In December of 2012, VAF Board member Aaron Wunsch was
interviewed by Alan Jaffe of PlanPhilly, an online alternative news website
dedicated to engaging and educating citizens on issues of design, planning, and
development in Philadelphia. Aaron describes
“A culture of despair” when it comes to preservation in Philadelphia. Follow the link to read
the entire article. http://planphilly.com/articles/2012/12/26/a-culture-of-despair-when-it-comes-to-preservation-in-philadelphia
Monday, May 5, 2014
Catherine Bishir participates in New Bern events
 |
| Catherine Bishir at commemoration event in October 2013 |
Last fall, past VAF President Catherine Bishir was part of
an event commemorating African American Union soldiers in New Bern, North
Carolina who were highlighted in her new book Crafting Lives: African American Artisans in New Bern, North Carolina,
1770-1900 published by UNC Press. When
reflecting on Catherine’s book, VAF member Camille Wells stated “I think this
was an especially moving event, because Catherine underscored these soldiers in
her book Crafting Lives and she
has a special gift for drawing attention to overlooked corners of the past and
underscoring them in ways that generate events of local pride like this one.”
For local coverage of the ceremony and the book please follow
these links:
Save the Date – 2014 National Preservation Conference
Attend PastForward, the premier educational and networking
event for those passionate about saving places, in Savannah, GA, Nov. 11-14.
Learning Labs, Field Studies, Intensive Workshops and Preservation Studio
provide participants with the tools and resources to improve their own
communities. In 2014, a virtual audience will join Savannah attendees with the
live-streaming of TrustLive, presentations exploring the intersection of
preservation and the world at large.
Visit
www.preservationnation.org/conference to sign up for updates and for more
conference details.
Early New England House Joinery Seminar at Historic Deerfield
Historic Deerfield will offer a one-day program focused on
Early New England House Joinery on Saturday, July 12, 2014. The day will
explore the work of 18th century joiners, including their workshops, tools and
the trade from framing to finish. Participants will also have an opportunity to
see examples of early architectural fragments in Historic Deerfield’s
collection not usually on view.
This first annual program focused on the building trades
will feature presentations by James L. Garvin, J. Ritchie Garrison, Jack Sobon,
Ted Ingraham, and Bill Flynt.
For more information and to register, please visit Historic
Deerfield’s website at
VAF Session at 2015 SAH in Chicago
SAH 68th Annual Conference
VAF is sponsoring a paper
session on “Chicago Vernacular” at the 2015 Society of Architectural Historians
Annual Conference in Chicago, April
15-19, 2015. The
session is designed to explore a range of vernacular architectural topics and
methods associated with metropolitan Chicago. Papers are welcome that investigate the
ordinary landscapes of Chicagoland from any number of approaches, including
architectural history, material culture and cultural landscapes, and those that
address symbolic systems, literary representations, and social justice
perspectives.
Proposals (including an
abstract of no more than 300 words plus a short CV) should be submitted by June
6, 2014 to either session chair: James Michael
Buckley, University of California, Berkeley, jbuckley@berkeley.edu or Marta Gutman, City College of New
York, mgutman@ccny.cuny.edu.
The complete call for
proposals with paper guidelines is available at http://www.sah.org/docs/conference/cfp-2015-sah-annual-conference-in-chicago-april-15-19.pdf?sfvrsn=8.
Notes from the Field: Projects Supported by the Fund for Fieldwork
A generous donation by long-time VAF member Thomas Carter
launched the Fund for Fieldwork in 2012, and in 2013, VAF put the FFF into
practice. The Fieldwork Grants Committee made two awards through the FFF in
support of members’ field-based research.
The first grant to Edward Chappell provided funding for his
investigation and field recording of an endangered, late seventeenth-century
building in Bermuda. Chappell’s work in Bermuda continues to expand what we
know and understand of early building practices and social constructions in the
Atlantic world.
 |
| Photo Courtesy of Edward Chappell |
 |
| Photo Courtesy of Edward Chappell |
The second grant awarded by the Fieldwork Grants Committee
also went to encourage the documentation of a regionally significant property,
this time in upstate New York. Janice Medina’s continued study of a nineteenth-century
house through the field notes she takes to better understand the property’s
evolution neatly frames the kinds of projects the Fund for Fieldwork underpins. Medina’s fieldwork will draw a more nuanced understanding of interior design
and room use, and the committee was honored to facilitate her work on-site.
 |
| Photo courtesy of Janice Medina |
 |
| Photo courtesy of Janice Medina |
Changes to the FFF made in the winter 2013-14 will enhance
its flexibility and expand its support of field research and of training in
fieldwork. Look for it in summer 2014 under its new name: the Orlando Ridout V
Fieldwork Fellowship.
