A haunted basement!

Now that another Halloween has darkened our doors and sparked the next generation of costume-festooned trick-or-treaters to stick out their spook-bags for their month's supply of cand-outs, I thought I'd make my annual night-walk to the Haunted Basement, a spine-tingling event put on annually on Halloween by Natasha Ruggieri-Koret, a clerk and notary public at the Watertown Free Public Library, and her live-in partner in the basement of their Watertown home. It's a carefully crafted collection of skulls, skeletons, witches, warlocks, masks, monsters, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, corpses, cadavers, stiffs, and any scary apparition your imagination can conjure up. This year's event had a Christian theme, mixing Jesus and the Virgin Mary in with the purgatorial phantasms, as if we were experiencing the Decensus before the Resurrection. Behold:

Too scary for words? I thought so too. But I hope this won't become The Nightmare Before Christmas for you. Happy Halloween!

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

A prince of a Province House

Province House (1679), Boston, image from 1905.

Province Court, Boston, 1901.

I love stumbling upon images of old Boston on Facebook and Instagram. They inspire my next blog posts, and they teach me volumes about what particular neighborhoods I thought I knew once looked like, recording the memory of buildings I never heard of, and wish I could see now. This left-hand image of Province Court in 1901 is no exception, with its Beacon Hill-style brick rowhouses along a narrow alley, ending up at what I presume is Province Street in one of the cozier enclaves of Downtown Crossing. But the memory this image sparks the most is that of the building the court and the street were named after: the long-gone Province House, a majestic colonial brick mansion that was home to the Massachusetts Bay Colony's royal governors from 1716 to 1776.

Since its demolition in 1922, its remnants have been the granite steps and lanterned cast-iron gateway arch to its gardens (now to Bosworth Street), which The Abbey Group preserved during their development of the 45 Province Condominium in 2009, following Nathaniel Hawthorne's warning about the Old Province House's decrepit state in his book Legends of the Province House (1838-39): "...any jar or motion was apt to shake down the dust of ages out of the ceiling of one chamber upon the floor of that beneath it." 

Provincial propriety
 

Province House, image by Edwin Whitefield, 1889.

Memorialized by The Abbey Group with a pair of bronze plaques on the old garden stone wall (one of which lists all Massachusetts governors to date), the Province House was first built in 1679 on Washington Street in Downtown Crossing as the private home of wealthy London emigrant merchant Peter Sergeant. Like the 45 Province Condominium's developers, Sergeant built high, wide and strong, hiring the best of local English artisans and builders and embellishing his Jacobean mansion with "the latest stylistic refinements of houses of the English gentry," according to historian Fay Campbell Kaynor. Its three-story height, high basement and gable, and distinctive cupola, topped by a copper Native American archer weathervane now exhibited at the Massachusetts Historical Society, made it the ultimate in the upward mobility of Boston's emerging Brahmin class. Its high tower gave Sergeant a privileged perspective on Boston's landscape, as well as his own vast landscape of gardens, orchards, and a 75-square-foot front lawn.
 
Governors' grandeur
 

Renting his house to the colonial governor, the Earl of Bellmont, as early as 1699, Sergeant died in 1714. Royal Governor Samuel Schute moved in two years later, beginning the Province House's succession of gubernatorial dwellers — including Gens. William Howe and Thomas Gage, chief commanders of British forces at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775 — until the British Army evacuated Boston at the hands of General George Washington on March 17, 1776. (Thomas Hutchinson, governor during the Boston Massacre of 1770 and the Boston Tea Party of 1773, did not live there.) And the house was gussied up aplenty for royal ceremonies and aristocratic balls and receptions with lavish cast-iron railings, sentry-attended front-entry gates, drawing-room tapestries, Dutch fireplace tiles, window seats, paneled wainscoting...

A tavern in the town
 

Province House, 1848, engraving by J. Rea.

