2016 Directors Night
New England Society of Architectural Historians
Directors Night
6:30pm November 17, 2016
Ferris Library, in Trinity Parish House,
206 Clarendon Street, Boston
Featured Presentations:
Czech Cubism
Jacob Albert
Renaissance Architecture in the French Champagne
Virginia Raguin
Between Antiquity and the Global Stage: Designing a Port for Early Modern Palermo.
Elizabeth A. Kassler-Taub
This talk will draw on new evidence for the design of Palermo’s port in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries culled from the Archivo Generale de Simancas in Valladolid, Spain. On the basis of these previously-unpublished sources, I will propose that the design was modeled in part on the dual port system at Ostia, in ancient Rome. I argue that this engagement with antiquity – which operated in tandem with an active desire to launch the city onto a contemporary global stage – speaks to Palermo’s active participation in the theory and practice of early modern ”maritime urbanism.”
The Architect’s Knowledge: Imagining the Profession’s Historical Body, 1797-1933
Bryan Norwood
Bryan will start by talking generally about his dissertation project, in which he is arguing that the co-development of professionalization and formalized education in nineteenth-century American architecture was grounded in a particular type of knowledge: architects professing to know the history of architecture. He will then turn in the second half to talk more specifically about how the work he did with the NESAH John Coolidge Research Fellowship fits into this study, focusing specifically on the formalization of education at University of Illinois and University of Michigan.
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.
