Historic Performances: Uncovering the intangible heritage of historic environmental practices by Henrik Schoenefeldt, Professor for Sustainability in Architectural Heritage, University of Kent, UK
and
Dr. Reid Goes to Liverpool by Vidar Lerum, Associate Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Building on his research of the last 15 years, Prof. Schoenefeldt will explore how a new and more critical understanding can be gained through the study of historic experiences of technologies. The focus of much research on the history of environmental design in architecture has been on the physical technology. The study of technology alone, however, only provides a limited understanding of the nature of historic approaches to environmental control. Using the Houses of Parliament as a case study, Prof. Schoenefeld will speak on the concept of a 'post-occupancy history' of architecture (PoH). Derived from the modern phrase 'post-occupancy evaluation,' post-occupancy history is concerned with the study of historic experiences of buildings in use as well as the study of historic methods of building management and evaluation. In this talk Prof. Schoenefeldt argues that historic research can provide an instrument to reconstruct historic engagements with the performance of buildings, taking into account the role of users, operating staff and scientists.
Dr. Lerum’s talk will delve into the “archeology of historical and contemporary buildings.” Inspired by Michel Foucault’s work on the Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language (1969), his research centers on the assessed performance of built and actively used objects of architectural design. For example, at the age of 22, the young architect Harvey Lonsdale Elmes found himself the winner of an architecture competition for St George’s Hall in Liverpool, a large and prestigious project for a civic building in the rising maritime mercantile city in the north-west. Elmes’ competition entry was chosen as the winner from among 75 submissions. In addition to building a new grand concert hall, the Liverpool Corporation also saw the need to build Courts of Assize. The competition for this project was again won by Elmes, this time competing with 88 other entrants. It is in this setting that Harvey Lonsdale Elmes went to see Dr. David Boswell Reid. The young architect was eager to learn about Dr. Reid’s experiments with heating and ventilation. He followed closely as the work at the temporary House of Commons progressed and he visited Dr. Reid’s testing facilities at his chemistry laboratory, which at this time had been expanded into a research facility for experimental studies of the movement of air and smoke under changing environmental conditions (Reid, 1855). Using photographs, drawings, sections, plans and diagrams which are painstakingly redrawn for consistency and clarity, Lerum will compare works of architecture noted in his book Sustainable Bulding Design: Learning from Nineteenth-century Innovations. He will emphasize on the artistry of the masters of architecture who came before.
Access readings here or download the attached ZIP file:
https://uchicago.box.com/s/r9r5bhyk2xky0icidg8zap33it1a62q9
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