This SAHGB - IHR seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).

Abstract:

In a session held jointly with the seminar Architectural History (SAHGB/IHR) and the Women’s History seminar (IHR), a panel of researchers who are leaders in the field of women in building construction will discuss and debate the role of women in the building trades in the Early Modern Period. Questions and issues which have reoccurred in historical research over many years will be considered. What trades did women undertake? Did women learn and exercise building skills? Did they apply them on site or in workshops (were they hands-on?)? The historical record is very uneven and often unclear. Historians have questioned whether it can be assumed that a woman named as a carpenter, plumber, mason, etc. actually was. Long-standing issues of widows, apprenticeship and women in business as builders will be aired and interrogated from the different perspectives of speakers.  

For the history of women in building construction in Britain and Ireland in the Early Modern Period, the discussion brings together Linda Clarke, Conor Lucey, Amy Erickson, and Kirsty Wright and Elizabeth C. Biggs with an overview of European gender-based practices from Shelley E. Roff. After short papers of ten minutes the panellists will follow up with a discussion of issues arising from the presentations, both contested and agreed, with those attending the seminar in-person and online invited to take part.

Registration:

Please use the form below and watch for the pop-up message that will appear on screen after you submit your details. You can copy the Zoom details that will be shown in this message, for those joining remotely.

Book A Place:

A day event held at The Courtauld Institute

This symposium – organised jointly by The Courtauld, the University of Kent, and the SAHGB – celebrates the extraordinary work and legacy of Mark Girouard (1931-2022), one of Britain’s greatest architectural historians, whose work continues to revolutionise the scope and perceptions of the discipline both within academia and beyond. Mark’s knowledge and expertise were as eclectic as they were ground-breaking, whilst his infectious passion and willingness to share them with, and foster them in others, was truly remarkable. Several generations of architectural historians have benefitted from, and indeed have been formed by, his support and writings. It will provide an opportunity for some of the leading architectural historians of Britain and Ireland to both reflect on how the vast corpus of Mark’s work has influenced their own thinking in the past, and, most importantly, to present new research and novel insights within the various fields impacted by Mark’s writing.

The symposium has been planned to take place as part of the foundational year of the SAHGB Girouard Fund, established in Mark’s name to support publications, research and programmes in architectural history.

Opened with addresses given by the Märit Rausing Director of The Courtauld, Mark Hallett, and Blanche Girouard, the day will commence with a keynote paper given by Maurice Howard (University of Sussex), followed by three sessions, each covering a different realm impacted by Mark’s scholarship and academic influence. The sessions range from sixteenth-century architecture to present and future concerns in architectural history, and will consider Mark’s influence on subjects as various as Early Modern state apartments; the study and perception of the Irish country house; Victorian pubs; and modern architecture in the pages of Country Life.

The conference convenors are Manolo Guerci (University of Kent); Kyle Leyden (The Courtauld Institute) and Elizabeth McKellar (SAHGB President).

Speakers will include: Gordon Higgott (former English Heritage), Emily Cole (Historic England), Margot Finn (UCL), Frances Sands (Sir John Soane’s Museum), Patricia McCarthy (Trinity College, Dublin), John Martin Robinson (College of Arms), Edward McParland (Trinity College, Dublin), Andrew Saint (The Bartlett), Michael Hall (Apollo Magazine), Alan Powers (The 20 th Century Society), and Jeremy Musson (former Country Life).

The day will conclude with a round table discussion, to be followed by drinks.

Programme:

How to Book:

A light lunch and refreshments will be included in the registration fee.

Booking for this event will close at 12PM on Wednesday, 16 October 2024.

Students: £10 | Full Tickets: £15 | BOOKING LINK (external, The Courtauld Research Forum)

Calling SAHGB Members!

We will be sending subscription renewal alerts in January and February, but you can use the ‘Renew Now’ form to carry on with your membership to the end of 2024 if desired.

This SAHGB - IHR seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).

Abstract:

Why did artists include prominent architectural settings in their narrative paintings? Why did they labour over specific, highly innovative structural solutions? Why did they endeavour to design original ornamental motifs which brought together sculptural, pictorial and architectural approaches, as well as showcasing their understanding of materiality?

Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy addresses these questions in order to shed light on the early exchanges between artistic and architectural practice in Italy, arguing that architecture in painting provided a unique platform for architectural experimentation. Rather than interpreting architectural settings as purely spatial devices and as lesser counterparts of their built cognates, this book emphasises their intrinsic value as designs as well as communicative tools, contending that the architectural imagination of artists was instrumental in redefining the status of architectural forms as a kind of cultural currency.

Exploring the nexus between innovation and persuasion, Livia Lupi highlights an early form of little-discussed paragone between painting and architecture which relied on a shared understanding of architectural invention as a symbol of prestige. This approach offers a precious insight into how architectural forms were perceived and deployed, be they two or three-dimensional, at the same time clarifying the intersection of architecture and the figural arts in the work of later, influential figures like Giuliano da Sangallo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Baldassarre Peruzzi, whose work would not have been possible without the architectural experimentation of early fifteenth-century artists.

In conjunction with our October seminar, the speaker is leading a viewing of materials at the Soane Museum the same afternoon, limited to 10 places.

Registration:

Please use the form at the bottom of the page and watch for the pop-up message that will appear on screen after you submit your details. You can copy the Zoom details that will be shown in this message, for those joining remotely.

Speaker Bio:

Livia Lupi is a historian of art and architecture in early modern Europe, with a focus on the intersection of artistic and architectural practice. Her work has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust and the Warburg Institute. In addition to her research, she works as a curator, editor, and translator.

Image Caption: Book Cover, Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy

Book A Place:

In conjunction with our October seminar, the speaker is leading this viewing of materials at the Soane Museum, limited to 10 places.

Abstract:

This visit is an opportunity to examine first-hand two key works of the Italian Renaissance in the collection of the Sir John Soane’s Museum: the North Italian Album (c. 1500) and a partial copy of Francesco di Giorgio’s Opusculum de architectura (vol. 128; c. 1550). The North Italian Album is an eclectic collection of cityscapes and colourful designs for buildings and objects. In dramatic opposition, the Francesco di Giorgio copy-drawings belong to a workaday model book of machine designs produced by tracing. Including comparative material in the Soane’s collection such as the remarkable Codex Coner, discussion will centre on the conventions of architectural drawings in Renaissance Italy and on the relationship between artistic and architectural practice, enabling participants to reflect on the strategies of architectural representation and questioning our understanding of what constitutes an architectural drawing. The visit is led by Livia Lupi (University of Warwick), author of Painting Architecture in Early Renaissance Italy and curator of forthcoming digital exhibition Beyond the Painter-Architect: Artists Reinventing Architecture in Renaissance Italy, and by Elizabeth Merrill (University of Ghent), an expert on Francesco di Giorgio and Principal Investigator of ERC project Copying as Common Practice in Early Modern European Architecture.

Registration:

To book a place, please email stephen.gage@sahgb.org.uk
Max. 10 participants

Speakers:

Livia Lupi is a historian of art and architecture in early modern Europe, with a focus on the intersection of artistic and architectural practice. Her work has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust and the Warburg Institute. In addition to her research, she works as a curator, editor, and translator.

Elizabeth Merrill specializes in early modern Italian architecture. Much of her research centers on Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501) and the artistic and technical culture of fifteenth-century Italy, which is traced through surviving model books, copy drawings, and illustrated treatises. Currently she is the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project “Copying as Common Practice in Early Modern European Architecture.”  

Image Caption: Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501), Hoeing machine (top), and Windass with double-pulley (bottom), Opusculum de architectura, c. 1475. London, The British Museum, ms. 197.b.21, fol. 5r. © The Trustees of the British Museum

This SAHGB - IHR seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).

ABSTRACT

Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius emigrated from Nazi Germany to Britain in 1934.

This seminar investigates the role of those aiding his re-establishment. The promotion of Ise Gropius is considered, her fluency in English making up for her husband’s initial weakness. She was supported by the critic Philip Morton Shand, who laboured to appeal to British audiences while translating Gropius’s book, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus. Comparison with the original German manuscript reveals drastic revisions to domesticate alien ideas. The buildings Gropius produced in Britain demonstrate the architectural outcome of this domestication. His design of Impington Village College with Maxwell Fry, an attempt to engage with indigenous formal and sociological trends.

