Titles
A-C
D-G
H-K
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P-S
T-Z
. Infratecture: Exploring the urban and architectural design...A Decolonial Vision of Cities, Rural Areas, and Life A Material Return to Gendered Labor in Modern Architecture v...A New Suburbia in a post-COVID World?A Tour of the Monuments of Jinwen Train line: Infrastructura...Alternative housing models in action. Public-community ecosy...Architectural Investigation of Urban Villages in Shenzhen an...Architecture, technology and the environment: proposals for ...Balancing ACT: transgressing boundaries, asserting community...Biomimicry Thinking: fostering quality of life and sustainab...Changing landscapes and places in fluxChanging Physical and Societal Landscape in the New Normal: ...Cities without Country: High-density urban agriculture and t...Co-creating with design Urban-Rural food systems for sustain...Colonizing the harbour - The role of architecture in creatin...Colour seduction: Foster Associates strategies for architect...Concept of Garden city in Wrocław (Breslau) after World War...Counterculture Countryside: Unveiling Stories of a Fallen Oh...Covid Distancing and its Effect on Shared Mental Models & ZP...Defining Wilderness: The Evolving Boundaries of Banff Nation...Designing for Sustainable Community Transformation: Age-Frie...Designing in the Anthropocene. How living and designing with...Designing Virtual Cultural Memories for Asian Cities: the Ca...Ecotopia – Architectural Ecotopes as an approach to combat...Ethics in the Outside between Transpacific Coastal Centres a...Expanding Service Learning Projects in Design Education Beyo...Exploration for an Inclusive approach for Historical Settlem...Factors Sustaining City’s Distinctiveness. Case Study Sura...Façade as Façade: Northern Ireland’s parallel realityFrom alternate realities, to the urban impossible: Drawing o...Greened Out: Exploring the understanding and effects of gree...Hunting the Kingfish: On Uncovering and Reclaiming Exurban Q...Indigenous Weaving Techniques in Shaping Building SkinsInfinite Space of the U.S. Interior Justice through (Re)Planting Aotearoa New Zealand’s Urban ...Keynote IntroductionKEYNOTE: Don’t be second hand American – build on Count...KEYNOTE: Ethical SpacesKEYNOTE: From Countryside to Country-sideMapping 18th-century London through Hogarthian ArtMapping Everyday Community Life in Exurban Areas around Toky...Mapping lifelines and tracing tendencies: how the design of ...Mapping of social initiatives as a model of local developmen...Memory, emotions and everyday heritage in good architectural...Micro Project - Macro Subjects: Waste and reuse as strategy ...Multicultural Design Projects and Openness to Diversity Multiculturalism in Public Transport HubsNarrative and Sustainability: An Interpretation and a Case S...Networks of Circular Economy Villages: Garden Cities for the...Neuro-Participatory Urbanism: Sensing Sentiments and Trackin...New communities and new values? Exploring the interplay betw...Non-urban zero emission neighbourhoods: Two cases from Norwa...(Not Just) Another Roadside Attraction: Documenting Roadside...Participatory methodology for the inventory of Intangible Cu...Pedagogy of Integration of L+Arch. The Last Pristine Place i...Poipoia te Kākano, Kia Puāwai – Enabling Māori communit...Protecting, Integrating & Allocating Agriculture in Urban De...Reflecting on the Urban and the Regional: Designing for a po...Resilient futures through collaborative teaching Revalue. Heritage as idea and project.Revisiting the notion of landscape in Landscape ArchitectureRings of Urban Informality – Manifestations, Typologies an...Rites and Myths. A new form of countryside regenerationRural Parks and the Urban Renaissance: Finding a Blueprint f...Rural Resourcefulness: Lessons from the American School Rurbanism or a transversal overlook in our territoriesSegregating the Suburbs: The History of the Ladera Housing C...Smudge, Prayer and SongSustainable Civil Infrastructure: A Historical Survey Teaching non-designers a designThe "K" shaped recovery: The impact of COVID 19 on housing i...The analysis of public space qualities in terms of flexibili...The Black Panthers, Rat Park, and Opioid Addiction – A Rur...The Cultural Capital of Urban MorphologyThe Garden in the Machine: new symbols of possibility for a ...The Influence and Importance of Sacred Places in Community A...The Life of the River: Currents and Torrents at the Edge of ...The Reach of a Morpho-Topical ArchitectureThe street, the place where the life is. A rudofskian though...The sustainability of urban ruins—Shougang Group industria...The World Park and the CountrysideUrban CatalystsUrban Design Projects for University CampusUrban Protected Areas – between cities and rural hinterlan...Urban Revitalization –Defragmenting the Lahore CanalValue-Inclusive Design for Socially Equitable Communities Virtual Tourism relocation (VTr) - to experience the lost, t...Welcome & IntroductionWelcome and IntroductionWhat does it mean to see cows grazing in American cities? Wild Ways – A scoping review of literature on understandin...
Schedule

