Tuesday night, 177 Lawrence filled with students and faculty from the School of Architecture and Allied Arts to hear the first lecture in the Department of Architecture’s six-lecture series on “Cities in War, Struggle, and Peace: The Architecture of Memory-Rebuilding Cities after War and Disaster.”
The lecture series comprises five more lectures to be held at the same venue every Tuesday night at 7:30. It will conclude with a panel discussion of faculty members on Feb. 19.
This is the second (and final) year the School of Architecture will be hosting this event. Last year, it held the same series of lectures, focusing on topics related to the planning and building of memorials and memorial museums and the effect those structures have on peace efforts.
The series this year aims to continue in connecting the issues of war and peace to architecture by exploring the link between the physical reconstruction of cities that have been demolished by war or disaster and the political and personal reconstruction of the people.
The two-year program is funded by the University’s Carleton and Wilberta Ripley Savage Endowment for International Relations and Peace. It is also sponsored by the Department of Architecture and the School of Architecture and Allied Arts.
The series was conceptualized by professor Howard Davis, who said he was looking for a way to answer the question of what architecture had to do with war and peace. One way that he could make this connection was through the design and building of memorials. He later developed the second installment of the program on reconstruction.
In April 2005, Davis proposed the idea to the Savage Endowment board. It was quickly approved and granted the funding, but it took Davis another year of planning before the lecture series could begin in January 2007.
The lecture series is “not just about buildings… it (represents) how a society sees itself before and after war,” Davis said.
Davis said he feels this series is very pertinent and important because “war is still with us.”
The six lectures this year take cases of six different cities, each devastated by some sort of fighting or disaster. The speakers are experts in a variety of fields relating to the topic and will be brought in from all over the world. Tuesday’s lecture, “The Many Uses of Reconstruction: Ideology, Economics and Design in Berlin, 1945-2008,” was given by Brian Ladd, a German historian. The focus of his lecture drew many parallels between the process and style of the rebuilding of Berlin and the political and cultural methods of healing that were taking place at the time.
Davis said he has no current plans to continue with another similar series, although he would “love it if the School of Architecture would follow up with this and continue the series.”
The lectures are free and open to the public.