After the British left Boston, the Province House was put to a smorgasbord of public and private uses — the Committee on Accounts office, the state treasurer's office, the state council's office, a boarding house, a tavern, a theater — and naturally went through umpteen overhauls over time, including the beheading of its tower when the king was dead from the scene. Rechristened the Old Province House tavern in 1835, it inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne's Legends of the Province House (later published as Twice-Told Tales), where he takes us through its wainscoted, paint-peeling ballroom darkened by neighboring building shadows, up its bridal staircase ("a feature of grandeur and magnificence"), into its formerly grand rooms "cut up by partitions and subdivided into little nooks" for lodgers, and along its garret's "ponderous white oak framework so much more massive than the frames of modern houses... although the timbers are said to be as sound as ever... it is contemplated to gut the whole." 

It was gutted in the 1850s to become Ordway Hall, which attracted throngs to minstrel shows, burlesque circuses, Professor Harrington's magic acts, Signor Di Carlo's virtuoso violin, and more... until a fire gutted it on Oct. 25, 1864, leaving its brick walls standing, which later enclosed a cluster of lodgers' quarters and tradesmen's shops and was integrated into Province Court.
From royal ball to wrecking ball

Despite historian William Sumner Appleton's efforts to preserve the Province House because it "is one of the most remarkable houses of which there is record in America" and "must have been as satisfactory in its own way to a visiting Englishman of quality as a home in England," its remains were razed in 1922 for the Province Building, an office block and movie theater (now the Boston Jewelers Exchange Building). The demolition revealed rows of rare colonial brickwork, fireplaces and other unique features, including large brick quarter-circles Appleton had never seen in any period house, and an uncommon third-floor fireplace, "an added touch of luxury proving Sergeant to be a man of great wealth and position whose house might well differ from all others in ostentation and comfort."

Though the brick shell was all that remained of the original Province House, there was enough for a reconstruction, which would have put it in a proper place on the Freedom Trail as a Colonial complement to the Old Corner Bookstore and Old South Meeting House across the street, and the Old State House down Washington Street. This would have made the Freedom Trail more complete, covering Boston's Colonial period from royal governorship to revolution, as the symbol of a turning point in American history. Besides, if barely enough of Fraunces Tavern in New York, where General George Washington bid farewell to his officers after the Revolutionary War, remained for a reconstruction, Boston could have done the same with the Province House, using its fireplaces and brickwork as starting points.

What replaced the Province House was the Province Building, now the Boston Jewelers Exchange Building, a commonplace cast-stone office block saved from total white-bread blandness by some neoclassical pressed-bronze ornamentation and black marble around its entrance and along its jewelry-shop corridors, a fitting ambiance for its elegant products. 

It memorializes its predecessor with a bronze plaque marking its site, which happens to be right next to – ugh – a McDonald's. This means many people having a Big Mac attack or french-fries freakout will surely not take notice of this historic site as they rush in to grab-and-go their order to satiate their fast-food fetish as fast as possible, without slowing down to ponder and reflect upon the rich history of the area. 

(The Old Corner Bookstore across the plaza makes the same mistake, by housing a Chipotle Mexican Grill that tempts consumers and passers-by to go inside for a quesadilla or burrito, thereby diverting them from stopping to think about the rich literary history that went on inside the building, an issue I explored in a previous post.)

And look at what the Province Building did to Province Court as well: it cut it off, so that it now functions as merely a service entrance to the Boston Jewelers Exchange Building and neighboring office buildings, rather than the thriving community of plumbers, painters, carpenters, tailors and other tradespeople it once was.

