My parents, my two older sisters and I lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, between 1960-1963. I was in third to fifth grades. During our years there, we marched in protest of segregated restaurants, movie theatres, and drugstores, boycotted segregated businesses, did voter registration drives, staged sit-ins, and were threatened by gun-wielding white men. The […]
Imperialist New York Architecture in Havana, Cuba
I just returned from a fascinating nine-day trip to Cuba, a place that I have wanted to visit for 50 years. In 2000, the Minnesota-based Cass Gilbert Society newsletter explored the possibility that U.S. architect Cass Gilbert (1959-1934) had at least consulted on the National Capitol building in Havana, Cuba. Gilbert was known for his […]
Cass Gilbert’s Buildings (among others) in Newark, NJ
A couple of blocks of buildings along Broad Street, facing Military Park in Newark, are being demolished in 2013. These blocks included stores where many people once shopped, but have been vacant for quite a while. Apparently, the Prudential Company plans to build more office space once the […]
Newark, New Jersey, on Lunaape Land
I am in the New York City area this week to celebrate the centennial of the Woolworth Building, a skyscraper designed by the architect Cass. Gilbert. A group of folks, including especially Helen Post Curry and Chuck Post, along with Barbara Christen, have been key organizers of this ambitious week of activities. On April 24, […]
Case Studies of Engagement
At the recent Erasing Boundaries symposium, there were so many sessions with fascinating case studies of people’s engagements. (See “Spaces of Connection” post below for more information on this symposium.) Jocelyn Zanzot (Auburn) spoke about the Rural Landscape Studio in Macon County, Alabama, in which she and her students worked with the Shiloh Missionary Baptist […]
Local, Global and Digital Engagements
As noted in the previous post, I was able to attend the Erasing Boundaries Project symposium in April 2011 in New York City. The project is a collaboration among landscape architecture, architecture, and planning faculties, students and community partners. The two days in New York were packed with stimulating presentations and lectures. Kudos to the […]
Spaces of Connection
The Erasing Boundaries Project hosted a national symposium in April 2011 in New York City called “Educating at the Boundaries: Community Matters.” The project is a collaboration among landscape architecture, architecture and planning faculties, students and community partners. This was the second symposium; the first was held in 2008. The goals include examining the pedagogy […]
Responsive Architecture
I had the good fortune to hear Tristan Sterk talk the other night in Champaign. He’s teaching now at the Art Institute of Chicago, and came down at the invitation of Therese Tierney, an assistant professor in the School of Architecture at the U of I. Tristan is principal of the Office of Robotic Architectural […]
BEE: Built Environment Education
I have been asked about integrating aspects of architectural history into K-12 curricula, which is something I did on a very small scale when my kids were in elementary school in the 1990s. I never went so far as to align the activities we did with state standards, but that’s because I worked closely with […]
Dawoud Bey at CAA
After a really crazy spring semester, I am finally cleaning my home office, finding tidbits here and there that I intended to blog about, but never did. Dawoud Bey was the keynote speaker at this year’s College Art Association conference. He teaches photography at Columbia College in Chicago, and runs a speaker series there. Bey […]
