Fred A. Bernstein


Fred Bernstein has degrees in architecture (from Princeton University) and law (from NYU) and writes about both subjects. He lives in New York City and has two sons.

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Publications

Architecture Criticism

What Price Honor?

A temple to honor at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs damages perhaps the greatest modernist campus in the world. And it's by the campus's original architect, SOM

Published in Architectural Record, January 8, 2016

Sweet Sixteen Acres

My assessment of Ground Zero, in 2018

Published in Log, October 1, 2018

A Park Grows in Moscow

Diller Scofidio + Renfro leads an international team of designers, working in the shadow of the Kremlin

Published in Blueprint, October 13, 2017

American Architecture 1945-1970: From Post-War to Post-Modern

(all that in 2,500 words)

Published in A+U (Japan), November 6, 2017

Architects Remember the 1964-65 World's Fair

One after another, architects who grew up in New York in the sixties recall how the fair inspired them

Published in Architectural Record, May 30, 2014

The Punctured Sky: New York's Architectural Heritage

A history of New York City architecture: the last 150 years in 4,500 words

Published in Books, April 16, 2008

The Many Dimensions of Roberto Burle Marx

Should the great landscape architect be recognized for more than his astounding parks and gardens?

Published Architect, April 10, 2016

Glazing Over Manhattan

Too many glass buildings, and the city becomes just another banal office park

Published in Architectural Record, May 9, 2013

Critic Takes New Catholic Architecture to Task

Published in The New York Times, January 1, 2000

Calatrava's New Saint Nicholas Church Opens at Ground Zero

A "national shrine" now hovers over the World Trade Center site

Published in Architectural Record, December 10, 2022

Eero Saarinen's Better Half?

A new book gives Mrs. Saarinen too much credit, and its author, Eva Hagberg, too much space

Published in The Architect's Newspaper, September 12, 2022

Grace Farms, by SANAA

A Gossamer Serpent in New Canaan

Published in Blueprint, June 20, 2018

Santiago Calatrava's Four Billion Dollar Mall

A review of the World Trade Center "Transit Hub"

Published in Blueprint, July 17, 2016

Starchitects on the Buildings That Influenced Them Most

Ando, Meier, Scott Brown, Decq, and others talk about their inspirations

Published in Architectural Record, April 13, 2016

We Have a Family Welder

Arthur Cotton Moore designs a curvy metal house to test his theories

Published in The New York Times, September 24, 2000

A Carbon Fiber House by Ali Tayar

Published in The Architect's Newspaper, May 2, 2015

Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Amazing Continuous Surface Building

Their new Columbia Medical School study center caps decades of experimentation

Published in Blueprint, November 9, 2016

The Ethereal Architecture of Sou Fujimoto

Perhaps Japan's most innovative architect, Fujimoto makes buildings that resemble clouds and forests.

Published in The Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2014

Being Frank Gehry

Published at fredbernstein.com, September 2, 2015

It's the Architecture, Not The Architect, I'm Rooting For

Give Calatrava a chance!

Published in Architectural Record, December 10, 2013

A Doll House in a Doll House

Barbra Streisand's "barn" in Malibu

Published in FredBernstein.com, November 13, 2012

Panama Highway, A Noose Around Casco Viejo's Neck?

An old city gets an unwelcome new neighbor

Published in Architectural Record, October 26, 2012

U.S. Flops at Shanghai Expo

Another embarrassing U.S. pavilion, courtesy of a shortsighted Congress

Published in Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2010

A School by Edward Durell Stone

While fighting over his Columbus Circle building, preservationists overlooked another Stone structure just a few blocks away

Published in Oculus (Journal of the New York AIA chapter), December 26, 2006

Rediscovering a Heroine of Chicago Architecture

Many of Frank Lloyd Wright's most evocative drawings were by Marion Mahony Griffin

Published in The New York Times, January 20, 2008

Glass House, Great Performance

Merce Cunningham animates Philip Johnson's estate

Published in Interior Design, August 25, 2007

Remembering the Royalton

Mourning Phiippe Starck's Miracle on 44th Street

Published in Interior Design, September 21, 2007

Post-Renovation Depression

The contractors are gone. So why do I feel blue?