Adapted in both writing and architecture, Gropius was spared the intolerances affecting other foreign architects, particularly Jewish émigrés. Amid debates around British architectural identity, Gropius was falsely depicted as a temporary visitor sent by the German state: an inspirational exponent of nationalism. Based on archival research, this seminar considers how Britons co-opted Gropius to their cause, boosting his profile in Anglophone media, enabling his move to the United States in 1937, and encouraging his enduring dominance in histories.his is

Registration:

Please use the form below and watch for the pop-up message that will appear onscreen after you submit your details. You can copy the Zoom details that will be shown in this message, for those joining remotely.

BIO

Dr Alborz Dianat is a researcher at University College Dublin and Executive Editor of the SAHGB Journal, Architectural History. His book, Walter Gropius in Britain: Emigration and Collaborations, is scheduled to be published by Routledge.

Images:

Walter Gropius, The New Architecture and the Bauhaus, dust jacket by László Moholy-Nagy, 1935: Public Domain

Book A Place:

Calling SAHGB Members!

Our Early Career Researcher Symposium will take place at Birmingham City University in June 2024. Please look out for how to register for this. The Call for Papers is open until 10 May

We launched a new Fund for Publications in December in memory of the prolific Architectural Historian, Mark Girouard. We are fundraising and building a page to collect resources about his work, and to encourage gift-giving so that we can support and inspire with future grants.

Register to attend this one-day conference exploring the architects Seely and Paget, the restoration of their buildings and reputation of their work and life in the 21st century.

Registration will close on Friday 26 April (12 noon).

An event supported by five partners, this will take place in the fascinating surroundings of The Charterhouse, Clerkenwell.

This day conference, hosted in buildings which they restored after extensive bomb damage in 1941, will look at recent restorations of their buildings and how they alter assessments of Seely and Paget.

Image: Charterhouse, Master’s Court, used with permission

How to register:

Places at the conference are £38, to include lunch and refreshments.

The event will run from approx. 09:30 - 4:30

This is an in-person event though please note that it will be recorded.

Please scroll down to the form and watch for a message that will confirm your place. We will send further information to those registered for this event. To allow us to check registrations, these will be sent on working days: thank you for your patience.

For access and travel information, please explore the website of The Charterhouse. For further enquiries, please contact admin.ocmch@brookes.ac.uk

If you are interested in this conference, Dr Peter Forsaith, Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, will also be giving a lecture at Seely and Paget’s first major commission: St. Faith’s Church, Lee-on-the-Solent. This will take place on 23rd March, with further information here.

This SAHGB - IHR seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).

ABSTRACT

Between 1892 and 1894, the Paris decorator Gilbert Cuel created one of the most iconic rooms of New York’s Gilded Age in the ballroom of the Cornelius Vanderbilt II residence at 1 West 57th Street. The interior was based on the Galerie Dorée of the Hôtel de Toulouse (Banque de France), decorated by Robert de Cotte and François-Antoine Vassé in 1713–17 and renovated by Charles-Auguste Questel and others in 1865–75. In 1926, less than forty years after its completion, the ballroom was disassembled, and its architectural fragments were dispersed. Reuniting some of these fragments for the first time, this talk will consider the Vanderbilt ballroom as a case study in reconstruction – from the perspective of both historicist decoration, or ‘period’ style, and historical research. Focusing on carved wood panels (boiseries), which have conventionally fallen between the scholarly categories of architecture and furniture, it will demonstrate the care taken to adapt 18th-century materials to 19th-century uses and highlight the difficulty of salvaging interior stories from the débris of architectural demolition.

Registration:

Please use the form below and watch for the pop-up message that will appear onscreen after you submit your details. You can copy the Zoom details that will be shown in this message, for those joining remotely.

BIO

Laura C. Jenkins is an art historian and PhD Candidate at The Courtauld Institute of Art. Her research focuses on French 18th- and 19th-century interiors in New York during the Gilded Age and on overlaps between architectural décors and social identities.