This made the Province Building a very early example of "urban renewal" in Boston, involving mass demolition of run-down areas without stopping to think about the historical events that took place there and the rare surviving example of colonial Boston architecture that was crying out for attention. A big building says more than a little memorial about Boston history.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Sources:

"Demolition of the Province House, Washington Street, Boston, Mass., June 6, 1922," Historic New England, https://www.historicnewengland.org/explore/collections-access/gusn/196711

Kaplan, Aline, "The Province House Steps Connect 3 Centuries," The Next Phase Blog, July 21, 2016, https://aknextphase.com/province-house-steps-connect-3-centuries/

"Province House (Boston, Massachusetts)," Wikipedia, last edited on 16 February 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_House_(Boston,_Massachusetts)

"Province House, in Boston, 1848," Historic New England, https://www.historicnewengland.org/explore/collections-access/gusn/198379

"Province House, Site of," Salem Witch Museum, 2026, https://salemwitchmuseum.com/locations/province-house-site-of/

"RoadTrip New England's Post," RoadTrip New England, Facebook, March 7, 2026, https://www.facebook.com/roadtripnewengland/posts/the-province-house-stood-at-the-end-of-governors-alley-now-province-court-just-o/1512732010665268/

"The Province House," The Historical Marker Database, 2006-2026, https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=176115

"The Province House stood at the end of Governor's Alley," roadtrip_newengland, Instagram, March 7, 2026, https://www.instagram.com/p/DVmPgBnCPIH/

"View of the remains of the Province House, Washington Street, Boston, Mass., 1922), Historic New England, https://www.historicnewengland.org/explore/collections-access/gusn/196831

Summer Camp IV: Skin-and-bones Scouting

Webelos provisional Campsite Sequan at Yawgoog Scout Reservation, Rockville, Rhode Island. Photo by David R. Brierley.

The winding down of another summer on not so sweet a note—continued unemployment—prompted me to revisit my blogpost series on the summer camps I'd attended, to reminisce on simpler, closer times as well as the architecture that framed and shaped them.

T. Dawson Brown Gates, main entrance, Camp Yawgoog. Photo: KB1KOI.

Camp Yawgoog, a Boy Scout reservation in Rockville, Rhode Island that I attended in the summer of '77, is notable for a type of "organic architecture" that makes Frank Lloyd Wright's stab at that style seem even more slickly suburban, in terms of not really "roughing it" with his natural resources. 

Sandy Beach Dining Hall at Camp Yawgoog.

Sandy Beach Waterfront Boathouse, Camp Yawgoog. Photo by David R. Brierley.

Designed primarily by Rhode Island architect D. Thomas Russillo (1902-1980), the Yawgoog campus parallels some of the earth-hugging horizontality of Wright's Prairie Style and Usonian houses but is a far better example of the kind of sticks-and-stones, skin-and-bones building that makes its users more aware of the nature that surrounds them than the structures themselves. 

Three Point Waterfront at Camp Yawgoog.

It does this both by emphasizing the building materials' natural resources with hand-hewn logs, posts and beams and rough fieldstones, and also by eliminating most of the walls, allowing sun, breezes, green views and water views to permeate the interiors so we don't lose touch with nature.

Bucklin Memorial Building, Yawgoog Scout Reservation, Rockville, Rhode Island
designed in 1933 by architects Jackson, Robertson & Adams. Photo by J.P. Riley.

The Bucklin Memorial Building, built in 1933 from a design by Jackson, Robertson & Adams, was our "check-in" building and our formal introduction to the informality of nature, as expressed in its log-cabin woodwork and random-ashlar stonework. Its broad wingspread gave us an open-armed welcome to the open concept of nature we were in for once we passed through its gateway.

Tent at Yawgoog Scout Reservation. Photo by Robin Joubert.

But the hotel-like formality of Bucklin Memorial's design had us fooled. For we were not in for the kind of luxury, or even the basic cabin housing, that I discussed in my three previous summer camp posts. No, this time we were sleeping from Taps to Reveille in canvas tents in the great outdoors, in sleeping bags on basic bunkbeds, roughing it all the way, rain or shine, to learn survival skills.

Tents at Yawgoog Scout Reservation.

