[Discussion] Fourth Savannah Symposium: Architecture and Regionalism

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

The 4th Savannah Symposium: Architecture and Regionalism

http://www.scad.edu/dept/arlh/symposium4/index.html

February 24-26, 2005

Invitation to Attend

Directed by Thomas R. Gensheimer and E. G. Daves Rossell, with the
assistance of Karl Schuler

The Department of Architectural History at the Savannah College of Art and
Design invites you to attend its fourth biennial symposium on architectural
history and contemporary practice.  The 2005 symposium features 65 speakers
from around the world, 2 keynote addresses, 2 tours, and 1 plenary session
addressing the built environment and regional identity.  We begin with the
simple proposition that architecture is inevitably regional.  While
globalizing trends alter or create entirely new regions, regional identities
remain-if one can identify them.

The symposium will explore the ways in which regionalism has been and is
continuing to be defined or redefined.  What are regional architectural
traditions and how are they defined?  Can regions be defined through
architecture?  How do regional spaces shape social identity?  What
constitutes a regional boundary in space or time?  How have popular
adoptions of regional form muddied the understanding of region?  Is there a
regional and timebound character to popular forms as well?  What are some
contested identities of regions?  How have regional traditions of
architecture and cultural landscape been interpreted by artists, authors,
and scholars?

Keynote speakers: Nezar Alsayyad and Henry Glassie.

Nezar Alsayyad is Chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and
Professor of Urban History at the University of California, Berkeley, as
well as an architect and planner.  A prolific scholar and designer, Alsayyad
founded and is executive director of the International Association for the
Study of Traditional Environments, and editor of Traditional Dwellings and
Settlements Review.  His many books include most recently, The End of
Tradition (2004), and Urban Informality (2004) co-edited with Ananya Roy.
Cairo: A Medieval City for a Modern World co-edited with Nasser Rabbat will
be out in early 2005.  He has produced and directed two public television
video documentaries, Virtual Cairo and At Home With Mother Earth.  His
architectural and urban projects include a resort in the Red Sea, several
apartment buildings, and numerous award-winning competition entries.  More
information can be found at:
[arch.ced.Berkeley.edu/people/faculty/index.htm]

Henry Glassie is College Professor of Folklore and Co-Director of Turkish
Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.  A seminal figure in the study
of vernacular architecture, Glassie has produced an unending series of
provocative articles and such major books as Pattern in the Folk Culture of
the Eastern United States (1969), Folk Housing in Middle Virginia: A
Structural Analysis of Historic Artifacts (1975) Passing the Time in
Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community (1982), Material
Culture (1999), and Vernacular Architecture (2000).  As of 2004, the
Presidential Special Achievement Award of the Vernacular Architecture Forum
is named the Henry Glassie Award.  More information can be found
at:[www.Indiana.edu/~alldrp/members/glassie.html]

Plenary Session speaker: Kingston Wm. Heath

Kingston Wm. Heath is Director of the Graduate Program in Historic
Preservation, School of Architecture and Allied Arts, University of Oregon.
He is most recently the author of The Patina of Place: The Cultural
Weathering of a New England Industrial Landscape (2002), winner of the
Abbott Lowell Cummings Award presented by the Vernacular Architecture Forum
"in recognition of the outstanding work in North American Vernacular
Architecture Studies."  Heath is currently working on Crossing the
Vernacular Threshold: An Interpretive Theory of Vernacular Architecture
(forthcoming).  More information can be found
at[http://hp.uoregon.edu/index.cfm?mode=faculty]

For more information on the symposium series, a schedule of events,
abstracts of papers, and registration, please
see[www.scad.edu/dept/arlh/symposium4/index.html]


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