Thursday, February 16, 6:00 pm
Patricia Waddy on “How to Live? Where to Live? Seventeenth-Century Cardinals and Their Dwellings in Rome”

When a seventeenth-century churchman was promoted to the cardinalate, his housing needs changed significantly—not only because of his greater status and dignity, but also because of his particular duties and the rules of etiquette and decorum that governed his activities as a cardinal. Yet even among cardinals there were considerable differences in economic resources, pre-existing housing in Rome, and political status. The housing arrangements of newly-created cardinals of the Del Bufalo, Barberini, and Bentivoglio families show us not only the close association between use and planning but also an important break in the continuum of housing types, from “casa grande” to “palazzo,” in seventeenth-century Rome.

Patricia Waddy, Distinguished Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University, is author of Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and the Art of the Plan (1990) and numerous other publications. Her research is especially concerned with the relationship between use and architectural design, from small houses to the largest palaces, in the dynamic social, urban, temporal, and artistic context of seventeenth-century Rome. She is a former president of the Society of Architectural Historians and has served as Editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.

Thursday, March 9, 6:00 pm
Nigel Whiteley on "See-thru architecture: the changing meaning of transparency in architecture"

Transparency is so much a part of the urban architectural experience that, for the most part, we are completely unaware of it. We gaze through the effectively invisible plate glass frontages of stores to take in the goods inside: we “window shop” but do not even notice the transparency. Yet transparency is not neutral, nor is it something we are neutral about. At one time, transparency itself was remarkable, a sign of modernity and progress which was not just technical, but also ethical. Some of these connotations continue to the present day. Transparency changed with the development of consumer capitalism in the 1950s and ‘60s, and underwent further transformations of meaning and associations in the 1990s, sometimes within architecture, and sometimes from wider social developments.

This paper sketches some of the key changes relating to transparency and attempts, first, to show how something initially associated with honesty and truth rapidly became problematic once the power of the gaze was noticed and, second, to argue that contradiction and ambivalence characterise our contemporary response to a transparency associated with both scrutiny and voyeurism.

Buildings referred to include:
Walter Gropius, Bauhaus building, Dessau, 1926
Walter Gropius, semi-detached studio houses for Bauhaus masters, 1926
Mies, Farnsworth House, 1950
Case Study House program houses, Southern California, 1945 and 1966
Suburban, post-War, picture windows
SOM, Lever Building, New York, 1952
Norman Foster, Willis Faber Dumas building, 1975
Contemporary office blocks, banks, clubs
Norman Foster, Reichstag addition, Berlin, 1999
Big Brother house

Nigel Whiteley, professor in the department of Art at Lancaster University, has been a visiting professor at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, and the Central Academy of Art and Design in Beijing. He has lectured in the USA, including Harvard, Columbia and Austin; been a visiting scholar at the Getty Institute, Los Angeles; undertaken lecture tours of India and Croatia; and presented papers in, amongst other cities, Barcelona, Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm, Turin and Aveiro. He has also lectured widely in the UK.

Solo books include Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future (2002), Design For Society (1993), and Pop Design - Modernism to Mod, (1987). Whiteley has edited and contributed to De-Traditionalisation and Art: Aesthetic, Authority, Authenticity (2000), and is the joint editor of The Lamp of Memory: Ruskin, Tradition and Architecture (1992), and The Authority of the Consumer (1993); as well as having essays published in journals such as Art History, The Oxford Art Journal, Design Issues, Architectural History and Cultural Values, and books including Interpreting Visual Culture (1998), Modernism, Gender and Culture (1997) and Utility Reassessed (1999). He has guest edited a special number of Design Issues on design criticism (1997) and has written a regular critical column for Art Review, a selection of which were translated into Croatian and published as a collection of essays entitled Nigel Whiteley: Oblikovanje Za Drustvo - odabrani eseji (1999). He is on the international editorial board of Design Issues and the Brazilian cultural journal Arcos, and an associate editor of the Journal of Visual Art Practice. Current research deals with the values of contemporary art, and the writings of Lawrence Alloway.


Date and time to be announced
Stow Chapman



Professor Chapman will discuss his forty plus years in the architectural field and how he has managed to maintain his client's beliefs, budget,  and intentions while upholding his own principles and utilizing an expanding field of personal influences.

Professor Chapman was born and raised in a suburb of Milwaukee. He attended The University of Michigan, University of Illinois,  and Columbia University.  He attained a Master of Architecture from Columbia in 1964. Professor Chapman won the Ryerson Fellowship from the University of Illinois, and was one of six winners of the National Building Museum Terra Cotta Competition. He is the recipient of many Architectural recognitions, both local and nationwide. He is published in the new Louisville Guide to Architecture.

Thursday, April 6, 6:00 pm
James Carpenter on "Constructing the Ephemeral"

James Carpenter is considered to be a leading architectural designer with a strong background in developing new and emerging glass and material technologies. His interest in architecture and structure has evolved into a unique design practice and studio, James Carpenter Design Associates, whose primary focus is the exploration of the natural phenomena of light in transmission, reflection and refraction as they influence architecture. His studio is a collaborative environment encouraging an interchange of ideas between architects, materials, engineers, structural engineers and fabricators and has received numerous significant national and international public commissions.

Fall 2005 Lectures:

Thursday, September 8, 6:00 pm
Rod Andrew Miller on "Jens Frederick Larson"

Rod Miller is Associate Professor of Art at Hendrix College, Conway, Arkansas. He received his bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Stephen F. Austin State University, a master’s degree from the University of Iowa and his doctorate from the University of Louisville.

Thursday, September 22, 6:00 pm
Susan M. Rademacher on "The Power of Scenery: Frederick Law Olmsted's Philosophy and Practice"

Since 1991, Susan Rademacher has led the Louisville Olmsted Parks Conservancy in its effort to assist the Parks Department in renewing Louisville's historic park system. She also serves as Director of the Planning and Design Division of the Metropolitan Parks Department, and is responsible for project review and approval for the entire Olmsted system as well as master planning and project development. Ms. Rademacher was the Editor in Chief of Landscape Architecture and Garden Design magazines for five years.

Links
Morgan Professors
Department of Fine Arts
University of Louisville
Speed Art Museum