Tag Archives: Tom Wolfe

TB blog: “Making Dystopia”

Posted on September 12, 2018 by

Here is my Traditional Building blog post from last month, shortly after I received a review copy of Making Dystopia. *** I’ve only just received a review copy of Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism, by … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture History | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Architecture’s debt to Wolfe

Posted on May 20, 2018 by

The possibility exists that someday architecture will shuck its cult status and return to its roots. If that day ever comes, the late writer Tom Wolfe will deserve much credit. His 1981 book From Bauhaus to Our House opened the … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Books and Culture | Tagged , | 9 Comments

The rest of Banham’s Wolfe

Posted on April 24, 2018 by

Here is a link to the rest of Reyner Banham’s review of Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House, in the London Review of Books. Readers may pick up where they left off in Banham’s “The Scandalous Story of Architecture … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Books and Culture | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Architecture and gossip

Posted on April 23, 2018 by

Gossip makes the world go round, nowhere more so than in the world of architecture. The arrival of #MeToo into architecture by way of modernist Richard Meier brings to mind the classicist Stanford White, who in 1906 was murdered in … Continue reading →

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Death wish in Providence?

Posted on November 9, 2017 by

When I saw the image above of Rhode Island’s pitch for Amazon’s HQ2, in today’s Providence Journal (“Envisioning Amazon’s HQ2 in heart of Capital Center“), I thought I imagined Deming Sherman’s head explode. But no, that was my head exploding. … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Development | Tagged , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Perils of architecture school

Posted on June 12, 2017 by

Common/Edge is a website about architecture. All of the essays are written well, but many seem to try to have it both ways about the battle over style in architecture. So I’m not quite sure how Prof. Nikos Salingaros managed … Continue reading →

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Betsky’s boo-hoo blues

Posted on November 2, 2016 by

Aaron Betsky, the architecture critic for Architect, the journal of the American Institute of Architects, took to blubbering aloud this week that Americans don’t give American architects enough respect. In “Elevating the Discourse: Architecture Awards in the U.S. and the … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Tom Wolfe and Henry Reed

Posted on September 25, 2016 by

I have been finishing up my book Lost Providence, girding my loins on the adrenaline rush of Tom Wolfe’s 1981 bestseller From Bauhaus to Our House. How to select a great passage to quote? Well, one way is to quote … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

The Fountainhead of Youth

Posted on May 7, 2015 by

Padriac Steinschneider, honcho of the New York chapter of the Congress of the New Urbanism, was as miffed as I was by the reflections of the Dallas Morning News architecture critic Mark Lamster on the CNU proceedings at Dallas last … Continue reading →

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