Friday, September 24, 2010

New Lecture Series: Priceless: New Approaches to Historic Preservation in the 21st Century

Great series historic preservation lectures to begin today; about to head off to the first of them.

Diane Lederman of the Republican provided a schedule of events, as well as this introduction:
AMHERST - A talk by the designer of the World Trade Center Site Memorial will highlight a series of lectures this fall at the University of Massachusetts on current architectural issues.

Called “Priceless: New Approaches to Historic Preservation in the 21st Century,” the series is free and open to the public. All talks begin at 4 p.m.

The new series ties into a new preservation initiative at the university, said Max Page, the director of historic preservation initiatives for the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.

The university is now offering a Master of Science in Design and Historic Preservation.

The series is intended for everyone. “Preservation is the way most people interact with the past,” Page said. (read the rest)

Here is the text of the announcement from UMass:

Priceless: New Approaches to Historic Preservation in the 21st Century


A Lecture Series of the new Historic Preservation Initiative in the Architecture + Design Program and the College of Humanities and Fine Arts

All lectures (except for Jim Wald and Michael Arad) take place at 4 pm in Herter Hall, Room 231 on the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus.


September 24 Liz Ševčenko, “Sites of Conscience: Historic Preservation for Human Rights”

Liz Ševčenko is founding Director of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, a network of historic sites that foster public dialogue on pressing human rights and social justice issues. She works with initiatives in more than forty countries to design programs and practices that reflect on past struggles and inspire public involvement in addressing their contemporary legacies.

September 30 Michael Arad, “Reflecting Absence: Designing the National September 11th Memorial”

Michael Arad is a partner at Handel Architects LLP. His design for the World Trade Center Site Memorial, "Reflecting Absence," was chosen by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation in January 2004. Prior to winning the Memorial competition, Mr. Arad worked as an architect for the New York City Housing Authority and for Kohn Pedersen Fox, where he worked on several major projects, including Union Station Tower, a mixed-use 108-story skyscraper in Hong Kong, and Espirito Santo Plaza, a 37-story tower in Miami that won the AIA New York Chapter Design Award Citation in 2001.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning and the Dartmouth Club of the Pioneer Valley.

Note: This talk is in Hills North, room 105 at 4 pm.

October 1 Jim Wald, “The Politics and Practice of Preservation in Amherst”

Jim Wald is a professor at Hampshire College, Director of the Hampshire College Center for the Book, member of the Amherst Board of Selectmen, and Chair of the Historical Commission for the Town of Amherst.

Note: This will be a walking tour, leaving from the Amherst Town Hall, 4 Boltwood Avenue at 1 pm.


October 15 Daniel Bluestone, “Forming Attachments: The Building and Preservation of Belmead (1845-2010)”

Daniel Bluestone is Associate Professor and Director of the Historic Preservation Program at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Buildings, Landscapes, and Memory: Case Studies in Historic Preservation (2011), and Constructing Chicago. He has also led several award-winning efforts to preserve significant historic sites in Chicago and Charlottesville.

October 27 Gerald Frug, “The Architecture of Governance”

Gerald Frug Gerald Frug is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He served as a Special Assistant to the Chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and as Administrator of the Health Services Administration of the City of New York. He is the author of dozens of articles and book chapters on local government, as well as of Local Government Law (2010, with Richard Ford and David Barron), City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation (2008, with David Barron), and City Making: Building Communities without Building Walls (1999).

October 29 Sergio Kiernan “The Battle for Preservation in Buenos Aires”

Sergio Kiernan is the Architecture Editor of Página 12, the foremost investigative paper in Argentina, and the author of Classical and Vernacular: The Architecture of Alejandro Moreno” and SYASA 20 Years, about the restoration of the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.

November 12 Richard Todd, “Preserving Appearances: On Artifice and Authenticity”


Richard Todd has spent many years as a magazine and book editor at The Atlantic Monthly, The New England Monthly, Worth, Civilization, and Houghton Mifflin. He has written scores of articles on a wide range of cultural themes for Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, and the Columbia
Journalism Review, among others. He is a professor at Goucher College and author most recently of The Thing Itself: On the Search for Authenticity.

November 19 David Fixler, “Preserving the Modern: Case Studies from Massachusetts”

David Fixler is a principal of design and preservation at Einhorn Yaffee Prescott AE/PC in Boston, President of DOCOMOMO-US/New England, the international organization dedicated to preserving and documenting the modern movement, and author of numerous articles on the preservation of modern architecture. He recently led a team that completed a major preservation planning report for the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus.



The series is made possible with the support of the Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, the Dean of the Graduate School, the Department of Art, Architecture, and Art History, the Department of History, the Department of Political Science, the Legal Studies Program, the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, the Dartmouth Club of Pioneer Valley, and Hancock Shaker Village.

For more information, please contact Max Page, Professor of Architecture and History, and Director of Historic Preservation Initiatives for the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, at mpage@art.umass.edu, and visit our website at http://umass.edu/architecture.

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