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"Hello, my name is John. I'm a recovering architect."

I like all sorts of towns, cities and buildings, but what I design are Classical buildings and Traditional towns and cities. You can see some of them at www.massengale.com.

With Robert A.M. Stern I wrote a history of architecture and urbanism in the Progressive Era, New York 1900, Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890–1915 (Rizzoli, 1983) as well as an introduction to the history of suburbia before sprawl, The Anglo–American Suburb (St. Martin's Press, 1981). With Victor Dover, I am writing Street Design, The Art & Practice of Making Complete Streets (J. Wiley & Sons, 2013).

I'm a Board Member of the Congress for New Urbanism, the former Chair of CNU New York and a former Director of the Institute of Classical Art & Architecture and Federated Conservationists of Westchester County.

A co-founder of the New Urban and Traditional Architecture Councils.I was also a co-founder of the pro-urb list, a forum on the internet for an advanced discussion of New Urbanism. And in this blog you will find some postings from that list, along with other writings and clippings on architecture, urbanism, Classicism, Tradition, metaphysics and culture.


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Monday, March 30, 2009

The Twentieth Century Is Over

29ouro_500.jpg

THAT'S THE IMAGE that accompanied Nicolai Ouroussoff's article Reinventing America’s Cities: The Time Is Now. It's Le Corbusier Ville Radieuse from the Great Depression, updated with the latest in architectural gimmicks and stupid style. Has Ouroussoff learned nothing from the last 70 years?

Cities are about public life. That happens in the spaces we make between the buildings — our streets and squares. In his Ville Radieuse plan, Corbusier proposed tearing down the historic streets of Paris and replacing them with towers in parks and futuristic transportation. We see the outcome in America in all the towers in parking lots we built during the Urban Removal period. Ouroussoff apparently wants us to continue that.

March 30, 2009 in Architecture, Current Affairs, New York, Urbanism | Permalink

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Noticed that too. I read the article really hoping there was something new in there but it was completely barren. Stale ideas from lazy minds. That doesn't mean nothing is about to change. On the contrary. It's a sign of a wide open field waiting for fresh thinking (or any thinking at all).

Love your postings.

Posted by: Murphy at Mar 31, 2009 9:32:34 PM

"Has Ouroussoff learned nothing from the last 70 years?"

Nope.

At least, he hasn't learned either humility or irony. Because in today's piece on the two new NY baseball stadia he writes,

"American stadium design has been stuck in a nostalgic funk, with sports franchises recycling the same old images year after year."

Make the appropriate substitutions, and the thought applies just as well to "modern" architecture as a whole.

Or, to bring back an old Doonesbury line, "Nicolai, it seems like only the other day you were recycling the same old images... Oh, wait... It was only the other day..."

Posted by: Hal O'Brien at Apr 2, 2009 9:09:50 PM