Friends of Fairsted 2015-2016 Lecture Series
Friends of Fairsted 2015-2016 Lecture Series
America’s Best Idea: Fairsted, the Olmsteds and Our National Parks
In Recognition of the 100th Anniversary of the National Park Service
Series Commentator: Anne Whiston Spirn
Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning, MIT
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Parks: Cornerstones of Civic Revitalization
Rolf Diamant
Public park systems are a measure of a healthy and functional society, an uncommon commitment to the common good. This talk will trace the symbolism and significance of public parks, from Frederick Law Olmsted’s seminal 1865 Yosemite Report to the present day, as a recurring expression of national and community renewal.
6:00 pm reception 7:00 pm lecture
43 Hawes Street, Wheelock College, Brookline
Admission is free; space is limited; registration required
http://friendsoffairsted.org/programs/
Rolf Diamant is a writer, historian, and adjunct associate professor at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. A former superintendent of Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Rolf enjoyed a 37-year career with the National Park Service as a landscape architect, planner, and park manager. He is past president of the George Wright Society and his column, “Letter from Woodstock,” addressing the future of national parks, appears regularly in the society’s journal.
2016 Annual Meeting

NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS
2016 ANNUAL MEETING
Wednesday 10 February 2016
Northeastern University
Behrakis Health Sciences Center Room 310 (3rd floor)
30 Leon Street, Boston, MA
Parking Available in West Parking Garage, Leon Street
6:00pm Business Meeting followed by lecture by
Timothy R. Rohan on his recently published book:
The Architecture of Paul Rudolph
Equally admired and maligned for his remarkable Brutalist buildings, Paul Rudolph (1918-1997) shaped both late modernist architecture and a generation of architects while chairing Yale’s department of architecture from 1958 to 1965. Based on extensive research and unpublished materials, The Architecture of Paul Rudolph (Yale University Press, 2014) is the first in-depth study of the architect, neglected since his postwar zenith.
Author Timothy M. Rohan unearths the ideas that informed Rudolph’s architecture, from his Florida beach houses of the 1940s to his concrete buildings of the 1960s to his lesser-known East Asian skyscrapers of the 1990s. Situating Rudolph within the architectural discourse of his day, Rohan shows how Rudolph countered the perceived monotony of the glass curtain-walled International Style with a dramatically expressive architecture for postwar America, exemplified by his Yale Art and Architecture Building of 1963, famously clad in corrugated concrete.
Timothy M. Rohan is associate professor in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at UMass Amherst. He has written articles for Grey Room, Casabella, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians and other publications. His new research concerns late twentieth-century Manhattan interiors.