Tuesday, January 21
THE ARCHITECTURE OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY INSANE ASYLUMS: VICTORIAN PSYCHIATRY
AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL CURE
Lecture by Carla Yanni, Associate Professor, Rutgers, State University
of New Jersey
The stately towers of insane asylums were once a common sight
at the edge of American towns. Nineteenth-century asylum superintendents
maintained that insanity was 80% curable if treated early in carefully
planned purpose-built structures. The Quaker Philadelphian Thomas Story
Kirkbride developed a set of guidelines for asylums that dominated American
hospital architecture for decades. This lecture traces the development
of the Kirkbride (or linear) plan, from the modest asylums of the 1840s
to the sprawling 800-bed neo-Gothic, Second Empire Baroque, and Romanesque
Revival asylums of the 1870s. H.H. Richardson's Buffalo State Hospital
for the Insane showed innovative planning that responded to the needs
of nineteenth-century psychiatry. While followers of Kirkbride preferred
large aggregate institutions, other superintendents supported the so-called
cottage plan, a system that broke the monolithic hospitals into smaller
parts. For example, the Illinois Eastern Hospital for the Insane at Kankakee
(1878) included domestically scaled buildings with pitched roofs, porches,
and front steps. Original research in hospital archives, public libraries,
drawings collections, and nineteenth-century newspapers indicates that
psychiatrists considered the architecture of their hospitals, especially
the planning, to be one of the most powerful tools for the treatment of
the mentally ill.
Wednesday, February 12
DISCOURSE OF CIVILIZATIONS: "ISLAMIC" ARCHITECTURAL FORMS
AND CONCEPTS IN WESTERN ARCHITECTURE AND DECORATION, 1800-1950
Lecture by Mehrangiz Nikou, Independent Scholar
Artistic exchange between the Islamic world and the West has
existed throughout history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, as colonization
of the East by the West intensified contact, artistic reciprocity also
increased. The impact of Islamic architecture and design in Europe and
the United States after 1800 was extensive and multifaceted. This lecture
will examine two such cases. "Islamic" architectural forms came
to be associated with certain construction materials as well as a number
of building types, among them synagogues. Numerous synagogues were constructed
in the Islamic style throughout the Western world. The ethnological, cultural,
religious, and aesthetic reasons behind this choice will be explored.
But the influence of Islamic design went beyond formal contributions.
There was a burgeoning interest in Western architectural circles in the
principles and concepts underlying Islamic architecture and decoration,
with a view toward their use in the formation of a "new architecture."
One such example was architectural polychromy. The widespread impact of
this concept and its diverse interpretations was examined.
Saturday, March 8 and Sunday, March 9
MID-CENTURY MODERNISM IN WASHINGTON
Fifth Biennial Symposium on the Historic Development of Metropolitan Washington,
D.C.
"Mid-century modernism in Washington," the fifth biennial
Symposium on the Historical Development of Metropolitan Washington,
D.C., organized by the Latrobe Chapter of the Society of Architectural
Historians, took place on Saturday, March 8, 2003. Noted local and national
scholars described the important role Modernism played in architecture,
urban planning, and landscape design in an area usually regarded as
a stronghold of conservatism. Discussions of commercial and government
buildings, planning, and the work of Hilyard Robinson, one of the city's
most important African American architects, traced the gradual acceptance
of the new style in the 1940s and 50s.
The 1960s was the heyday of International-style Modernism in Washington.
Papers on this period covered important architects working in the city--Marcel
Breuer, Philip Johnson, and Charles Goodman--and individual landmarks--the
Metro system, the Modern landscape of Reston's Lake Anne Village, and
the still debatable designs of L'Enfant Plaza and the Martin Luther
King, Jr., Memorial Library. Finally, papers on D.C. public school buildings,
speculative suburban residential developments, and institutional and
community buildings in the Maryland suburbs demonstrated how Modern
design moved into the architectural mainstream.
