• From McMansion to McMain Street

    Like the McMansion, the McMain Street attempts to mimic the complex roof massing of many buildings in a single building. Here are ideas on better ways to preserve or create Main Street character.
    Drive through any middle-class suburban neighborhood built in the last 25 years and you will encounter the “McMansion,” the aspirational mega-house with its overly complex roof form, dumbed-down architectural details and grandiose double-height foyer. The term McMansion is embedded in the American...Read more

  • Legacy projects kick off in Louisville

    CNU neighborhood design workshops this week are led by Urban Design Associates, Street Plans Collaborative, Placemakers, and Gresham Smith.
    Four CNU Legacy Projects will launch this week In Louisville, Kentucky, as community design workshops will engage residents to improve public spaces, streets, mixed-use centers, and natural and cultural assets. Three of the workshops will focus on specific neighborhoods—Russell and Portland in the...Read more

  • The emperor's new buildings

    A book review of Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism by James Stevens Curl.
    For most reform-minded urbanists today, the complicity of architectural Modernism in the urban fiascoes of the last century is not in dispute. A representative (and seminal) criticism was Jane Jacobs' withering 1961 attack, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which she described Le...Read more

  • Better alternatives to Mr. Potato Head architecture

    Background buildings don't need to be ugly or use pointless variety in the “break-up-the-box” style.
    I recently criticized the architecture of multifamily buildings that too often prevails in US cities this decade. Materials and façade elements are often varied and juxtaposed in a way that is incoherent, and the buildings convey little order or sense of place. They look similar in Dallas, Denver,...Read more