Posts Tagged ‘Architecture Here and There’
On the Moynihan Train Hall – by David Brussat
by David Brussat, Architecture Here and There, contributing writer, architecture Photo: Moynihan Train Hall is inside the 1912 James A. Farley Post Office Building. News of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Train Hall opening across 8th Avenue from Penn Station in Manhattan is rivaled only by news about the closure of The Vessel, the ridiculous tower…
Read MoreBest trad buildings of 2020 – by David Brussat
by David Brussat, contributing writer, Architecture Here and There Photo: Tennis pavilion promoted by Melania Trump on the White House grounds. (White House) Two weeks before President Trump signed his executive order calling for federal buildings to be designed in traditional styles, his wife, the first lady, Melania, announced the completion of a tennis pavilion…
Read MoreKennedy Plaza is still at risk
by David Brussat, Architecture Here and There, contributing writer, architecture Efforts by the city and state governments to make Kennedy Plaza ugly have not yet succeeded in making it fail. But the attempt to ruin the central public square of Providence is ongoing. The plaza’s beauty has diminished greatly since its Art Nouveau waiting kiosks…
Read MoreCreative Capital capitulation
by David Brussat, Architecture Here and There Photo: One of two bus shelters newly installed in Providence’s innovation district. (William Morgan) In recent decades, art in Providence has served as a wrecking ball aimed not just at beauty but at the very concept of art, in a city that depends on art for its historical…
Read MoreGehry Ike in its kitschy glory – by David Brussat
by David Brussat, contributing architecture writer – Architecture Here and There Photo: Recent view of completed National Eisenhower Memorial. (Evelyn Hockstein/Washington Post) Frank Gehry’s monument to hims– oops, I mean to Dwight Eisenhower, does not open to the public until this Sept. 18, pushed back by the pandemic from May 8, the 75th anniversary of…
Read MoreLincoln vs. Jefferson, architecturally speaking…
Photo: The Jefferson Memorial, by John Russell Pope, on the Tidal Basin. (Wikipedia) by David Brussat, Architecture Here and There A comparison of the Lincoln and the Jefferson memorials is almost as fascinating, in some ways even more so, than a comparison of Messrs. Lincoln and Jefferson themselves. Since I can add little to the…
Read MoreSave the statues – by David Brussat
by David Brussat, Archiecture Here and There, opinion The statue of Christopher Columbus in Providence has been defaced in 2010, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2020. Yesterday, amid American history’s most perfervid bout of iconoclasm, the statue was removed by the city for its protection. The municipal government of Providence is as feckless as they come,…
Read MoreProvidence dodged a bullet last Tuesday morning
Photo: Business owners, workers, and the excellent clean & safe crews of the Providence Downtown Improvement District clean up after Tuesday morning’s downtown riots. (WBUR) By David Brussat, Architecture Here and There That’s the good news. For all the horrifying videotape, rioters managed to do little real damage to downtown. Lots of glass was broken,…
Read MoreChina bans copies of foreign design in its architecture
By David Brussat, Architecture Here and There (Photo, top: CCTV headquarters (center right), in Beijing, known as Big Pants. Or is it stomping on the people?) The People’s Republic of China, taking time off from other matters, has issued a decree banning copies of foreign design in its architecture. The decree, as described in the…
Read MoreYour face as face mask art
by David Brussat, contributing writer, architecture Face mask designed to activate facial-recognition on wearer’s iPhone (Architectural Digest) Years ago, I urged Providence artists to create murals designed to look like the buildings on which they were painted. A façade with no windows could be painted to look like the rest of the building. Humans could…
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