Tuesday, March 18
THE LEGACY AND MYTH OF ST. PETERSBURG: MODERNITY'S CHALLENGE
Lecture by Anatole Senkevitch, Jr., Associate Professor of Architectural
History and Theory, University of Michigan
The lecture was held in cooperation with the Russian Cultural Centre,
Embassy of Russia
Founded by Peter the Great in 1703 as Russia's new capital
and "window to the West," St. Petersburg reflects a bold effort
to transform parochial Russia into a competitive European empire. Its
integration of buildings, open spaces, and waterways emerged through
a strategic planning process mandated by sovereigns and carried out
by architects whose dynamic urban ensembles consolidated the city's
physical and spatial fabric. But St. Petersburg fell from grace shortly
after the Russian Revolution, when the seat of government was transferred
back to the ancient capital of Moscow.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the city, determined
to revive its once-glorious standing as Russia's gateway to Europe,
inaugurated a bold new plan to revitalize its historic center. The lecture
profiles key aspects of St. Petersburg's singular architectural and
urban legacy and assesses the city's struggle to sustain that legacy
while seeking to modernize its cultural and physical infrastructure
for the 21st century.
Tuesday, May 6
THE PERSISTENT CHALLENGE OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN WASHINGTON
Lecture by Richard Longstreth, Professor of American Civilization
and Director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, George
Washington University
This lecture marked the publication of the second edition of Capital
Losses: A Cultural History of Washington's Destroyed Buildings by
James M. Goode.
The first edition of Capital Losses, published in 1979, catalyzed
the historic preservation movement in Washington with its account of
demolished landmarks, especially of those razed in the post-World War
II era. The newly issued second edition, expanded by 18 buildings, is
a reminder that, despite major progress over the past quarter century,
preservation in Washington still faces formidable challenges. James
Goode's introduction to this program recounted the stories of several
of the additions to Capital Losses. Richard Longstreth's lecture
explored the persistent problems that endanger the city's historic fabric—demolition
by neglect, unapproved alterations to properties, and façadism—as
well as inroads on traditional patterns of land use ranging from commercial
encroachment in residential areas to overdevelopment more broadly. Measures
taken in the name of security threaten the character of a growing number
of public spaces. In addition, the city needs to take stock of its rich
and generally unrecognized legacy of buildings and landscapes from the
mid-20th century.
Sunday, June 1
The McMILLAN RESERVOIR: AN "ARCHAEOLOGICAL RE(EN)VISION" AS
A WATER PARK
Tour and discussion with Miriam Gusevich, Associate Professor School of Architecture, Catholic University of America
The McMillan Park Reservoir was constructed in the1880s by the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers to receive Potomac River water via the Washington
Aqueduct and Georgetown Reservoir. A water treatment facility, consisting
of the McMillan Reservoir Slow Sand Filtration Plant, pumping stations,
gatehouses, and other structures, was added in 1904-1905. The entire
complex, renamed McMillan Park, was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted,
Jr. from 1906 to 1913 to be a major component of the city's park system.
In 1913, the McMillan Fountain was donated by the citizens of Michigan;
it stood in the park until 1941. The sand filtration plant was decommissioned
in 1986 and the site purchased by the District of Columbia in 1987.
Since then, many proposals have been considered for the reuse of the
site, and its fate is uncertain.
Miriam Gusevich of the School of Architecture, The Catholic University
of America, participated in city-sponsored workshops devoted to the
future of the site. She and her colleagues worked with citizen groups
and municipal officials to find creative solutions to varied needs and
desires for the reuse of the park. She lead a tour of the site and then
discussed their findings and proposals at the School of Architecture.
Saturday, September 13
TOUR OF CONGRESSIONAL CEMETERY
Tour led by members of the Association for the Preservation of Historic
Congressional Cemetery
Originally established as a neighborhood cemetery not far from the Capitol
in 1807, Congressional Cemetery was renamed in 1816 when burial sites
were set aside for the internment of members of Congress. Benjamin Latrobe
designed the distinctive cenotaphs, reminiscent of 18th-century visionary
architecture, that mark these burial sites or honor members who are
buried elsewhere. The cenotaphs were in use until 1877, when Arlington
National Cemetery became the national burial ground.
