The Society of Architectural Historians is pleased to announce four new SAH American Architecture and Landscape Field Trip grants for 2019-2020. SAH has awarded grants to support field trip programs administered by Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, a first-time grantee, and three grantees who have received SAH Field Trip grants in the past, Glessner House, the Dade Heritage Trust, and the Illinois Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects.
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, part of the Cranbrook Educational Community, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, requested funding to work with high school students. Their field trip program will focus on the Cranbrook campus, with buildings designed by Eliel Saarinen, Rafael Moneo, and Todd Williams/Billie Tsien. Students will engage in a three-part program focusing on presentations about the profession of architecture as well as a design history of the campus, followed by a walking tour and a design charette in which students will be asked to design their own expansion for the Cranbrook Art Museum, Saarinen’s 1942 masterpiece. Using plans and photographs from the Cranbrook archives, students will create massing models for their additions. The goal of this field trip program to educate students about the history of buildings and the architectural profession. This is a pilot program designed to develop, test, evaluate and determine the feasibility of a larger scale, repeatable field trip program.
The Glessner House, located in the south Loop area of Chicago, will continue to offer their Time Travelers program to introduce third grade students to concepts in architecture, architectural history, design, and social history, using the 1885-1886 Glessner House, designed by H. H. Richardson, as the primary resource. Students tour the exterior of the house (front and back), the main entry and major rooms including the library, parlor, dining room, school room, and kitchen. At each stop docents give students an opportunity to observe and discuss the structure, design, materials, and uses of the house, as well as the roles of the family, guests, and servants who lived in or visited the house. Following the structured tour, students visit three learning centers where they will participate in hands-on activities designed to reinforce and apply lessons learned from the tour.
The Dade Heritage Trust in Miami, Florida, will offer their Historic Places, Green Spaces Educational Program designed to acquaint students with significant cultural and historical sites where they intersect with recreational spaces such as city parks, within urban Miami. The goal is to inspire preservation of both the built and natural environment. The program is open to all Miami-Dade County K-12 students from both public and private schools, with a focus on Title I schools. Among the sites to be toured are the City of Miami’s Lummus, Southside, and Simpson Parks, the latter is a heritage forest in urban Miami. They also will tour a variety of buildings located in or nearby the parks including the historic 1855 Wagner Homestead, the 1844 Fort Dallas Barracks, and the 1905 Dr. James M. Jackson Office.
The Illinois Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects, based in Chicago, will use SAH field trip funding for their Project Pipeline Architectural Field Trips, which provided an opportunity for students to closely engage with great architectural works and professionals in the Chicagoland area. The 2019 field trips will focus on the architecture and landscapes on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. It also revolves around an existing “Design and the Public Impact” symposium, which features discussions of how students and professionals can use design to solve social justice issues in the built environment. Among the speakers who will be presenting to the students are Rosa T. Sheng, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, who was the founder and Chairperson for Equity by Design in San Francisco, and Katherine Darnstadt, founder of LATENT DESIGN, a firm that concerns itself with social justice and architectural design.