Published in The New York Times, February 22, 2007

Seaside at 25: Paradise, With Problems

The walkable community now has valet parking, and other concessions to the real world

Published in The New York Times, December 9, 2005

A Cathedral to Science in Queens

Published in Oculus (Journal of the New York AIA chapter), October 24, 2004

Letting Kahn Be Kahn

Restoring the Yale University Art Gallery

Published in The New York Times, December 10, 2006

Sky-High Style

Master Architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen used his signature vocabulary to create a unique rocky mountain retreat.

Published in Metropolitan Home, December 4, 2006

A Makeover Too Far

The conspicuous consumption of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

Published in Dwell, October 29, 2006

The Wright Stuff, in the Japanese Heartland

Visiting the Meiji Mura Museum

Published in The New York Times, April 2, 2006

Where New and Old Collide

Steven Holl's building for Pratt Institute in Brooklyn

Published in Metropolis, January 17, 2006

Family Ties

A topflight Manhattan designer expanded her father's house on Long Island and brought it forward from the 1970s.

Published in Metropolitan Home, December 4, 2005

Outside The Box

Boston-based architect Adolfo Perez turned a mid-century starter house into a home of substance for design-wise clients.

Published in Metropolitan Home, December 4, 2005

Second Nature

Contemplative architect George Suyama built a house for himself and his wife that is as hospitable to the landscape as it is to the couple's guests.

Published in Metropolitan Home, December 4, 2005

Mies in Newark

Published in Oculus (Journal of the New York AIA chapter), November 14, 2005

Paul Rudolph's Tracey Towers

The fate of Rudolph's apartment buildings in the Bronx

Published in Oculus (Journal of the New York AIA chapter), October 13, 2005

A Long Time for a Little Grandeur

An addition to the Tilles Center soars

Published in The New York Times, January 5, 2005

Peter Eisenman in Verona

A review of the architect's 2004 Castelvecchio installation

Published in Architectural Record, December 6, 2004

Where Are All the 60's Buildings Going?

Baby boomers lead the charge to tear down 60's architecture

Published in The New York Times, October 31, 2004

America Joins Architecture's Rem-formation

Published in Icon, October 20, 2004

Bridge Apartments

Published in Oculus (Journal of the New York AIA chapter), September 29, 2004

A Monument to Arriving in the Middle of Nowhere

A review of the Secaucus Transfer

Published in The New York Times, July 11, 2004

A Neglected Modernist Masterpiece

Pier Luigi Nervi's bus station at the George Washington Bridge deserves respect

Published in Oculus (Journal of the New York AIA chapter), November 2, 2003

Pierwise, One Person's Wreck Is Another's Art

Saving two rusting piers in the Hudson River

Published in The New York Times, September 4, 2003

How much design do public spaces need?

Published in Architectural Record, August 14, 2003

One campus, two faces

Princeton goes Gehry -- and Gothic -- at the same time

Published in The Princeton Alumni Weekly, January 21, 2003

Memorials fit for a city

Architects get busy after 9/11

Published in Blueprint, February 22, 2002

City Folk

A review of the new American Folk Art Museum, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.

Published in World Architecture, February 22, 2002

When Modern Married Money

Blue blood meets white architecture in New England.

Published in The New York Times, February 3, 2002

Dust-Up In the Desert

Trouble at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture

Published in The New York Times, January 31, 2002

Franoise Bollack at the Center

Published in Genre, January 17, 2002

Drawing Closer to an Old Friend

Thoughts on the importance of the Empire State Building after September 11

Published in The New York Times, October 11, 2001

Rem Koolhaas takes a look at the "junk space" of American malls

Published in The New York Times, February 28, 2002

The New School's Stairmaster

SOM's student-centered building on Fifth Avenue

Published in Architectural Record, March 2019

The Mouse That Roared

A look back at Michael Graves's career

Published in Architectural Record, November 14, 2014

UnSangDong Architects

A Korean firm is part of Record's Design Vanguard

Published in Architectural Record, December 16, 2006

SOAPBOX: Masking a Terminal's Triumph

A 35-foot-high billboard on the facade of the Port Authority Bus Terminal will obscure the strengths of the building's 1980's renovation

Published in The New York Times, December 20, 1998
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