My tent was one of a circle of canvases around a central flagpole at Camp Baden-Powell. Named for Boy Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell, it was a "sub-campsite" of Camp Sandy Beach, one of three camps comprising Yawgoog (the others were Camp Medicine Bow and Camp Three Point). Camp Baden-Powell was also one of the snootiest, boasting a self-righteous cheer:

"10! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! 2! 1! 

Boomeracka-B! Poomeracka-P! 

Boomeracka-Poomeracka! Who Are We? 

We are the Scouts of Camp (clap, clap) B-P!"

Scoutmaster Jim: "What's the best campsite in Sandy Beach?"

Us: "BADEN-POWELL! YEAAAAAAA!" 

(On my first day, I was told to yell "Yeaaaaa!" whenever somebody said "Baden-Powell," so kids started saying it just to watch me react, until my tentmate Nick urged me to cut it out.)

Tents at Yawgoog Scout Reservation, Rockville, R.I.

Our biggest reaction was Reveille. After a far-off bugle-call while we tried to catch our last winks, a louder call burst from the flagpole: "Everybody UP!" Bump, thump, flip, rip, shake, rattle, roll. Bombs away from the top bunks as commotion filled my tent while we scrambled and scurried to cop the "FIRST UP" plaque at first light. "C'mon, Tent Two, let's move it!" (So long, plaque.)

Pebbles and pine-needles pricked our barren soles as we fell out in front of our tent (sometimes in the rain), as the dewy air permeated our PJs and our breath was as visible as campfire smoke. "Ten-SHUN!" All erect. "Hand-SALUTE!" Right hands stationed on foreheads as the colors fluttered their daily rise up the knotty tree-limb pole (except when it was raining). Their rope was bowlined securely in place. "TWO!" Hands dropped in a chorus of thigh-slaps. "All right, inspection's in thirty-five minutes! So let's get these tents cleaned up!" Which kicked off our mad dashes to the latrine, our helter-skelter scampers for the limited supply of brooms and dustpans, our on-the-double donning of our Scout uniforms, neckerchiefs, caps and sneakers. Floor-sweeps, trash-picks, and bed-makes became the order of the day in dread of the military-style inspection on the way.

Tent at Yawgoog Scout Reservation. Photo by Joseph Schwendt.

Fast-forward thirty-five minutes. We stumbled and fell out in front of our tents, all uniformed, on the clock – mostly. "All right, that's five points off for Tent Two!" (Good-bye, "BEST INSPECTION" plaque.) One by one, Scoutmaster Jim stared down each tent leader, who shouted in full salute, "SIR! Flaming Arrows Patrol ready for inspection! SIR!" 

Jim entered the tent to start the scrutiny: "There are pine-needles on the floor!" (But we swept everywhere!) He emerged and pointed toward our tootsies: "There's paper down there!" (But we picked up everything!) He jiggled our tent-ropes: "Too loose!" And then: "I'm taking off five more points because of that!" He pointed to me, un-uniformed. At least the latrine squad got it the worst: "The bathroom looks terrible! Sinks all dirty, hose left on the floor!" I broke into an impromptu cackle of giggles to relieve the letdown of blowing inspection and to start the rest of the day on a cheerier note.

On that cheerier note, we marched to the mess hall for breakfast: "Left, left, left-right-left!" "Sound off!" "One-two!" "Sound off!" "Three-four!" "Bring it on down!" "One-two-three-four, one-two—THREE-FOUR!" And so on.

The Camp Sandy Beach mess hall had the same open-concept design, just as open to the air as its interior space was, kudos to its network of hammerbeams, rafters and purlins, Because of its unobstructed openness (except for the "Blue" section in a separate space, used only when there was an overflow of Scouts), it had to be divided into sections, each marked by a color: Gold, Red, Yellow, etc., with a chart of left-to-right shifted color-names that were shifted under a picture of a Scout sitting and eating or a picture of a Scout walking with a tray, to indicate when each section was scheduled to stay seated or go get food, to get seconds, to bring in its plates or cups for the dishwasher, etc. This was done to keep a reasonable order in a camp situation that could otherwise dissolve into mayhem – which it could do anyway, like the time one kid got up to go to the bathroom, and another kid sprinkled pepper in the first kid's milk. I asked him why. "He got me all wet! And [Scoutmaster] José didn't do anything about it!" More giggles for me.

