AN OP-ED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES by the architect Steven Bingler and the architecture critic Martin Pedersen calls attention to an important architectural problem that has been swept under the rug for quite a while now. Architecture is a public … Continue reading
Via della Dogana Vecchia, Rome Click on the image for larger version HANS MONDERMAN AND SHARED SPACE are all the rage, but the Italians starting making slow streets in the late 1960s without naming them. Rome and Bologna don’t have … Continue reading
Bath, Maine, November 7, 2014 – Click to Enlarge
November 7, 2014 – Click to Enlarge
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
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
From the Amazon Original Pilots and The Cosmopolitans comes the Street Design #StreetoftheDay: the rue Caron, leading into the place du Marché Ste.-Catherine, in the Marais. The shot is taken from the show. More information after the jump:
We’re starting to see that people in the 21st century are rejecting many of the trends of the late 20th century. Just as architecture and urbanism in the second half of the 20th century were very different than they had been … Continue reading
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
Technology can supply some of our favorite and most-loved things, but most of the time, we use it in a way that inadequately expresses human experience and aspirations.
WE FREQUENTLY READ that New York is incomparably better today than 40 years ago. Yes and no. Crime is down, but buildings are up—to the degree that too much of a good thing is bad. Fifty-seventh Street will soon have … Continue reading
COLUMBIA ARCHITECTURE PROFESSOR and architectural historian Ken Frampton was once asked about “the cult of New Urbanism.” It’s “ersatz kitsch colonialism for the modern middle class”, he said. Faced with a statement like that, what can one do except write … Continue reading
THIS EXCERPT from an old post at Veritas & Venustas comments on some of the same issues that Witold Rybczinski just wrote about in a post and a Tweet: Good, Better, Best (originally published February 2004) .. The concept is a … Continue reading
The Shard, Dubai-on-Thames, Great Britain. Renzo Piano, 2003-2011. The tallest building in the EU. IN THE 20TH CENTURY, experts told cities across the country they needed in-city highways to successfully compete with modern metropolises. In the 21st century, “iconic towers” … Continue reading
THE ARCHITECTURE CRITIC for New York magazine wrote about the work of Robert A.M. Stern in an article entitled Unfashionably Fashionable. I commented: “There are two kinds of music,” Duke … Continue reading
A YEAR OR SO AGO, I was invited to take part in a discussion on Traditional and Modern architecture at theglasshouse.org that was framed like this: Traditional versus modern architecture; Proponents of traditional architecture cite a preference for historical styles. Modernist … Continue reading
