All posts filed under: Historic Preservation

People (and Dog) Watching in Rome

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Saturday was a picture perfect day in Rome.  Not a cloud in the sky.  Mid-60s temperature.  Our windows were open all day to let in the fresh air and sunshine.  It was a day that called us to go outside. And we did just that, heading over to the largest landscaped public park in Rome, located nearby the Academy in Monteverde on the Janiculum.  While we walked, talked, and enjoyed the sunshine, we primarily engaged in the age-old past-time of people watching.  Thankfully, we were rewarded in this beehive of activity.  Children playing football. Teenagers in love. Older couples holding hands, both to show affection and to steady their partner. Picnics on the grass. Danish architect Jan Gehl has said that – in the past 50 years – architects, landscape architects and planners… “…have gotten confused about scale. They constantly confuse car scale with people scale. Sometimes they make a mix, but most of the time they make car scale and say, look, there’s a sidewalk, people can walk here. What’s the problem? That is …

To Be An Artist

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Yesterday the Fellows Walk took us to the opposite side of Rome, where the city grew outside the walls in the 19th century.  It was a different take, focused on unification, industrialization, and city planning. The tour ended in the Quartiere Coppedè (the Coppedè Quarter) designed by architect Gino Coppedè. A small enclave of apartments and houses from the early 20th century, the buildings exhibit a riot of every Italian architectural influence imaginable.  Wild historical eclecticism – one short-lived response to modernism of the early 20th century. Following the end of the tour, Candice and I roamed the neighborhood with Jeff Cody from the Getty, taking photographs and finding new elements to view on every wall.  Over a coffee, Jeff pulled out a small sketch book to show us some drawings he had made from earlier visits to Italy, and it was then that I regretted not having taken any sketching classes in my life. Just look at these possibilities in the Quartiere Coppedè:         It was the second time in two …

Observations from the Road: (“The Pedometer is Getting a Workout” Edition)

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Rome has steps. Everywhere.  A lot of steps.  (Yes, I can confirm for Mrs. Reeves, my sophomore English teacher, that I know a “lot” is a field and not “many” but I like the way “a lot of steps” sounds.) So begins this edition of “Observations from the Road” (or “The Pedometer is Getting a Workout” edition). For those who may be new to More to Come…, the “Observations from…” series are short – often meaningless – comments that don’t deserve a full blog post (or perhaps even the light of day) but that hasn’t stopped me from posting them in the past.  So here goes with the current edition. I’m going to break the pedometer – Everyone who has been to Rome told us that we’d walk a great deal…but I guess I didn’t really believe it until we arrived and started walking.  And believe me, I love to walk. Rome is a wonderful city to see from the sidewalk (or the middle of the street, where a great deal of walking appears to …

View of Florence

48 hours in Tuscany

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48 hours barely counts as dipping your toes in the water that is Tuscany, but it is what we had for this first visit over last weekend.  With Claire in the country for a limited time, we opted to experience a few sites and then return later for a longer drink of more that the region has to offer. But first, let me detour to talk about trains. At the suggestion of our friends Tom and Rod, we booked our trip on the Italo high-speed train from Rome to Florence.  Ninety minutes after boarding – following the smoothest train ride I’ve ever experienced and going 260 km/hour (that’s about 160 mph for the metrically challenged) – we pulled into Florence and walked ten minutes to our cozy little historic hotel. For those who talk about American exceptionalism, I’d beg to differ. When it comes to train travel, we aren’t even on the same planet! On Monday, while we were coming back from Florence on the train, our DC Metro apparently had another fire in a …

Looking Back, Looking Forward

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Candice and I arrived at the American Academy in Rome on Monday morning to begin my six-week sabbatical.  We suffered through the usual jet lag (and a bit more…but that would be TMI) and quickly settled in to our cozy apartment.  Over the course of the first few meals we were welcomed by dear friends of Tom (recent Rome Prize winner from the National Trust) and Rod’s (his husband); joined a talented graphic artist and his wife at the bar when we both realized we were there for our first night (and then later realized we had met a decade ago when he designed the branding for The Glass House); were connected to some new acquaintances through long-time colleagues in the U.S.; and simply met a host of welcoming fellows and “fellow travelers.” Once the jet lag wore off, we began to explore the neighborhood of Trastervere which lies at the foot of the hill from the Academy (down some 70 steep steps…but that’s another story.) Our focus was the Basilica di Santa Maria, where …

Talking Preservation’s Future on “Back to the Future Day”

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I am in Missouri as part of a cross-country trip that began on Friday in Los Angeles and will end on Thursday in New York City. The annual Missouri Preservation Conference – where I was the keynote speaker – brought me to Cape Girardeau, winner of a 2015 Great American Main Street Award. The conference theme?  The Past and Future of Preservation.  As luck would have it, my talk was on Back to the Future Day!  What better occasion to talk about the future of preservation! Here’s the description of Back to the Future Day from the New York Times: On Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2015, at 4:29 p.m., our today will finally catch up to the tomorrow depicted in “Back to the Future, Part II.” In that 1989 film, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) appear with a flash in their DeLorean time machine from 30 years in the past. Suddenly, they find themselves in the same town, Hill Valley, but surrounded by impossible technology and outlandish social mores. It’s …

Ickworth

A brilliant week of English charms and global lessons

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In Cambridge – a lovely town with an international reputation for education – it was appropriate that the delegates to the 16th International Conference of National Trusts (ICNT) took in the charms of the East of England while also gathering so many valuable lessons from instructors both local and global. All in all – to use the British equivalent of great – it has been a brilliant week! The opening day’s remarks set the stage for discussions throughout the week.  Dame Helen Ghosh – Director General of the National Trust for England, Wales & Northern Ireland – began by reminding the delegates of the need to be open to change as we seek to conserve our heritage.  Jonathon Porritt challenged many of the assumptions the delegates brought to Cambridge, in a speech on our environmental challenges that was referenced throughout the week. Tuesday took Candice and me along with half of the delegates to Wimpole Estate, for conversations around cultural identities.  This emphasis arose from the 15th ICNT in Entebee, Uganda, in 2013, which raised …

Wimpole Hall Interior

Sheep and chandeliers

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“Sheep and chandeliers” is the title the National Trust of England, Wales & Northern Ireland has given to its brochure for Wimpole Hall and Wimpole Farm, where we joined a group of participants in the 16th International Conference of National Trusts for a day of in-depth discussions and tours on Tuesday. Over the course of the day, we gathered in small groups throughout the estate with National Trust staff and volunteers to discuss topics such as the spirit of place, ways to use the past to engage with contemporary issues, and cultural identities in a homogenizing world. All were fascinating, made even more so by the extraordinary setting of this estate and working farm. We learned of the site’s role in World War II, where it hosted American and British bombers on the large expanse of lawn in the front of Wimpole Hall, as well as some of the challenges of interpretation for a site with layered histories and traditional expectations of how an estate would be presented to the public. The discussion sessions were …