Another great space at Camp Sandy Beach was the theater, where that ever-dependable web of hammerbeams, rafters and purlins yielded a roomy auditorium for a smorgasbord of camp entertainment and song on the big stage, from rousing choruses of "The Green Grass Grows All Around," "Bill Grogan's Goat," "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt" (where each half of the audience tried to sing it the softest, to the point where they'd be just mouthing the words), and "I Know a Man Named Michael Finnegan" (where each half of the audience tried to sing it the loudest, to the point where they'd yell it the loudest) to umpteen performances of the same old Three Stooges sketch ("NI-A-GARA FALLS! Slowwww-ly I turrrrn! Step by step! Inch by inch!") and a lot of same-old others. 

And, of course, there were those chats with Jim the Moose, a talking, guffawing wall-mounted cervidae that hung by the stage, provoking cries of:

"We want the moose! We want the moose!" 

Evolving into: 

"We want the moose!" 

"SHOT!" 

"We want the moose!"

"SHOT!" (What were they talking about? He already was shot, and mounted!)

The amphitheater, modeled loosely on the Theatre of Dionysus in Greece but taking advantage of a natural incline to create stadium seating descending to a sunken stage overlooking the lake, was the other great Scout-gatherer. Sunday worship had a vivacious minister ("Jeremiah, Peter and John!' [in rhythm]), and the Yawgoog Choir sung a flat unison rendition of that hokey old hymn "The Old Rugged Cross." 

But the evening talent shows were a blast. I remember a rousing performance of "The Monster Mash," an Abbott-and-Costello vacuum-cleaner-salesman sketch (starring yours truly), four older guys singing a barbershop arrangement of the Mickey Mouse Club theme that segued into a cackling rendition of "Old McDonald" (M-O-U-S-Ee-i-ee-i-o!").

I also remember a performance of "The Mortgage on the Cow," where everybody bobbed up and down as they said "Hey, Joe, you're lookin' mighty low!" "We ain't got the money for the mortgage on the cow!" "Sob, sob, sob-sob-sob!" until someone said, "I just shot the cow!" which relieved everybody of their financial obligations. That may have been my favorite of all the sketches I saw at the camp (in part because it was performed only once; the others were done so much we got sick of them).

The high point of the amphitheatre was a group performance of the 12 Points of the Scout Law, where one Scoutmaster led a section of Scouts by torchlight to far off in the woods, representing one of the  12 points, and when everyone was dispersed with their Scoutmasters, on the cue of our Scoutmaster saying "A Scout is..." our groups shouted one by one, so our voices could be heard all over the reservation:

"TRUSTWORTHY!"

"LOYAL!"

"HELPFUL!"

"FRIENDLY!"

"COURTEOUS!"

"KIND!"

"OBEDIENT!"

"CHEERFUL!" (my group)

"THRIFTY!"

"BRAVE!"

"CLEAN!"

"REVERENT!"

Of course, none of us was all those things. This was all for show, and maybe some hope that we would act that way someday, once we became Scoutmasters ourselves. But until then, a typical day at Camp Yawgoog went like this:

"Hey, Todd, tell us how babies are made."

Silence from me.

"We'll throw this rock at you if you don't."

Frozen silence, as I stood there, like a deer caught in the headlights, staring at the big gnarly rock clutched in his fingers and the thousand-yard stare in his eyes. I finally walked away.

"Nah, we're only kiddin'."

"Where do you think you're going?" snapped an adult voice.

"Over there," I said meekly.

"Don't cut through a campsite."

Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place!