Many public and private figures are buried in Congressional Cemetery,
including architects William Thornton and Robert Mills, photographer
Mathew Brady, musician John Philip Sousa, and FBI director J. Edgar
Hoover. Also notable is the 1835 receiving vault or Public Vault where
several presidents and other notables were interred pending removal
of their remains to their home states. The monuments are an extensive
collection of 19th- and 20th-century sculpture, and the landscape represents
two centuries planning and effort.
The Association for the Preservation of Historic Congressional Cemetery,
formed in 1976, now leases the site and is responsible for operating,
developing, maintaining, preserving and enhancing the cemetery grounds.
The Association has approximately 1,000 members who contribute annually
towards the maintenance and restoration of the cemetery and is helped
by numerous volunteers.
Thursday, October 23
WASHINGTON "DOWN UNDER": L'ENFANT, THE GRIFFINS AND THE DESIGN
OF CANBERRA
Lecture by Christopher Vernon, Design Advisor, National Capital
Authority, Commonwealth of Australia; and Senior Lecturer in Landscape
Architecture, University of Western Australia
For Chicagoans Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney Griffin, Australia
provided an opportunity to apply the lessons of what they perceived as
America's shortcomings. As they refined their 1912 prizewinning design
for Australia's new capital city of Canberra, the couple drew upon the
spatial and symbolic lessons of Pierre Charles L'Enfant's 1791 plan of
Washington, D.C.--in particular, on L'Enfant's placement of landscape
vistas at the ends of a cross-axial composition. The Mall, projecting
west from the hilltop Capitol, focused on a scenographic view toward the
nation's vast interior, beckoning the fledgling democracy's expansion.
Perpendicular to this corridor, a cross axis extended south from the President's
House to capture the convergence of the branches of the Potomac River
in its prospect.
L'Enfant's sophisticated landscape effects were obscured, if not erased,
by the city's early-20th-century redesign by Daniel Burnham and the Senate
Park Commission. Monuments and other architectural objects began to usurp
landscape features as axial terminations. In designing Canberra, for a
site they imagined as a "wilderness," the Griffins resurrected
L'Enfant's aspirations , employing his technique of axial projections
to re-value landscape as a spatial container and present nature as a symbol
of democratic national identity. The slide-illustrated lecture will explore
this and other resonances between L'Enfant's Washington and the Griffins'
Canberra.
Tuesday, November 18
AN ESTHETICS OF RECONCILIATION: CULTURAL IDENTITY AND MODERN ARCHITECTURE
IN LATIN AMERICA
Lecture by Susana Torre, Architect and Independent Scholar
The lecture examined two distinct currents of nationalist thought and
practice that reshaped Latin American architecture during the first
decades of the 20th century. One, promoted by groups of young intellectuals,
writers, painters, and architects seeking to define a national identity
through neo-colonial and Hispanic-American styles, acknowledged the
colonial mix of indigenous craft and European iconography. The other,
advanced by Latin American artists and architects and members of the
economic and cultural elite familiar with European developments, aimed
to introduce forms that evoked essential national attributes. In the
1920s and 1930s, Latin American architects, in contrast to the European
architectural avant-garde, sought an "esthetics of reconciliation"
between the modern present and the historical or mythical past and between
urban and rural life, sometimes for opposite ideological purposes. Thus
the paired houses of artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Mexico
City celebrate the colorful aesthetic traditions of Indian peasantry,
while the residences of the aristocratic Victoria Ocampo, in Buenos
Aires and Mar del Plata, reflect a refined, all-white modernist vocabulary.
The lecture also followed the interaction of nationalist ideas and
modern architecture in subsequent decades: the 1940s and 1950s, when
it produced a synthesis of architecture and monumental exterior mural
painting in Mexico, and the 1960s, when Latin American architects and
cultural critics began a discourse on "appropriate" modernity,
no longer seeking national identity in an idealized past but in forms
that redefined the earlier esthetics of reconciliation.
|