Image Captions

1. Ballroom, Cornelius Vanderbilt II residence, New York (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

2. Galerie Dorée, Hôtel de Toulouse, Paris (Musée Carnavalet, Histoire de Paris)

Book A Place:

Calling SAHGB Members!

Renewals are now due for those who pay annual membership fees online, through ‘Support Us’.

We launched a new Fund for Publications in December in memory of the prolific Architectural Historian, Mark Girouard. We are fundraising and building a page to collect resources about his work, and to encourage gift-giving so that we can support and inspire with future grants.

Sincere thanks for your support through 2023. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

Bookings for this event are now closed. Many thanks to those who have registered. If you are joining the Webinar, please do not forget to use the blue link in your email in advance. This will send you all information you need.

We will be developing a transcript of the event and reporting some of the information in the next issue of our SAHGB Members’ Magazine.

Since the news of the ending of the partnership between the RIBA and V+A broke last year, the SAHGB’s Chair, Elizabeth Darling, and Bob Allies, member of the Council, have been liaising with RIBA to ensure that members’ interests are represented in the discussions about the Collections’ future. Our recent report can be read here.

We can announce that Oliver Urquhart-Irvine MVO, Executive Director of Architecture Programmes and Collections, RIBA, will join us for a hybrid Q+A session about the collections move on 29 February 2024. We will hold this with limited spaces in person, in London (Blackfriars area), and as a Zoom webinar with a Q+A function.

Bookings closed on 27 February, and we regret we cannot offer places on the door.

Members and external participants are welcome to participate but those wishing to attend will receive an email with registration instructions after indicating interest below, and to submit questions, in advance, for either the Zoom webinar or in-person places. You need to respond to the email you receive after giving brief initial information here on this page.

For any queries, if you have registered already, please use info@sahgb.org.uk. We may not be able to respond in the afternoon of 29 February.

Calling SAHGB Members!

For those who use the website to renew annually from Jan-December, membership subscriptions are now due.

We encourage you to book for our Annual Lecture, on 14 March, ‘Architecture and Affect in the Middle Ages’, given by Prof. Paul Binski.

This SAHGB - IHR seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).

Pre-industrial construction enterprises are usually thought to be ‘artisanal’, and the medieval and early modern building trades have been idealised around ‘craft skills’ since the mid nineteenth century. Records of actual working contractors on major infrastructure projects and housing development contradict these embedded ideals, however. This paper describes the way in which early modern building contractors, a surprising number of them female, managed projects, competed for business, utilised and organised labour and supply chains, and ran profitable enterprises, which delivered the technologically enduring legacy of the late seventeenth century built environment.

Registration:

Please use the form below and watch for the pop-up message that will appear onscreen after you submit your details. You can copy the Zoom details that will be shown in this message, for those joining remotely.

BIO

Professor Judy Stephenson is an economic historian researching labour markets, institutions, firms, finance and industries in London between about 1600 and 1850. She is known for her work on London and English wages between 1650 and 1800 and has published on contracts and wages, and the boundaries of the firm before 1800. She is currently Professor of Economic History of the Built Environment at The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction and Honorary Secretary of the Economic History Society, 2022-2025.

Book A Place:

Calling SAHGB Members!

Renewals are now due for those who pay annual membership fees online, through ‘Support Us’.

The Annual Lecture 2024 takes as its theme: Architecture and Affect in the Middle Ages. Register here for 14 March as we expect this to be a popular event.

Sincere thanks for your support through 2023. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

This SAHGB - IHR seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).

Neal Shasore will talk about his recent publications, Designs on Democracy: Architecture and the Public in Interwar London (Oxford University Press), and a co-edited (with Jessica Kelly) volume of essays, Reconstruction: Architecture, Society and the Aftermath of the First World War. Shasore will use this work as a jumping off point to talk about more recent interests in Empire Timber and a forthcoming book on the history of 66 Portland Place, the headquarters of the RIBA. The seminar discussion will provide an opportunity to reflect on interwar architectural and built environment historiography more widely and where it sits within broader narratives and analytical frames within nineteenth and twentieth century British history, and its relevance to our contemporary moment.

