THE END OF ARCHITECTURE?

THE END OF ARCHITECTURE?

I got an email request the other day. The sender had asked ChatGPT “What are the best articles about architecture written since 1990?” and the third recommendation, after two essays by Koolhaas, was “The End of Architecture?” by Witold Rybczynski. According to the...
ORDER WITHOUT DESIGN

ORDER WITHOUT DESIGN

Last summer I ran into Alain Bertaud in Charleston (above). We had first met in India, when he was at the World Bank and I was at McGill Uiversity, working on a research project with B.V. Doshi’s Vastu Shilpa Foundation. I had not seen Alain in the intervening forty...
RADOSLAV ZUK (1931-2024)

RADOSLAV ZUK (1931-2024)

Rad Zuk was a longtime colleague of mine when I taught at McGill for two decades, but my first encounter with him was when I was a student there in the 1960s. I was in the penultimate year of a six-year course. Zuk had joined the faculty a year or two earlier, and I...
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...