Category Archives: Architecture

Separated At Birth: One Santa Fe & One Western Avenue

by John Massengale Posted on December 22, 2014

ONE’S IN the Los Angeles Arts District, the other’s at Harvard Business School. In addition to the 40-ton Swords of Damocles overhead, they share little human scale* and little to even show that humans live there. The critics love both, … Continue reading →

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The Good Kind: Lincoln Road Garage by Herzon & De Meuron

by John Massengale Posted on December 19, 2014

I’M NOT SURE this building comes across well in photographs if you haven’t seen the real thing—but it’s one of my three favorite buildings in Miami, along with Vizcaya and the Biltmore (in the public spaces, including the pool). It’s … Continue reading →

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The NJIT Architecture School said, “Kean University’s proposal of a curriculum of ‘drawing by hand’ does not recognize the demands of today’s job market.”

by John Massengale Posted on October 31, 2014

Kean University, a state school six miles away from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, another public university, has announced that they will open the Michael Graves School of Architecture. According to articles in the New Jersey Record, NJIT is … Continue reading →

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“One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.”

by John Massengale Posted on October 29, 2014

That’s the famous quote by the immortal Vincent Scully about Penn Station, where demolition started fifty-one years ago today. But stay tuned—some interesting things are starting to happen, and they’re not the things you’ve been reading about. More photos here … Continue reading →

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Top Seven Reasons Behind the Shanghaiing of New York (#Dubai-on-Hudson)

by John Massengale Posted on October 29, 2014

Big Finance: Most people don’t realize that Big Finance is the engine driving the global movement that has the Mayors of New York, London, and Paris promoting shiny Starchitecture indistinguishable from the shiny Starchitecture in Dubai, Mumbai, and Shanghai (always in … Continue reading →

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Ferguson, Missouri and the Cost of Sprawl

by John Massengale Posted on August 26, 2014

ENGINEER CHARLES MAROHN makes his usual insightful and interesting points in a post about Ferguson, Missouri on the Strong Towns blog (below). I happened to read the post just before reading an article in the Guardian that had many long quotes from … Continue reading →

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One of the Good Kind

by John Massengale Posted on July 11, 2014

A “social and collaborative work environment” in East London, built for £80,000. The architects clad the building with concrete tiles made on the site. Rowan Moore, “Assemble: from pop-ups to grown-ups,” The Observer (5 July 2014).

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A Sidewalk Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

by John Massengale Posted on July 2, 2014

IN 1919, the car hadn’t yet conquered West 57th Street in Manhattan. Together, the sidewalks for the pedestrians were still significantly wider than the roadway, and the modern detritus of the traffic engineer was nowhere in sight. MCNY image from “West … Continue reading →

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