Registration:

Please use the form below and watch for the pop-up message that will appear onscreen after you submit your details. You can copy the Zoom details that will be shown in this message, for those joining remotely.

BIO

Neal Shasore is Head of School and Chief Executive of the London School of Architecture, a bold experiment in architectural pedagogy. He was previously departmental lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Oxford, and held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Liverpool School of Architecture. He is a former Honorary Secretary of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain and a trustee of the Architectural Heritage Fund. His publications Designs on Democracy: Architecture and the Public in Interwar London (Oxford University Press), and Reconstruction: Architecture, Society and the Aftermath of the First World War were shortlisted independently for the major awards of the SAHGB in 2023, with Reconstruction receiving a commendation from the Colvin Prize judging panel.

Book A Place:

Calling SAHGB Members!

Renewals are now due for those who pay annual membership fees online, through ‘Support Us’.

We launched a new Fund for Publications in December in memory of the prolific Architectural Historian, Mark Girouard. We are fundraising and building a page to collect resources about his work, and to encourage gift-giving so that we can support and inspire with future grants.

Sincere thanks for your support through 2023. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

This SAHGB - IHR seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).

Please note that places on Zoom are still available to book below, but the in-person option at Senate House is now full.

This seminar will address a significant question of architectural style in early eighteenth-century Britain: What was Nicholas Hawksmoor’s relationship with the Gothic church? This seminar will illuminate a new source of Hawksmoor’s experience surveying, repairing, and rebuilding England’s gothic churches, including Beverley, St Albans, and Westminster Abbey. It will uncover Hawksmoor’s little-known involvement in surveying England’s great religious compounds – the largest buildings he likely ever saw – and preparing extensive historical surveys, prints, and designs for them. It will argue that Hawksmoor’s approach to interpreting and inventing architecture within the style of the ‘Gothick manner’ was fundamentally (and intellectually) linked to his experience training in Sir Christopher Wren’s Office.

Registration:

Please use the form below and watch for the pop-up message that will appear onscreen after you submit your details. The Zoom link will be shown in this message for those joining remotely.

BIO

Dr Elizabeth Deans is an architectural historian of seventeenth-century Europe and specialises in architecture of the post-Restoration period in Britain. She is currently writing a book, Working in Wren’s Office: A Material History of Architectural Training in Britain, 1660-1730. Currently, Elizabeth is Assistant Director of the Ax:son Johnson Centre for the Study of Classical Architecture at the University of Cambridge and lectures in the Faculty of History of Art.

Book A Place (remote attendance on Zoom):

Calling SAHGB Members!

You are welcome to come to our Awards presentation, and the launch of a new fund in memory of Mark Girouard, in London on the evening of 15th December. Please register by 11 December through the ‘What’s On’ post and we will be in touch to give full details of the event.

We will be sending subscription renewal alerts in December, but you can use the ‘Renew Now’ form to carry on with your membership to the end of 2024 if desired.

Sincere thanks for your support through 2023. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

16 November 2023: Hybrid AGM

The Annual General Meeting of the SAHGB will be held on Thursday 16th November, in the Atrium of Allies and Morrison, 89 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0HX, with a remote attendance option on Zoom, if preferred. Please note that we have now closed the period for registrations and proxy nominations.

We will follow the AGM with drinks at the venue.

Members and external participants are welcome to participate but those wishing to attend will need to register by 14 November, for both Zoom or in-person places.

The papers can be found on the members’ pages at this link

If places at the venue are booked to capacity, participation will be offered remotely through Zoom.

If you wish to appoint a proxy, please contact the Administrator before 14 November, on info@sahgb.org.uk

Calling SAHGB Members!

We will publish details in our newsletter, and online, of our 2023 AGM and linked Q+A Event on the future of the RIBA Collections in November. Please register for these if you wish to attend. We will be sending subscription renewal alerts in December, but you can use the ‘Renew Now’ form to carry on with your membership to the end of 2024 if desired.

16 November 2023: Hybrid AGM

The Annual General Meeting of the SAHGB will be held on Thursday 16th November, in the Atrium of Allies and Morrison, 89 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0HX, with a remote attendance option on Zoom, if preferred. Please note that we have now closed the period for registrations and proxy nominations.