To be continued...

Sources:

"Camp Yawgoog," Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/CampYawgoog1916

"Camp Yawgoog," Scouting America, Narragansett Council, https://campreservation.com/546/Camps/436

"Camp Yawgoog," Scouting America Troop 23 Brooklyn, https://www.t23b.org/locations/camp-yawgoog

"Camp Yawgoog, Yawgoog.org, https://www.yawgoog.org/

"Welcome to Camp Yawgoog," Boy Scouts of America 2026 Leaders' Guide, https://www.yawgoog.org/uploads/6/8/4/2/68426127/2400969_bsoa-2026_leaders_guide_final.pdf

Wendell, Bryan, "Mix tradition with high-flying fun at Yawgoog Scout Reservation, Narragansett Council," Scouting Magazine, https://scoutingmagazine.org/2016/08/mix-tradition-with-high-flying-fun-at-yawgoog-scout-reservation-narragansett-council

"What are the Scout Oath and Scout Law?", Scouting America, https://www.scouting.org/about/faq/question10/

"Yawgoog Scout Reservation," Alchetron, https://alchetron.com/Yawgoog-Scout-Reservation

"Yawgoog Scout Reservation," Wikipedia, last edited on 10 October 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yawgoog_Scout_Reservation

"Yawgoog Scout Reservation, Narragansett Council," Scouting Magazine, YouTube, posted April 19, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJcA-Ae2-Ls

Rethinking kitsch

Does anybody remember these? 

Did it jibe with your psychedelic wallpaper while rockin' you out on Elton John or Three Dog Night in the summer of '72? 

Did it mingle with your macramé when you wore it on your wrist like a bracelet or strung it around your neck like love-beads? 

Did you twist it while doin' the Twist in your bellbottoms or your miniskirt and go-go boots?

Did its sweetcake commercials turn you on soooooooo much it made the top of your list of must-haves for Christmas?

If you answered 'no' to any of the above—'cause either you weren't around back then or this kind of kitsch was just not that into you—these are examples of the Toot-a-Loop Crazy Color Radio, aka Panasonic R-72. People found it groovy, not so much for its sound (which was far from hi-fi, and was AM only), but for its portability, wearability, and twistability ("It's an S, it's an O, it's a crazy ra-di-o!" went its Mary Poppinsy jingle—though you had to twist it open to adjust the dial). Others dug its donut-hole familiarity, sensuous curves, and novel look and feel compared to the "square" transistor radios with the telescopic antennae they were getting bored of listening to on the beach.

Compared to those music boxes, others thought the Toot-a-Loop was just "ducky" (doesn't it resemble a duck?), so awestruck by its swoopy-swirly sculpture looking good on their dresser that they didn't care how its reception made Elton John, Alice Cooper or Chicago sound like they were being filtered through a cheesecloth.

But, yeah, I had an orange-yellow Toot-a-Loop of my own, just like the one on the left. And I slathered it with the psychedelic stickers that came with it, to mesh with my "mod room." But its novelty wore off quickly as I tired of its tinny reception and aimed for the higher-fi sound of the likes of the KLH FM radio that had been a fixture in my home at least since age 3.

Western Electric and AT&T got in on the act around 1973 with Donald Genaro's design for their Sculptura Round Donut Phone, in both touch-tone and rotary-dial (who remembers how to work one of those?) versions. Now the skinnier part of the negative space in-between the non-concentric circles became the hand-friendly receiver, while the heavier half held the cradle, buttons or dial, and wiring. But this was as temporal as the Toot-a-Loop, lasting until about 1989, when digital development turned them both into dinosaur doodads I dismissed for years as void of intellectual or archival value.

It turned out I was duped. An odyssey through Boston's Museum of Science revealed to me the mathematical origins of those gimmicks: the Dupin Cyclide. Instantly recalling the familiar Toot-a-Loop image of my preteens, this display presented itself as a geometric solid curving out of two nonconcentric circles as a tubular sequence of circles expanding halfway around and contracting back to the initial starting size to form a symmetrical solid of an off-center circle within an all-encompassing circle, bulging at one end and thinning back out at the other. 