VAF Creates the Orlando Ridout V Fieldwork Fellowship
To honor founding member
Orlando Ridout V, who died in 2013, the Vernacular Architecture Forum has
established a fieldwork fellowship in his name. Orlando, a mentor to so many of
us, asked that donations in his memory be made to the VAF to support students
in fieldwork. To fulfill his request, the Orlando Ridout V Fieldwork Fellowship
will support students in their field-based research and in their efforts to
learn fieldwork through apprenticeships and field schools.
Orlando also encouraged
post-graduate training and fieldwork projects as continuing development for
professionals in the field. To honor his own emphasis on field work and his
support of continuing learning in the field, the fellowship will also be
available to professionals engaged in continuing education and training
projects. The Fieldwork Grants Committee appointed each year by the VAF
President will administer the program.
The new Fellowship combines
the former Fund for Fieldwork, established by a generous gift from long-time
VAF member Thomas Carter in 2012, and contributions to the Ridout memorial fund
into this newly-named fellowship program.
Guidelines:
The guidelines for the Orlando
Ridout V Fieldwork Fellowship allow all VAF members, as well as students participating
in field school programs to apply to the VAF Fieldwork Grants Committee for
monies to support their field-based projects and training opportunities.
Applicants to the Ridout
Fieldwork Fellowship should outline their projects or training programs in a
letter of intent that includes a description of the activity and a short budget
to explain how the funds will be expended. All applicants need to submit a letter
of support, preferably from a faculty member, field school instructor, or
workplace supervisor. The two letters should be submitted to the Chair of the
Fieldwork Grants Committee for consideration; applications are accepted and
acted on throughout the year with no formal deadline.
The Fellowship awardees will
report to the Fieldwork Grants Committee at the end of their grant period (1
year maximum). The report will take the form of a one-page summary letter describing
what he or she accomplished during the fellowship.
The VAF Fieldwork Grants
Committee reserves the right to post information about the awardee and their project
in VAF’s publications or website.
The Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Urban Field School
by Arijit Sen, Associate
Professor of Architecture; senA@uwm.edu
Landscape - the scene - undeniably offers itself to us as a transparent totality, coherent and final. Compared to the ephemeral nature of human consciousness and social action, the continuity of the material world and its apparent unchangeability seem to promise constant or certain meaning. Yet the stability of physical form falsely certify stability of meaning...[i]
The Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures summer field school at Milwaukee and Madison borrows from multiple disciplinary sources to expand and explore ways to study the built environment. We include scholarship of historic preservation and material culture emerging from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, oral history methods and digital humanities scholarship developed by Randforce Associates LLC[iii] and myriad new media practices in order to rethink, document and interpret the material world. The five-week field school integrates a rigorous analysis of sensate information collected through architectural field studies, sound recordings, oral history interviews, storytelling workshops and digital media. Students make their own portable sound recorders in order to capture ambient sound. Soundscapes allows us to consider an aspect of the sensate material world that visual analysis misses. Field school projects demonstrate how multi-sensory fieldwork methods can render an otherwise invisible world of power, labor, and identity.[iv] Our projects seeks to employ the enduring creativity of storytelling, the power of digital humanities, and depth of local knowledge in order to galvanize Milwaukee residents to talk about their built environment as repositories of community memory, spaces of caring and markers of civic pride.
The
five-week course calendar covers a broad array of academic skills. Workshops
during Week 1 focus on photography, measured drawings, documentation and
technical drawings. Week 2 workshops focus on sounds, oral history interviewing
and digital ethnography. Week 3 is centered on mapping and archival research.
Weeks 4 and 5 are devoted to producing final reports, website, exhibits and multi-media
documentaries. Nationally recognized faculty directing portions of this school
include Jeffrey E. Klee, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Anna Andrzejewski, Associate Professor
of Art History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Michael H. Frisch,
Professor and Senior Research Scholar, University at Buffalo, Judith
Weiland, Randforce Assoc., Erin Dorbin,
photographer, documentarian and historian from Hey Man, Cool! Digital History
Productions, Jasmine Alinder, Associate Professor of History, University
of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Michael Gordon, Associate Professor Emeritus
of History, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Steve Wetzel, Assistant Professor of Film, University of Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Arijit Sen, Associate
Professor of Architecture, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and Matthew
Jarosz, Associate Adjunct Professor of Architecture and Historic
Preservation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The
field school integrates traditional hand drawing documentary methods with
digital tools. While on-site
documentation of buildings are hand-drafted by students, these documents are
then converted into CAD files. At the end of each day, students add metadata to
their digital photographs, CAD files, and other digital images before storing
them in a password protected Flikr® site. All interview data are stored as .wav
files in Soundcloud®. Using a
map-application we organize all visual, aural, archival, and cartographic
information by geocodes (latitude and longitude information) and the data is then
accessed using google maps. That means that as soon as a student clicks on any
predetermined study location on google maps, they have instant access to all
images, sounds, and other forms of digitized data on that site. This “digital
desktop” allows everyone to access collected information on any study location
at any time. This reduces the need to organize paper data in files and helps us
work around the limited desk and countertop spaces available in the field. It
also allows collaborative work afterhours, when students work on their projects
remotely from home. You may see partial
use of the map interface app here: http://blcfieldschool.weebly.com/main-street.html. (Partial because, raw data access is limited to
public due to privacy reasons. So you will not see interview and photograph
archives on the public site).
