As You Were
What to do when an architectural landmark is destroyed. Rebuild or build new?
The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2024. read
The Next New Thing
Can a traditional/classical building be modern, and vice versa?
The American Scholar, Summer 2024. read
Give Us Something to Look At
Why ornament matters.
The American Scholar, Winter 2024. read
The Historian’s Revenge
Revisiting Vincent Scully’s The Shingle Style Today. A surprising conclusion.
The Hedgehog Review, Fall 2023. read
Inventor of the Future
My review of a new biography of Buckminster Fuller
New York Times, posted August 2, 2022. read
Modern Classicism on Constitution Avenue
Bertrand Goodhue and Paul Cret, two American masters
The Classicist, No. 18, 2022. read
The Man Who Built Forward Better
Happy Birthday Mr. Olmsted!
The Hedgehog Review, Spring, 2022. read
Portrait of a Marriage in Six Homes
My memorial to Shirley
The American Scholar, Winter, 2021. read
House and Home
My contribution to a book benefitting No Kid Hungry.
Home: A Celebration (Rizzoli, 2021). order
The Five Best Architecture Books for Non-Architects
Oldies but goodies
Shepherd, posted May 14, 2021. read
Chasing Beauty
An interview with Carolyn Stewart on matters domestic, architectural, and numismatic.
American Purpose, posted 23 July, 2021. read
The Unbearable Burden of Invention
What happens when imitation is banished from architecture
The Hedgehog Review, Spring 2021. read
Building to Last
The uncertain future of global architecture
The American Scholar, March 20, 2021. read
A Personal Canon
Four books that influenced my writing
Yale University Press Blog, posted January 20, 2021. read
Version 1.0
An essay on tools in a South African wine maker’s magazine
Jack Journal, Volume 2, 2020.
Follies
A review of Rory Fraser’s book about British follies
Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2020. read
Broken Glass
A review of Alex Beam’s new book on the Farnsworth House
Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2020. read
New Onion Domes in the Old South
Inerview with Andrew Gould and an excerpt of Charleston Fancy
Penn Gazette, March/April 2020. read
A Brief History of Recent Canadian Architecture
The title says it all
Architect, December 2019. read
In Search of Frank Lloyd Wright
A new bio of the old master
Architect, posted October 17, 2019. read
It Ought to be Gothick
About rebuilding Notre Dame de Paris
The American Interest, September/October 2019. read
A Portrait of Organic Growth
An excerpt from Charleton Fancy
Architect, posted July 19, 2019. read
The Need for Locatecture
WR interviewed on Charleston Fancy by Jeremiah Eck
Common|Edge, posted uly 10, 2019. read
A Big Architect for a Little Museum
Foster’s sensitive addition to the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach.
Architect, May 2019. read
Modernism and the Making of Dystopia
A review of James Stevens Curl’s controversial book
Architect, February 2019. read
The Untold Story of Apple Park
Laurie Olin, Steve Jobs and the California landscape.
Architect. November 2018. read
The Flasher of the Arts
How architecture lost its way.
Hedgehog Review, Summer 2018. read
What Happened to the World’s Fair?
It became obsolete.
Architect, April 2018
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The Cool Room
KieranTimberlake’s cooling experiment
Architect, December 2017
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Housing Redux at Princeton
Architect, October 2017
Housing and the modernist ethos
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Grave Concerns
Architect, posted September 14, 2017
Some architects last project is their gravesite.
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What Game of Thrones gets wrong
Quartz, posted September 3, 2017
The Iron Throne analyzed.
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What If?: The Unbuilt Legacy
Architect, March 2017
Unbuilt projects loom large, but what if they had been built?
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Take a Seat
American Craft Magazine, February/March 2017
An interview about chairs.
read
How One Chair Rocked its Way into Hearts and History
1stdibs, January 9, 2017.
A short history of the rocking chair.
read
Revisiting Kleinhans Music Hall
Architect, November 2016.
Eliel Saarinen designs a great space for music.
read
Seven Chairs That Changed the World
Architectural Digest, August 25, 2016.
Short but sweet.
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Sitting Up
Paris Review, August 23, 2016.
Excerpt of Now I Sit Me Down
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Rethinking the Concert Hall
Why we should be building more Carnegie Halls.
Architect, May 2016.
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Biography of a Building
Understanding Norman Foster through the Sainsbury Centre.
Architect, February 2016.
read
The Campus as Petting Zoo
Why continuity is better than variety.
Architect, January 2016.
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The Biographer’s Elusive Quest
Why architects’ lives are a challenge to document.
Architect, November 2015.
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Remembering the Rosenwald Schools
A mighty D-I-Y project from the segregation era.
Architect, September 2015.
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A Tale of Two Colleges
Architectural ideas age as surely as buildings.
Architect, July 2015.
read
The Enduring Legacy of Paimio
How Alvar Aalto set the benchmark for hospital design.
Architect, June 2015.
read
Unnecessary Scale
Our urban memorials are growing larger and that is a bad thing.
The European, posted May 20, 2015
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KieranTimberlake’s New Sandbox
What makes for a better workplace?
Architect, May 2015.
read
The Late, Great Paul Cret
The low-key master
New York Times, T Magazine, posted October 21, 2014.
read
Building the Brand
Three architects add to the historic campus of the Harvard Business School
Architect, October 2014.
read
Rebuilding the Mack
The pros and cons of historic preservation
The American Scholar, Fall 2014.
read
Engineering a Tradition
Ian Ritchie’s new book prompts a reflection on High Tech
Architect, August 2014
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In Praise of LACMA’s Vulgar Architecture
Replacing faithful old buildings with trophy-wife architecture is a bad idea.
Zócalo Public Square, posted July 14, 2014
read
The Franchising of Architecture
Globilization is a good thing, isn’t it?
