5/24/2023 0 Comments City life witold rybczynski![]() ![]() The answer to that question is the subject of James Stevens Curl’s controversial new book, Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism (Oxford University Press, 2018). ![]() ![]() Before the 1930s, the buildings are pretty good after that, not so much. The Board of Education Building dates from 1932. “I wish they hadn’t built that,” is my all too common reaction. And then there is the second category: utilitarian apartment slabs with unrelieved gridded façades, infill condo housing that looks as if it had been trucked in from the suburbs, a grim precast concrete retirement home that takes up a whole block. “How nice that someone actually took the trouble,” I think as I walk by. ![]() There are those that offer visual pleasure, whether they are modest run-of-the-mill brick row houses or the rather grand Board of Education Building, an Art Deco-ish pile topped by busts of Sir Isaac Newton, Ben Franklin, and Alexander Graham Bell. The buildings in my neighborhood, Logan Square in downtown Philadelphia, fall roughly into two categories. Michael Froio Exterior detail on the Board of Education Building in Philadelphia ![]()
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