Word: architecturee
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sturdy and reflective, unwilling to accept imported style wholesale, English artists and craftsmen took French Gothic and, once it had been imposed on them by the Norman hierarchy in the major arts like architecture, transformed it in their minor arts. The image of the cathedral as the castle of God...
The surfeit arises from the sheer size of the show. Its catalog lists 748 items, ranging from a corroded metal pen to a whole stained-glass lancet window from Canterbury Cathedral. It covers manuscripts, paintings, maps, jewelry, seals, coins, heraldry, enamelwork, ceramics, armor, textiles, architecture and a great deal more...
The rediscovery, however, is not merely a matter of fashion and status seeking. It is more visceral than that. "We feel better," the architecture critic and preservationist Brendan Gill has written, "when we find ourselves in the presence of the past, with its evidence of the mingled aspirations and disappointments...
No matter how many splendid old buildings are refurbished, downtown revivification does not necessarily follow. The historic district of Charleston is an antebellum museum of architecture, but despite the surfeit of charm and platoons of tourists, the downtown was dying in the '70s. Developers proposed an un-Charlestonian remedy: a...
The '60s, a generous, hopeful time, produced terrible urban policy and dispiriting architecture, while in the '80s, a gilded, ungenerous age, the nation is saving buildings and repairing cities. An uncomfortable irony, but preservation is a conservative movement. Thus it carries with it a whiff of complacency and rue.