New York Times T Magazine, posted June 11, 2014.
read
The Art of the Aerie
Where is Raymond Hood now that we need him?
Architect, posted May 1, 2014
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Tadao Ando and the Dream of a Perfect Chair
Why architects are challenged by chair design
Architect, April 2014
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The Picture Frame, Not the Picture
Bing Thom’s Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas
Canadian Architect, February 2014
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Obama and His Library: Go Small
New York Times, February 19, 2014
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Paradise Planned
A review of Robert A. M. Stern’s history of the garden suburb
Posted on Designers & Books December 6, 2013.
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Channeling Kahn
Renzo Piano’s addition to the Kimbell Art Museum. Thumbs up.
Architect, posted November 18, 2013.
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Behind the Façade
My impressions of Poundbury, the town that Prince Charles built
Architect, November 2013
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The Louis Kahn Archive at Penn
Drawings, models, photos and much more
Posted on Designers & Books, November 14, 2013
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The Houses of Louis Kahn
Brief book review on Designers & Books, posted November 6, 2013
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The Best Advice for Biographers
What Stacy Schiff told me
The American Scholar, posted October 28, 2013
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Ideas about Architecture
An excerpt of How Architecture Works in the October 2013 issue of The Yale Review
If you have access to the TYR site, you can read it here
What Makes a Building Memorable?
An excerpt from How Architecture Works in Metropolis magazine, posted October 2013
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Radical Revival
Revisiting a groundbreaking housing development of the 1980s.
Architect, August 2013
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A New Detroit Needs Four Cylinders, Not Eight
Bankruptcy may offer an opportunity to shrink the city
Bloomberg View, posted July 23, 2013
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Lost Among the Algorithms
My take on parametric design
Architect, June 2013
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The Spirit of Campus Past
Why Bob Stern adopted the Federal style at Penn
Change Over Time 3.1, Spring 2013.
If you have access to Muse, you can read it here.
The Zen Master
Bing Thom makes the A-list
The Walrus, June 2013
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Article on Home, 25 years later
Apartamento, Winter 2012-13.
No link to article, but the Milan-based magazine’s website is here.
Overexposed
Rem Koolhaas and Peter Bohlin face off in Seattle
Architecture, May 2013
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Creating a New Suburban Town Center
Wharton Real Estate Review, Spring 2012
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Two Decades of Design and Development
Wharton Real Estate Review, Spring 2012
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Civility and Architectural Propriety
Chapter in Civility and Democracy in America: A Reasonable Understanding, Cornell W. Clayton & Richard Elgar, eds.
University of Washington Press, 2012
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A Humble Architect
Moshe Safdie and Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges Museum
The Walrus, October 2012. Nominated for a Canadian National Magazine Award.
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When should architects retire?
Arquitetura e Urbanismo
September 2012
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The Dawn of Market Urbanism
Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2012
read
Watch my conversation with Moshe Safdie on stage at Penn
watch
I like Ike (and His Memorial)
New York Times, March 23, 2012
read
Quoted on the future of the single-family home by Forbes.com
Watch my conversation with Bing Thom on-stage at Penn
watch
Philadelphia Inquirer, January 27, 2012
Interview with WR about Arne Jacobsen’s Series 7 chair
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Christmas Architect
Slate, December 21, 2011
After 7 years, my last Slate column
read
Interview on cities and city life
Grist
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Prevailing over Technology
Joel Garreau’s Prevail Project at Arizona State University, December 1, 2012
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Postmodernism had a positive effect on architecture. Really.
Slate, November 17, 2011.
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Civil and Architectural Propriety
Wharton Real Estate Review, Fall 2011.
read
Review of Siegfried Giedion’s Mechanization Takes Command
Harvard Design Magazine, No. 34, 2011
Black Holes: the 9/11 memorial
Slate, September 7, 2011
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The Blast-Proof City
Foreign Policy, September 2, 2011
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Sorry, This Entrance Is Closed
Slate, August 3, 2011
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Airline seats and design
Slate, June 8, 2011
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Bringing the High Line back to earth
New York Times, May 15, 2011
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The death of the McMansion
Slate, May 11, 2011
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Density and the American city
Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2011
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My take on computers and architecture
Slate, March 30, 2011
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Downsizing Cities
A pertinent essay from the Atlantic archive
Atlantic, October, 1995
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How to Save Dying Cities
Slate, March 9, 2011
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On Archispeak
Slate, February 2, 2011
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Books Every Architect Should Read
Designers & Books, February 1, 2011
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Interview
Penn Book Center, January 28, 2011
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Interview
Express Night Out, January 20, 2011
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The Great Recession’s effect on architecture
Slate, January 13, 2011
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Interview
BBC World News, January 11, 2011
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Interview
Dwell, January 1, 2011
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Digital Architecture
Slate, December 15, 2010
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Remembering Student Days
McGill University, December 15, 2010
rad
Tall Buildings, Short Architects
Slate, December 2, 2010
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Interview
Huffington Post, November 30, 2010
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A Polish translation of “Why We Live in Houses Anyway”
autoportret, No.2, 2010
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An empty Guggenheim Museum
Slate, April 14, 2010
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Why planning is not the answer to our troubled cities
Slate, March 31, 2010
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The tallest building in the world
Slate, January 13, 2010
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On Christopher Alexander
Slate, December 2, 2009
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On the new Barnes
Slate, October 14, 2009
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Why cities are green
Atlantic, October 2009
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Too much Frank Gehry is too much
Slate, September 23, 2009
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1967, A Polish visit
Cosmopolitan Review, August 15, 2009
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On language and friendship
American Scholar, Summer 2009.
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How high is your ceiling?
Slate, May 20, 2009.
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