Cultures, Communities and Design

Calgary
Rural Resourcefulness: Lessons from the American School
A. Person & S. Pilat

Abstract

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What lessons can architects and planners draw from histories of innovative building in rural contexts? The work of the American School, which originated in Oklahoma in the mid-twentieth century, offers some examples. Under the leadership of Bruce Goff, the University of Oklahoma developed an original approach to design that stood apart from the Bauhaus and Beaux Arts models. Students were taught to look to sources beyond the accepted canon of western architecture and to find inspiration in everyday objects, the natural landscape, and non-western cultures such as the designs of Native American tribes. Grounded in an ethos of experimentation, material resourcefulness and contextualism, the American School approach produced wildly imaginative works that were nevertheless deeply connected to the landscapes and cultural contexts from which they emerged. Students learned to look at every material—whether natural or manmade—as a potential building material. As a result, ashtrays, feathers, slag glass, local rocks found in farmers’ fields, and recycled oil drilling parts were incorporated into the fantastic designs of American School architects. An analysis of two American School projects illustrates how this material resourcefulness was put into practice and served as a motivator for design innovations. The 1948 Ledbetter House by Bruce Goff and the 1961 Prairie House by Herb Greene illustrate the ways in which the designs of the American School incorporated inexpensive, found, and recycled materials in distinctive ways. Moreover, the means of construction employed necessarily had to rely on local and often unskilled labor; faculty colleagues and students were often called in to help build. Today, the material resourcefulness of the American School, born in part from economy, scarcity, and pragmatism, may serve to inspire 21st century designers and planners searching for ways to build more sustainably by looking at their material contexts with fresh eyes.

Biography

Dr. Angela M. Person is Director of Research Initiatives and Strategic Planning for the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma and lecturer in the OU Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability. In her role as Director of Research, she supports the Gibbs College in leveraging its resources to drive development of thoughtful, sustainable and experiential solutions to the design problems of the future. She also serves as Diversity Liaison for Gibbs College. Dr. Person’s research looks at relationships between social and material conditions and individual, community, and public identities. She teaches courses in architectural theory and criticism, architectural methods, environment and society relationships, political geography and human geography. Person earned her PhD from the University of Oklahoma, while studying in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability. She also has a background in museum studies (MA), environmental design (BS), and geology (minor). In her free time, she enjoys designing furniture and interiors with her friend and D-Plei Design partner, Luisa.

Stephanie Z. Pilat is the Director of the Division of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma. Pilat is a designer and writer whose teaching and research examines points of intersection between politics and architecture. Pilat’s work considers the ways in which design culture both reflects and constructs national identities and political agendas. She is the author of Reconstructing Italy: The Ina-Casa Neighborhoods of the Postwar Era (Routledge 2014), and co-editor of Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture (OU Press 2020), and The Routledge Companion Guide to Fascist Italian Architecture and Urbanism: Reception and Legacy (2020). Pilat’s research has been generously supported by a Fulbright Fellowship, a Rome Prize from the American Academy, a Wolfsonian-FIU fellowship, an American Fellowship from the American Association of University Women, a Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the University of Oklahoma and the University of Michigan. In 2015, Pilat was named as one of the “30 most admired educators” in the nation by DesignIntelligence magazine. Pilat holds a professional degree in architecture from the University of Cincinnati and a Masters and Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory from the University of Michigan.