MAKE A GLASS

MAKE A GLASS

In the past, when a “master” was recognized he usually became an influence (Bramante, Palladio, and Michelangelo or, Oud, Corbusier and Mies). Today, while we recognize masters, we seem unable—on unwilling—to learn from them. Or maybe it is a misplaced emphasis on...
YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN

YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN

I’ve been writing about Planting Fields, a Roaring Twenties estate on Long Island’s North Shore, Great Gatsby territory. The house, an impressive Tudor pile, was designed by Walker & Gillette in 1918-22; the garden was laid out by Olmsted Brothers. Like the more...
THE WISDOM OF EXPERIENCE

THE WISDOM OF EXPERIENCE

I was recently listening to an online interview with Bret Stephens. Speaking admiringly of the nineteenth-century Anglo-Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke, the New York Times columnist referred to Burke’s approach as “the wisdom of experience rather than the...
INHERITANCES

INHERITANCES

A while back I wrote a blog on the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art’s indiscriminate use of “classical” and “traditional.” More recently I’ve been writing an essay about the origins of the American campus and the Collegiate Gothic style. I was reading the...
UNSTICKING

UNSTICKING

“What is to be done?” my friend asked. We had been discussing the rather low current state of architecture, countless glass boxes, undisciplined and arbitrary designs, a profession at sea. We have been here before. Because fashion is an unavoidable aspect of...
IRONY

IRONY

Describing the Königliches Schloss, the rebuilt imperial palace in Berlin, Michael J. Lewis wrote recently in The New Criterion: “It is not so much a recreation of the palace as a workmanlike scale model of the original, placed on the original site, and with something...