A complex model, to be sure, but basically this model I saw at the museum can fit 14 spheres inside it so that each sphere would touch its neighbor and all spheres would touch the cyclide's circular surface. In the computer-generated model to the right, the cyclide comprises multiple circles going both latitudinally and longitudinally, such that the latitudinal circles diminish in distance from each other as they near the thinner side of the cyclide but the longitudinal circles are always equidistant from each other. The cladding of the web the circles create forms a Dupin Cyclide solid.

The Dupin Cyclide (here depicted in more "hip" rainbow colors compatible with its Toot-a-Loop and Donut-Phone reductions) was discovered by, and subsequently named after, mathematician Pierre Charles François Dupin c.1802 while he was still a student at the École polytechique under the lectureship of Gaspard Monge, a pioneer of the descriptive geometry that is visually expressed in technical drawing. Dupin drew on Monge's mathematical theories and geometric drawing techniques to construct a cyclide as a product of the cross-hatching of latitudinal and longitudinal circles into a three-dimensional solid, such that the longitudinal circles would determine the cyclide's girth based on their diametrical reduction as they go around the solid, and the latitudinal circles would determine its circular form as they expand into the larger outer circle and contract into the smaller inner one. In this way the expansion and contraction of two diametrically opposed (really, perpendicular) sets of circles result in the Dupin Cyclide solid of nonconcentric circles, distinct from the "bagel" or "donut" solid of concentric circles. (Which means the Sculptura Phone wasn't a real donut, nor was the Toot-a-Loop a real "O" – but does "Dupin Cyclide" sell products?)

Phoenix Center's internal office building, taken in
2011 while under construction. Photo by Hat600.

And yes, the Dupin Cyclide model figures prominently in organic modern architecture. Perhaps the most remarkable example is the Phoenix International Media Center in Beijing, China, which applies the Dupin Cyclide form of bulging out at one end and thinning back out at the other to form a mathematically harmonic relationship with its alignment with the bending road beside it, its immediate street corner, and Chaoyang Park on one side of it.

According to its architect, Shao Weiping, the Phoenix Center's web network of mathematical spheres creates a twisting lattice "mesh" of a DNA-like double helix, wrapped in a loop in circular contours that serve as a living example of the yin-yang symbol of ancient Chinese philosophy, with two opposing geometric forces counter-forcing against each other yet complementing each other in a tension of harmony and a pushmi-pullyu of balance, just like the original Dupin Cyclide's cross-hatched circle groups.

Phoenix International Media Center, Beijing, China. Photo by EditQ.

Designed with parametric 3D modelling software, including Frank Gehry's Digital Project modeling tools, the Phoenix Center's Dupin Cyclide curves and contours have a scentifically practical use as well: they were manipulated to channel the building's surrounding airflow and convert the steel diagrid into a network of miniature canals that rechannel rainwater into reflective pools around the Center.

Montreal Biosphere, formerly the American Pavilion of Expo 67, by R. Buckminster

Fuller, on Saint Helen's Island, Montreal, Quebec. Photo by Philipp Hienstorfer.

Also, the diagrid enabled the Phoenix Center's construction in a more economical way than standard steel framing and glass or masonry walls, by creating a tensile web of circles holding the structure together with a cross-hatching technique like the original Dupin Cyclide. This is sort of a derivative of the geodesic dome pioneered by Buckminster Fuller and showcased at Expo 67. 

USA Pavilion at Expo 67, geodesic dome design by Buckminster
Fuller, with minirail running through it. Photo by CA2MI.