We will follow the AGM with drinks at the venue.

Members and external participants are welcome to participate but those wishing to attend will need to register by 14 November, for both Zoom or in-person places.

The papers can be found on the members’ pages at this link

If places at the venue are booked to capacity, participation will be offered remotely through Zoom.

If you wish to appoint a proxy, please contact the Administrator before 14 November, on info@sahgb.org.uk

Calling SAHGB Members!

We will publish details in our newsletter, and online, of our 2023 AGM and linked Q+A Event on the future of the RIBA Collections in November. Please register for these if you wish to attend. We will be sending subscription renewal alerts in December, but you can use the ‘Renew Now’ form to carry on with your membership to the end of 2024 if desired.

This SAHGB - IHR seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).

It has long been recognised that Wren took inspiration for his Sheldonian from the theatres of ancient Rome, but at the same time the details of this relationship have been much debated, so that the most recent accounts have tended to downplay the connection. This seminar attempts to redress the balance and demonstrate that Wren was even more influenced by his understanding of the Roman world – and not just Roman theatres - than has been previously thought. It reassesses some key questions: why would Wren have chosen the ancient Roman theatre as a model or inspiration for his design? What did he understand about Roman theatres and what were his sources? How did he use them and what else did he use? The key to this reading is to recognise the importance of Wren as a Latin scholar and admirer of the Roman emperor Augustus, to many of Wren’s circle a role model for the newly restored monarch Charles II.

Registration:

Please use the form below and watch for the pop-up message that will appear onscreen after you submit your details. The Zoom link will be shown in this message for those joining remotely.

Link Image: Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, copyright Wikimedia Commons

BIO

Janet DeLaine, FSA, was Associate Professor in Roman Archaeology at the University of Oxford, and is now Emeritus Fellow at Wolfson College. Her research focuses on the built environment of the Roman world, and she has just published a volume on Roman architecture for the OUP History of Art series.

Book A Place:

Calling SAHGB Members!

We will publish details in our newsletter, and online, of our 2023 AGM and (rescheduled) Q+A Event on the future of the RIBA Collections. Please register on this page by 14 November. We will be sending subscription renewal alerts in December, but you can use the ‘Renew Now’ form to carry on with your membership to the end of 2024 if desired.

Sincere thanks for your support through 2023. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

This event will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the London School of Architecture (4 Beechwood Road, London, E8 3DY).

Bookings are now closed. If you booked your place, please look out for your meeting link if joining remotely and guidance for those registered if you are joining in person.

Since their launch in 2019 with the support of then-Honorary Secretary Dr Neal Shasore (London School of Architecture), the Society’s ED&I networks and their members have come together to work towards a bigger, more diverse architectural history which reflects and builds upon the knowledge and experiences of persons from a wide variety of backgrounds. These networks were established based on the protected characteristics outlined in the Equality Act 2010, and they reflect the Society’s commitment to diversifying and making the discipline of architectural history more inclusive.

This event brings together emerging scholars and professionals from diverse backgrounds in order to foster conversations about the future of architectural history and the study of the built environment. We recognise that while progress has been made in some areas, there is still much work to be done to eradicate barriers to inclusivity and to truly diversify the discipline. With the worrying rise in racially motivated hate crime and media transphobia in recent years, it is important that we come together to create safe and inclusive spaces for architectural historians from a wide range of backgrounds to share their experiences and research in solidarity.

Each speaker will give a short presentation on a current piece of work or research which focuses on issues related to equality, diversity and inclusion within architectural history or the built environment. After the presentations, the floor will be open for questions from the audience. Dr Neal Shasore (Head of the London School of Architecture and former SAHGB Honorary Secretary) will give some opening remarks, and Elizabeth Darling (current SAHGB Chair) and Doreen Bernath (incoming SAHGB Honorary Secretary) will make closing remarks. Christiane Buxton, our current LGBTQIA+ network convenor, will be chairing the panel.

The roundtable will be followed by a wine reception, which gives attendees an opportunity to get to know the ED&I networks and their work and get involved.

Registration:

Please use the form below and watch for the pop-up message that will appear onscreen after you submit your details. The Zoom link will be shown in this message for those joining remotely.

