Free Republic

Yes, we trash can. President Barack Obama’s austere new presidential library is getting roasted with comparisons to the Death Star, garbage bins and other domineering monoliths in a hilarious social media thread sparked by Sen. Ted Cruz. “Locating the Death Star in Chicago was a bold move,” Cruz (R-Texas) wrote on X Tuesday while reposting a video of the latest work on Obama’s Chicago presidential center. The facility, a slab of concrete and granite rising 225 feet above Chicago’s Jackson Park, has faced ridicule from critics since its design was first unveiled nearly 10 years ago — and the peanut...

Call it the Arc de Trump. President Trump posted an architect’s rendering of a huge triumphal arch to mark the nation’s 250th birthday – and his biggest change yet to the capital’s skyline. The stone arch would be constructed just across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial — soaring above that memorial’s 99-foot height — and add a major new element to DC’s public architecture. The online sketch depicts a massive monument that bears a strong resemblance to the Washington Square Park arch in Manhattan and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The stone monument features carved wreaths, two...

This is important, and at some point you should slow down for fifteen minutes to watch it carefully: Youtube: How did the world get so ugly?Just give him the first 1:30, and you’ll begin to see where he’s headed. But then keep going, because he expands on the point. We tell a story about ourselves with the things we choose to build, and the built environment we choose to inhabit. We communicate our respect for ourselves, and for others, by the reality of our stuff. Who are we? What’s the significance of our lives? What do we deserve? Screenshot: So:...

America didn’t always build ugly cities. As you tour Philadelphia’s historic landmarks or gaze up at New York’s early skyscrapers, you can’t help but wonder…Why don’t all American cities boast beauty like this? When did ugliness take over… Public buildings — including buildings that dominate a city, even if not owned by the government — have the power to: - Grow a city’s economy - Foster pride in one’s community - Inspire a loving relationship between residents and their city With these truths in mind, American architects created breathtaking buildings that became pillars of American identity. Then something happened.. -...

You probably can’t tell whether this is the alien itself or the ship it landed in. Possibly both at the same time. Hard to distinguish the tentacles from the portholes or the eye-sockets, while the salmon-pink folds and creases have a certain gynecologiocal feeling. In any case, this beast landed in Xalapa, capital of Veracruz state, Mexico. It is called Casa de los Milagros or House of Miracles by architect Danilo Veras Godoy and is a private residence, not an intergalactic freight transport vehicle / organism. As a technical matter, this is an extreme case of what you get when...

The old ten-story Hedrick Building (erected 1928) at St. Mary’s and Martin Streets in downtown San Antonio gets a severe facial to take off the make-up applied sometime in the early 1960s. Note the revealed, original, intricate “Spanish Baroque” detailing (with grace-notes of “Aztec Terminalissimo”) in the applied terracotta ornaments. There’s quite an inventory of similar period office towers in the old downtown of America’s seventh largest city, a great many of them already rehabbed and sparkling again. Very impressive! The city must have been roaring like all git-out in the 1920s. (Oil money, would be my guess.) Of course,...

The island of Manhattan boasts so many soaring towers, that it’s hardly news when a new one shoots up—even if its spire pierces the clouds. That said, now and then, there’s an exception in the form of an ambitious architectural masterpiece, like the west side’s new 90-story Affirmation Tower, a five-tiered, terrazzo-clad skyscraper that, upon closer inspection, appears to be upside down. Developed by Don Peebles, the chief operating officer at the Peebles Corporation, and designed by AD100 architect Sir David Adjaye, Affirmation Tower is as symbolic as it is enormous (1,663 feet tall and two million square feet.) Not...

A not so rhetorical exercise that occasionally makes the rounds asks the reader to look at the 45 goals of the Communist Party that were read into the Congressional Record in 1963 and consider how many have actually been accomplished. “Not for nothing,” as they say, but a significant percentage of the items on that list are already in place. For the purposes of this essay, I would direct the reader to this little gem: 22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks...

A wonderfully preserved Gilded Age mansion is poised to hit the market for $13.9 million as the glamorous homes from that period of time are back in the spotlight. The grand 19th-century limestone residence is at 57 E. 74th St., between Park and Madison avenues. It’s one of seven on the historic block designed by noted architects Buchman and Deisler.

This slumping row-house in London’s Charterhouse Square is not a “building” per se, but rather an objet-d’art from the Stunt-and-Clutter school of contemporary art called “A Week at the Knees” by one Alex Chinneck. I confess, I don’t even get the verbal gag. Seems like a non-sequitur to me. But so is most of the production from Stunt-and-Clutter Ltd. The aim is to astound the public with startling originality. Since there are no longer that many new things under the sun, this calls for ever more extreme ventures into the absurd and hallucinatory. Between the general overload of Internet-generated info...

