Blogs

For those of you who couldn't attend the talk Trevor Owens gave at the iSchool yesterday, check out his slides and rough notes on trevorowens.org. Naturally, the discussion of digital preservation and its place in the future of the digital humanities raised several important and intriguing questions among students, staff and faculty in attendance.

Anna Moyer will be presenting her Architecture Design Studio 2 final project in this years HAAARCH program. The studio introduced system based design concepts, which required students to work in a continuous sequence of strategic design. The final assignment led to the design of a funerary complex on a predetermined site located on Mount Washington in Pittsburgh. Anna's design incorporated elements from the site itself, as well as from the text, Walden written by Henry David Thoreau.

Robert Bush will be presenting his architectural studio II models within the Frick Fine Arts gallery. A complimentary slideshow portfolio will also be projected to show previous projects within the History of Art & Architecture, as well as Studio Arts Department.  The projects selected provide a sense of Robert’s individual creativity through two-dimensional and three-dimensional expressions, but they also demonstrate what can be achieved through the Architectural Studies design track major.

In 1992, architectural thinker and educator Lebbeus Woods proposed a series of technological pods throughout the war-torn sections of Zagreb meant to be used for free global communication. His motivation was for a an architectural free-space away from tyrannical government and traditional social hierarchy. My talk will expand on this idea of guiding social hierarchy by way of architecture.

The Statuette of St. George (1586-97) is one of the many treasures located within the treasury at the Munich Residenz. Commissioned by Duke Wilhelm V of Bavaria in 1586, the statuette was made to contain a relic of St. George and was sent from the Duke’s brother, Archbishop Ernst of Cologne. As a reliquary, the statuette was constructed to convey the story of St. George Slaying the Dragon. St. George was a soldier in the Roman army who was later revered as a Christian martyr and is highly respected.

Located in the Cabinet des Medailles are the chalice and paten found buried at the monastery in Gourdon which is in modern day France. Though we may never know how they made it to Gourdon definitively, it is worthwhile to look into the historical and social implications surrounding these items to understand their meaning more fully.