by Witold | Apr 12, 2019 | Architecture
I have written crtically in Zócalo of LACMA’s decision to demolish its old museum. “Why does Los Angeles, which has little enough history, feel the need to keep reinventing its surroundings?” I asked. That was almost five years ago. Now we read that the LA county...
by Witold | Mar 29, 2019 | Architecture
Blair Kamin, the architecture critic of the Chicago Tribune, recently made this wise observation about the latest crop of urban buildings: “Glass usually works best when it operates in counterpoint to richly articulated walls of masonry. When glass becomes the...
by Witold | Mar 23, 2019 | Architecture, Urbanism
There have been a number of articles about the new Hudson Yards project in New York: Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times, Michael J. Lewis in the Wall Street Journal, Alexandra Schwartz in the New Yorker. Schwartz is forthright: “what Hudson Yards really feels...
by Witold | Dec 7, 2018 | Architecture
Last October the Philadelphia Museum of Art re-opened its restaurant. It is designed by Frank Gehry, whose firm is doing a major do-over of the museum. I thought I should take a look and we went there for lunch. The small (75 seats) restaurant, somewhat mysteriously...
by Witold | Jun 3, 2018 | Architects, Architecture, Modern life
The first university architecture programs appeared in the late nineteenth century, at MIT (1865) and the University of Pennsylvania (1868). Previously—and for a long time thereafter—most architects in the English-speaking world learned their craft through...
by Witold | May 27, 2018 | Architecture
The Comcast Technology Center (Foster + Partners) in downtown Philadelphia is nearing completion. It’s not open yet, but its impact on the skyline is already apparent. Meh. The most that can be said about it is that it recalls a De Stijl composition of overlapping...
