York and a classicist who often writes in to TradArch to note that modernism is at least as popular as traditional design in the cafes and restaurants of the Big Apple, … Continue reading →

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More Semes on modernist “coup d’etat”

Posted on February 15, 2014 by David Brussat

[This post is the second part of two beginning earlier this morning here.] In response to my recent post on the fecklessness of an editorial in the January edition of Pencil Points about the new modern architecture, Steven Semes sent … Continue reading →

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Wandering into Pencil Points

Posted on February 13, 2014 by David Brussat

Yesterday I opened my Princeton selection of reprints from Pencil Points, the journal for architectural draftsmen, to an editorial from the January 1925 issue on the new modern architecture, entitled “Living Architecture.” Here are a couple passages from it: When … Continue reading →

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Column: “The Rise and Fall of Penn Station”

Posted on February 13, 2014 by David Brussat

Before Pennsylvania Station opened in 1910, travelers headed for New York on the Pennsylvania Railroad, owned by the largest company in the world, had to debark in New Jersey and cross the Hudson River by ferry to Manhattan. It’s hard … Continue reading →

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How vulnerable is Gehry’s Ike?

Posted on February 5, 2014 by David Brussat

The industry journal that rules on Capitol Hill is not the Washington Post but Roll Call. Here it publishes “It’s Time to Bury Gehry’s Eisenhower Memorial Design,” an assessment of the prospects for Frank Gehry’s not just ridiculous but sinister … Continue reading →

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