• The power of cute, affordable townhouses

    We need more ways to build uncomplicated affordable housing in cities and towns. These 19 th Century townhouses in Alexandria, Virginia, offer a great model. Although the townhouses have nice details, they wouldn’t be expensive to build. Each unit has little siding and few windows in the front...Read more

  • Time to move beyond the style wars

    A humanist framing, prioritizing the public, returns beauty to its rightful place as an essential component of good architecture.
    In order to move beyond the style wars that have plagued the debate between modernists and traditionalists for the last 75 years, I’d like to propose a humanist framing, one that prioritizes the public, on whose ground and in whose sight we build. This means architects have a greater responsibility...Read more

  • Champs-Elysees transformation going forward

    The famous Paris artery Champs-Elysees, terminated by the landmark Arc de Triomphe, is due for a major redesign. The legendary avenue lost much of its splendor in recent decades, many Parisians believe, as eight lanes of traffic carry an average of 3,000 vehicles per hour. Mayor Ann Hidalgo, known...Read more

  • Architecture and urbanism in the climate change era

    Architecture & the City, part polemic and part auto-biography, makes the case for how architecture should be taught and the city planned to address some of the world's biggest challenges—by learning from the past.
    A revealing pair of images in Michael Dennis’s magnificent new book Architecture & the City compare a selection of contemporary buildings from well known architects around the world with an image of Boston’s Back Bay. The former is a collection of weird freestanding sculptural shapes unrelated...Read more