I was standing in a courtyard in Florence last Tuesday, watching a group of tourists marvel at the sweeping, glass-and-steel curves of a contemporary wing, completely oblivious to the fact that the entire structure was fighting a losing battle against…
I was standing in a dusty courtyard in Ravenna last autumn, tracing the uneven way a medieval mason had notched a limestone block, when I found myself thinking about the sheer noise surrounding modern high-tech architecture. People talk about Renzo…
I was sitting in a small café in Milan last spring, staring at a piece of laminate that looked like it had been rejected from a fever dream, when it hit me how much we misunderstand the chaos of the…
I was standing in a drafty, half-renovated palazzo in Palermo last autumn, staring at a structural intervention that was being hailed in the journals as a masterpiece of “innovation.” It was nothing more than a clumsy, expensive attempt to force…
I was kneeling in the dust of a crumbling courtyard near Syracuse last autumn, my fingers tracing the uneven seam where a reused Roman block met a medieval limestone lintel, when I realized how much we get wrong about this…
I was standing in a dusty courtyard in San Cataldo last Tuesday, running my hand over a seam where the new concrete met the old stone, when it hit me how much we get wrong. Most theorists treat Aldo Rossi…
I was standing in a damp basement in Ravenna last Tuesday, watching a contractor try to force a modern, Portland cement-based grout into a sixteenth-century masonry gap. It was painful to watch. There is this pervasive, expensive myth in our…
I remember standing in the courtyard of the Castelvecchio last autumn, my fingers tracing the grit of a sixteenth-century lime mortar that was slowly weeping under the weight of a modern steel intervention. Most critics will spend hours prattling on…
I was standing in the Querini Stampalia last Tuesday, my flashlight tracing the edge of a brass inlay, when I realized how much people misinterpret him. Most architectural critics treat the relationship between Carlo Scarpa and detail as if it…
I remember standing in the shadow of a massive concrete cantilever during a site survey in the late nineties, the air thick with the smell of wet dust and ozone. Most people look up at these massive shells and see…