Philip [Johnson] was always a perfect gentleman of the old school. But once I saw his wit and grace take an almost grandfatherly form. It was at the end of a splendid fall day that I had spent with him … Continue reading
Santa Fe, New Mexico is the most beautiful city of the 20th century. This simple statement requires some explanation.
The psychotherapist Carl Jung wrote about everything, including traffic engineers: All time-saving methods, to which alleviaton of traffic congestion and other conveniences belong, do not, paradoxically, save any time, but simply fill the time available in such a manner that … Continue reading
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 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
ONE of the many great things about New York City is that it’s easy to get from New York to many great places. We tend to head northeast to New England. The Berkshire mountains in Western Massachusetts are distinctly not … Continue reading
“An American Renaissance Gem, How an industrialist and his unlikely team built a Miami marvel” The Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2006; Page P13 Book review by John Massengale Vizcaya, An American Villa and Its Makers By Witold Rybczynski and … Continue reading
This was originally posted on my old blog Veritas et Venustas in September 2008. I’m not reposting most of my old political commentary from there, but I’m making an exception for this one because it starts to get into an … Continue reading
CitiField has no city, and the Metropolitans have no metropolis. OVER AT DESIGN OBSERVER, the great Michael Bierut wrote a good piece on baseball parks that I thought was a little too quick to equate traditional design with “nostalgia” while … Continue reading
An old post from Veritas & Venustas: It’s cold. It’s winter. It’s minus 20 degrees, an arctic wind is blowing in from the Russian steppes, and you’re walking on the biggest street in Moscow. Above you in the swirling snow … Continue reading
When the richest team in baseball asks New York City and New York State for $300 million to stay in a place they would never leave (they are the Bronx Bombers, after all, about to set an all-time major league … Continue reading
These are the plans referred to in the post above. They were designed by architecture students at the University of Miami in 1998. Click on the plans for larger images. From that post, Yankees To Ask New York For $300 … Continue reading
2016: VIRGINIA WOOLF was one of my first posts on Veritas et Venustas, almost exactly ten years ago. I would write it a little differently today, because the ideas I wrote about then have moved forward over the last decade. … Continue reading
THE MAIN ENTRANCE to the 911 Memorial Museum looks like the exit from a cineplex in a suburban shopping mall. It is unworthy of New York and a sad commentary on how little we achieved at Ground Zero after a … Continue reading
The Boston Globe is online at http://boston.com/, and the article “Harvard’s architects say: How about us?” can be bought from the online archives for $2.95. I have put selected portions of the article below. By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist, December … Continue reading
