“[H]as there ever been another place…where so many people of wealth and power have paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested…?” —Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our …
Hating Modern Architecture, and Loving It (Part 2)
When Louis VII of France entered for the first time Abbot Suger’s newly completed church of Saint-Denis—arguably the earliest thoroughly executed work of Gothic architecture on the planet—he reportedly exclaimed …
Hating Modern Architecture, and Loving It (Part 1)
There’s no getting around it; Very few people like Modern architecture—a sentiment hardly limited to East Tennessee. It has never had a big following, which ought not to be news …
Building in Code: Cumberland Avenue’s Big Gray Error
Building codes, zoning ordinances—these are not the stuff that dreams are made of. We do not put our children to sleep at night reading excerpts on occupancy limits or egress …
Remembering Knoxville’s Role in the Red Summer of 1919
Monuments and memorials are the things around which great cities construct themselves and by which their builders and inhabitants remember who they are, why they are there, and the important …