The field school received a national award from the American Association for State and Local History and was showcased in the American Folklore Association’s 2013 annual meeting. We thank the Wisconsin Humanities Council, Cultures and Communities Program, the Provost’s Office, the Department of Architecture and the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for their financial support.
The Field School is admitting students for the Summer 2014 field school at Washington Park and more information is available at www.TheFieldSchool.weebly.com or by contacting me at senA@uwm.edu
Check us out at www.TheFieldSchool.weebly.com
 |
| Author Dr. Arijit Sen with students at BLC field school |
Landscape - the scene - undeniably offers itself to us as a transparent totality, coherent and final. Compared to the ephemeral nature of human consciousness and social action, the continuity of the material world and its apparent unchangeability seem to promise constant or certain meaning. Yet the stability of physical form falsely certify stability of meaning...[i]
In 1977, Dell Upton urged us
to explore the seen as well as the unseen aspects of the landscape and
understand the relative roles of “vision and the intangible in the interpretation
of landscape.” Later developed in the work of scholars such as Pocius (1991),
Williams and Young (1995), Herman (2005) and Nardone (2003) a method of
analysis has emerged that intertwines interpretations of the material,
experiential, ephemeral and the affective characteristics of the built
environment.[ii]
The Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures summer field school at Milwaukee and Madison borrows from multiple disciplinary sources to expand and explore ways to study the built environment. We include scholarship of historic preservation and material culture emerging from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, oral history methods and digital humanities scholarship developed by Randforce Associates LLC[iii] and myriad new media practices in order to rethink, document and interpret the material world. The five-week field school integrates a rigorous analysis of sensate information collected through architectural field studies, sound recordings, oral history interviews, storytelling workshops and digital media. Students make their own portable sound recorders in order to capture ambient sound. Soundscapes allows us to consider an aspect of the sensate material world that visual analysis misses. Field school projects demonstrate how multi-sensory fieldwork methods can render an otherwise invisible world of power, labor, and identity.[iv] Our projects seeks to employ the enduring creativity of storytelling, the power of digital humanities, and depth of local knowledge in order to galvanize Milwaukee residents to talk about their built environment as repositories of community memory, spaces of caring and markers of civic pride.
A central concern in the use
of digital tools is the issue of privacy. Many programs like Panoramio® (www.panoramio.com) make all data public over google
maps; a common mistake that the researcher misses (and we did too initially).
Figuring out the privacy and data use policy of each application and program
may be a wise thing to do.
The field school received a national award from the American Association for State and Local History and was showcased in the American Folklore Association’s 2013 annual meeting. We thank the Wisconsin Humanities Council, Cultures and Communities Program, the Provost’s Office, the Department of Architecture and the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for their financial support.
The Field School is admitting students for the Summer 2014 field school at Washington Park and more information is available at www.TheFieldSchool.weebly.com or by contacting me at senA@uwm.edu
Check us out at www.TheFieldSchool.weebly.com
[i]
Dell Upton, “Seen, Unseen and Scene,” in Understanding Ordinary Landscapes,
edited by Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1977), 174-79.
[ii]
Gerald L. Pocius, A Place to Belong:
Community Order and Everyday Space in Calvert, Newfoundland, (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1991).
Michael Ann Williams and M. Jane Young,
“Grammar, Codes, and Performance: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Models in the
Study of Vernacular Architecture,” Perspectives
in Vernacular Architecture 5: Gender,
Class, and Shelter (1995), 40-51.
Jennifer Nardone, “Roomful of Blues:
Jukejoints and the Cultural Landscape of the Mississippi Delta,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 9:
Constructing Image, Identity, and Place (2003), 166-175.
Bernard L. Herman, “Time and Performance: Folk Houses in
Delaware,” American Material Culture and
Folklife: A Prologue and Dialogue, edited by S. Bronner (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
Research Press, 1985), 155-175.
[iii]
http://www.randforce.com;
The website explains, “Randforce Associates LLC is led by Michael Frisch,
Principal, Professor of American Studies and History/ Senior Research Scholar
at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He established Randforce in the University
at Buffalo's Technology Incubator to advance oral history scholarship and
public practice in the digital age. … He is joined by Douglas Lambert, Director
of Technology, with a background in engineering and information cartography,
and Judith Weiland, Director of Operations, with expertise in institutional
projects, local history, media production, and technology. Melanie Morse, whose
background is in education and video production, and Arnold Alt, editor and
performing artist, are Associates. Since its founding in 2002, Randforce has
been using new digital media tools to "put the oral back in Oral
History"--to mobilize the power of voice and image for professional,
community, institutional, family, and research applications.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)