This video explores how Greek city-states constructed some of the most impressive, and most beautiful, buildings in history. How the Greeks built Temples | 11:49 toldinstone | 587K subscribers | 27,375 views | July 11, 2025Chapters 0:00 Introduction 0:40 Form and function 2:18 Planning 2:52 Variables 4:20 Flexispot 5:45 Location and materials 6:45 Construction 8:09 Decoration 9:16 Financing

This Month we put aside the eyesore motif to remember Leon Krier (1946-2025), the great architect and urbanist who was “godfather” to the movement for restoring artistry, beauty, and decorum in an everyday world much debased by the idiocies of various Modern-isms, and by the fiasco of suburban sprawl. Leo passed away this week at 79. I knew him somewhat, having spent time with him at conferences and in cafes, and corresponding with him over the years. He was a gallant, humorous, and supremely talented fellow who brought much light into an increasingly darkened world. He is perhaps best-known for...

Behold: The new home for the Milwaukee Public Museum — to be renamed the Nature & Culture Museum of Wisconsin — in downtown Milwaukee. Kind of looks like four laundry hampers, though the official PR says “the rock formations at Mill Bluff State Park in central Wisconsin served as design inspiration.” Credit the architectural firms of Ennead Architects (New York), with Kahler Slater (Milwaukee). Like many state museums, this one is a hodgepodge of history, nature (what used to be called natural history), ethnography (i.e., Indians), DEI nonsense (hey, it’s Wisconsin), and a miscellany of artifacts and freakish stuff that...

Behold the lovely new Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Building at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. Complements the nearby parking deck! It’s a cancer research center, designed by HDR Architects, Omaha. Certainly has that American heartland tumor spirit! The promotional literature says, “the COVID-19 pandemic significantly influenced the design.” The building is intended to symbolize “hope and progress,” it says. Strange to relate, the percentage increase in cancer cases in the USA from 2021 to 2024 (the latest fully projected year) is approximately 12.6 percent. Could that have anything to do with the Covid-19 vaccines? Perhaps researchers in the Kellen Building...

In the Middle Ages, like rats in a burned-down barn, wayfarers sought refuge in the oversized ruins of the Roman Empire. In such places as the Forum and the Palatine Hill, shepherds roamed with their flocks. Although preoccupied with simple survival in an anarchic world, they might occasionally have glanced at the derelict, overgrown marble temples and wondered what gods once walked the earth and created such magnificent beauty. In terms of pure sensory experience, of course, they were never worse off than scholars with historical or philosophical knowledge. The classical ideals of architectural beauty, based on organic motifs, symmetry,...

Is this the real-life Atlantis. A 90-foot “pyramid” submerged just off the coast of Japan is turning heads — and could shake up everything we thought we knew about ancient civilizations. Sitting 82 feet below sea level near the Ryukyu Islands, the Yonaguni Monument has baffled scientists and divers since it was first discovered in 1986. The enormous stone structure, complete with angular steps and flat terraces, looks uncannily like the ruins of a man-made temple — despite being over 10,000 years old. That timeline, if proven accurate, would date it thousands of years earlier than Egypt’s pyramids or England’s...

One of the largest private homes built by the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright is on the market in Tulsa, Oklahoma — and it just got a major price cut. Dubbed “Westhope,” the residence is one of just five homes Wright built with unique, geometric blocks stacked in vertical columns. No fewer than 5,200 panes of glass cover almost half of the exterior, and large skylights let in even more Sooner sunshine. It can be yours for $3.5 million — a 56% drop from its initial asking price in 2023, Mansion Global reported. At 10,400 square feet, Westhope is one...

Concerning President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring new federal buildings to show a preference for "classical architectural style" which includes Neoclassical, Georgian, Federal, Greek Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Art Deco, referencing the architectural traditions of Greek and Roman antiquity. . . Behold (above) the federal building and courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama by HBRA Architects. And, no, it was not conceived when Andy Jackson was fighting the Battle of Emuckfaw against the “Red Stick” Creek Indians in 1814. Rather, it went up in 2012, a rare example of neoclassical design executed in our time. For the most part, though, the decades-long trend...

Some of California's architectural wonders were consumed by the flames.It's been more than three weeks since the beginning of the Los Angeles area wildfires and the level of devastation is overwhelming. The numbers are stark: The fires killed 28 people and incinerated more than 16,000 structures. Officials peg the economic damage at $150 billion or more, with insurance companies expecting losses of $30 billion. We've also seen the heartbreaking images of our fellow Californians combing through the wreckage looking for their beloved pets and remnants of their lives. My wife is a Red Cross volunteer and I can't stand hearing...

One of the two dozen or so new Trump Administration’s executive orders issued since assuming office includes a mandate for the restoration of an amalgam of classicism-inspired "traditional" architectural styles in all new federal government buildings. The newly signed Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture order directs the General Services Administration (GSA) to submit recommendations within 60 days that "advance the policy that Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government." The President,...