Tag Archives: Nikos Salingaros

How modernism got square

Posted on June 8, 2023 by David Brussat

Editor’s note: Here is a post from December 2013, almost a decade ago, shortly after the Providence Journal booted my Journal blog from its roster of staff-written web logs, which is where the word “blog” comes from. I used to … Continue reading →

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Providence lost, regained II

Posted on April 3, 2023 by David Brussat

Editor’s note: This is the second of several sections of the epilogue to Lost Providence, first published in 2017. Further sections are upcoming soon. *** The Rhode Island School of Design offered its services [a decade ago] to assist the … Continue reading →

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Modernist GMO architecture

Posted on April 8, 2022 by David Brussat

It occurs to me that in my longstanding effort to demonize modern architecture that I could stand to remind readers that it qualifies as the architectural equivalent of genetically modified organisms – GMO architecture. I wrote of the term several … Continue reading →

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Christopher Alexander, R.I.P.

Posted on March 20, 2022 by David Brussat

The great architectural and computer design theorist Christopher Alexander, born in Vienna and of British and American citizenship, died at his home in Binsted, Sussex, U.K. this past week after a long illness. He was 85. His more than 200 … Continue reading →

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Traditional design is healthier

Posted on January 28, 2022 by David Brussat

Without thinking much about it, most people prefer traditional architecture. Now it seems as if more detailed and ornamental styles of design for buildings and cities are not only more popular but more natural and more healthy. A new study … Continue reading →

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Landscape urbanism revisited

Posted on August 25, 2021 by David Brussat

*** Not long ago, in response to my post “Steuteville’s public square,” a pile of emails and comments was generated by my query as to whether something called landscape urbanism still exists. One email called for another look at its … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Landscape Architecture | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Pop the “historicist” bugaboo

Posted on April 25, 2021 by David Brussat

The architectural theorist Nikos Salingaros recently urged me to bar the use of the words historicist and pastiche, which modernists use to criticize architecture by traditionalists. “The modernists are forewarned that their favorite terms of insult are now off-limits,” quoth … Continue reading →

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After Biden nix Trump E.O.

Posted on March 5, 2021 by David Brussat

Architecture is a huge field of human endeavor. Along with the planning of cities and towns, and the arts and crafts that enter into civic beauty, it forms the stage on which the human comedy is performed. For millennia, our … Continue reading →

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TAG 4: Classical gears up

Posted on March 2, 2021 by David Brussat

TAG 4, the fourth Traditional Architecture Gathering since the first, held in in Charleston, S.C., in 2015 for members of the TradArch listserv, happened on Zoom this past Friday, Saturday and Sunday, sponsored by the Classic Planning Institute. Some 600 … Continue reading →

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“The Art of Classic Planning”

Posted on December 1, 2020 by David Brussat

This comprehensive, fascinating and brilliant volume by Nir Haim Buras, who founded the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, is subtitled “Building Beautiful and Enduring Communities.” So one might well assume that it rejects the … Continue reading →

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