That dome showcased how the lattice-shell of a geodesic polyhedron distributes the stress of its tensile triangular elements throughout the structure, so it withstands heavy loads with lighter structural materials and elements. The Phoenix Center picked up on some of these dynamics, such that its circular contours formed tensile triangles in a yin-yang cohesion of opposing forces joining to create structural soundness, harmony, and physical beauty, as the diametrically opposed circle groups together formed the smooth curves of the Dupin Cyclide solid that were so sensuously appealing to the Toot-a-Loop and Donut-Phone user.

Museum of the Future (2022, Killa Design), Dubai, UAE. Photo by Lyonerov.

Yet another architectural application of the Dupin Cyclide – albeit more elliptical and less structurally revealing this time – is the Museum of the Future (Arabic: متحف المستقبل) in Dubai, UAE. Built in 2022 from a design by Killa Design of Dubai, it proclaims its intention with windows shaped like an Arabic poem about the future written by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and inscribed by Emirati Matar Bin Lahej, and a cyclide form of two nonconcentric ellipses, bulging at one end and thinning at the other. This design sculpturally promotes the seven-story museum as the incubator for ideas and innovation it was designed to be, as a showcase of scientific exhibits of what the year 2071 will supposedly bring us, from an orbital space station to advancements in ecology and biodiversity and interactive, collaborative activities for children under 10 as producers of "future heroes."

The museum's window-poetry, in English, reads:

 

We won't live for hundreds of years, but the products of our creativity can leave a legacy long after we are gone.

.

The future will be for those who will be able to imagine, design and build it, the future does not wait, the future can be designed and built today.

 

The secret of the renewal of life, the development of civilization and the progress of humanity is in one word: innovation.

Museum of the Future at night. Photo by Shefiq Abdulla.

Innovation certainly went into the cyclide-based design, which was conceived from new parametric design and Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools. These included a growth algorithm that digitally grew the internal structure in an advanced digital rendition of the the geometric drawing techniques Gaspard Monge had passed onto Pierre Charles François Dupin in the early 1800s. To realize this vision physically, Killa Design and Buro Happold Engineering enlisted Danem Engineering Works of Dubai to develop the internal steel diagrid structure of 2,400 diagonally intersecting steel members and the 1,024 fire-retardant, stainless steel-clad composite panels that present the poem on the exterior, each with a unique 3D shape not like the others, so the Arabic calligraphy can look pen-written and flow with the building's organic curve.

Yes, this is where the groovy fads of Toot-a-Loop and Donut-Phone originated from and led us to, in ways more mathematic, scientific, architectural, and downright intellectual than I could fathom as a kid who couldn't get away from the radio or get off the phone. So switch off the radio, hang up the phone, put down the "ducky," and do the math about the generations and evolutions of thought that brought them on and continue to reshape the ingenious discovery of the Dupin cyclide as a useful tool, building form, and scientific catalyst for the future. In other words, grow up!

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Sources:

"Dupin cyclide," Wikipedia, last edited on 16 January 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dupin_cyclide

"Expo 67," Wikipedia, last edited on 11 September 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_67

Gardiner, Ginger, "Building the Museum of the Future," CompositesWorld, September 29, 2020, https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/building-the-museum-of-the-future

"Geodesic dome," Wikipedia, last edited on 4 October 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesic_dome

Giovannini, Joseph, "Phoenix International Media Center, Designed by BIAD," Architect, July 14, 2014, https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/buildings/phoenix-international-media-center-designed-by-biad_o/

"Museum of the Future," Wikipedia, last edited on 12 September 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_the_Future#cite_note-:4-29

"Phoenix Center," Wikipedia,  last edited on 7 May 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Center

"Sculptura Or 'Donut' Telephone, 1980-1989," The Henry Ford (Museum of American Innovation), https://www.thehenryford.org/collections/explore/artifact/359260?AssetId=THF88084

"Western Electric 'Sculptura' Telephone, Circa 1978," The Henry Ford (Museum of American Innovation), https://www.thehenryford.org/collections/explore/artifact/60237?AssetId=THF136638