SPEAKERS

Eve Pennington is a current PhD student at the University of Manchester. Eve's thesis is titled Mothers of Modernity: Women's Experiences of New Towns in North West England, 1961-1989.

Dr Ewan Harrison is an historian of post-war architecture in Britain and its Empire. He is especially interested in architectures for business, and the business of architecture. He is a lecturer at the University of Manchester and a Fellow at the University of Liverpool Architectural Heritage and Urbanism in West Africa Research Centre. He was a founding member of the Society's ED&I networks and one of the LGBTQIA+ Network convenors from 2019-2023.

Jordan Whitewood-Neal is an architectural researcher, designer and artist whose work addresses disability, domesticity, pedagogy, and cultural infrastructure. He is currently co-leading a Design Think Tank at the London School of Architecture and he is co-founder of the disability-led research collective Dis-Collective. 

James Zatka-Haas is a writer, artist, and co-founder of the disability-led research collective Dis-Collective alongside Jordan Whitewood-Neal. Having been born with Cerebral Palsy, James's work explores what it means to experience the world from an altered perspective, and understanding how that perspective shapes the way we see, feel and love.

Sarah Akigbogun, founder of Studio Aki, is an Architect and Filmmaker. Studio Aki is a transdisciplinary architecture and research practice committed to creating socially-engaged projects. The studio straddles the boundaries of architecture, art and design, drawing on influences from engineering, film and theatre. Akigbogun is a graduate of the Architectural Association and has trained as a structural engineer and graphic designer.

Bookings are now closed.

Calling SAHGB Members!

We will publish details in our newsletter, and online, of our 2023 AGM and linked Q+A Event on the future of the RIBA Collections in November. Please register on this page by 14 November. We will be sending subscription renewal alerts in December, but you can use the ‘Renew Now’ form to carry on with your membership to the end of 2024 if desired.

Sincere thanks for your support through 2023. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

Please note that this event is now fully booked (6 October 2023)

You will receive information about your place shortly.

This fascinating study day is hosted at West Horsley Place, Surrey, courtesy of the West Horsley Place Trust.

This relatively unknown gem is not usually open to the public. The house is multi-phase with significant remains of a large medieval timber-framed building, concealed by a brick front of the mid-seventeenth century characteristic of Surrey’s style. It has been altered on several occasions but its architectural history is still relatively poorly-understood. Attenders will have an opportunity to see the whole of the house, led by Charles O’Brien, author of the recently-revised ‘Pevsner’ for Surrey and SAHGB Council member; Martin Higgins, chair of Surrey’s Domestic Buildings Research Group; and with contributions by Claire Gapper.

A sandwich lunch along with tea/coffee and cakes are included.

Accessibility:

The visit to West Horsley Place will include several sets of stairs.

Weather permitting, attendees able to access the roof areas safely may have the option to explore this part of the house at their own risk.

Bookings now closed

Calling SAHGB Members!

We will publish details in our newsletter, and online, of our 2023 AGM and linked Q+A Event on the future of the RIBA Collections in November. Please register for these if you wish to attend. We will be sending subscription renewal alerts in December, but you can use the ‘Renew Now’ form to carry on with your membership to the end of 2024 if desired.

This SAHGB - IHR seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).

This is the story of a prize-winning modernist school and its early demise, and entangled with this is a larger story about the landscape in and around Heathrow airport, about the local versus the global, and about noise and its tolerance (perhaps also about ‘affordance’). The school in question – Woodfield County Secondary Modern – was one of the first secondary modern schools built under the dispensation of the 1944 Education Act, and its architect (Denis Clarke Hall) attempted to combine some of the ideals of continental modernist schools with forms suitable to the idea of a vocational technical education. The seminar offers an analysis of the particular conditions and ideals that shaped the school and how they immediately came into conflict with the school’s environmental conditions, particularly the noise pollution of its site; such was the conflict, in fact, that within fifteen years the school was abandoned and demolished. The seminar asks, how were ordinary local needs like housing and schooling reconciled - or not - with the imperatives of a facility like an international airport with its apparently superordinate claims to make or maintain London’s global status (in the face, for instance, of imperial decline)? How, more specifically, was aircraft noise to be mitigated, how was it even to be measured in its effects? How far was noise ‘annoyance’ a cultural or learnt matter, and what might this mean not only for the skins of buildings but to the forms of life that they contained?

Registration:

Please use the form below and watch for the pop-up message that will appear onscreen after you submit your details. The Zoom link will be shown in this message for those joining remotely. The date of this event is 12th October.

Image:

Woodfield County Secondary Modern School, Cranford (Architect – Denis Clarke Hall, 1954). Photographer – Reginald Hugo de Burgh Galwey.

Courtesy RIBA Drawings and Photographic Collection.

BIO

Mark Crinson is Emeritus Professor of Architectural History at Birkbeck, University of London. He was Vice-President and President of the European Architectural History Network (2016-2020), and he is a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the keynote speaker for the SAHGB’s 2023 Study Tour to Manchester, and recently contributed an episode of the 2023 Architectural History podcast mini-series.

His book Shock City: Image and Architecture in Industrial Manchester (2022) has been shortlisted for the SAHGB’s Alice Davis Hitchcock medallion at the time of this event; an interview can be read on our Features page.

His books include Rebuilding Babel: Modern Architecture and Internationalism (2017), The Architecture of Art History – A Historiography (2019, co-authored with Richard J. Williams), and Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (2003, re-issued 2019). He is currently researching a Leverhulme-funded book, Heathrow’s Genius Loci.

Book A Place:

Calling SAHGB Members!

We have a small-group Autumn Study Day in Surrey bookable through the What’s On calendar, and will publish details in our newsletter, and online, of our 2023 AGM and linked Q+A Event in November. Please register for these if you wish to attend.

Sincere thanks for your support through 2023. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

An all-female panel discusses women in social housing with a St. Pancras focus as part of the London Open City events for 2023.

The event takes place on 16th September, in the Basil Jellicoe Hall, London, and participants can join for a free guided walk before the discussion, taking in estates that are not normally open to the public.

Please get tickets in advance via Eventbrite where the full event description and registration guidance for the walk and discussion can be found.

London Open City offers a varied programme of events and tours.

Link image from calendar: via Unsplash, @constantinevdokimov

Calling SAHGB Members!

We have a small-group Autumn Study Day in Surrey bookable through the What’s On calendar, and will publish details in our newsletter, and online, of our 2023 AGM and linked Q+A Event in November. Please register for these if you wish to attend.

Sincere thanks for your support through 2023. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

We are delighted to announce this new SAHGB-IHR event.

This will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).

Cover Image - © Nigel Green, Blue Crow Media

London's alleyways have a habit of leading to unexpected places. They act as the city’s library: echoing the routes of trade, lost rivers, burial roads, disputed boundaries, tracks of animals and people. Alleyways inject a dose of disjunction into the cityscape, triggering unfamiliar ways of moving from one familiar space to another. They have a tendency to momentarily rewire the city and throw drab views of a place into a new light, unexpectedly montaging different areas and streets together to make new experiences. Common waypoints only allow a surface interaction with a place, while hidden passages allow us to enter the inner mechanics of its perceptual constructions.

BIO

Matthew Turner is a senior lecturer at Chelsea College of Arts. He has written about alleyways for Icon magazine, the Architectural Review and has discussed them with Robert Elms on BBC Radio London. In 2022 he published the London Alleyways Map with Blue Crow Media. and the West: An Architectural Dialogue (2019) and the prize-winning Craig Ellwood (2002).

Book a place

Calling SAHGB Members!

Please explore our Summer events on our website: Study Visits to Greenwich and a Curator’s tour at the Soane Museum, and celebrations of Wren and Adam for 2023. Sincere thanks for your support. Please get in touch if you have any questions.

We welcome registrations for a summer Study Day on foot in Greenwich, on 28 June, to celebrate the area’s maritime history and Sir Christopher Wren’s rich legacy.

This year marks the 450th anniversary of Inigo Jones’ birth, and 300th anniversary of Christopher Wren’s death. As part of the Wren300 commemorations, you’re invited to explore Maritime Greenwich, a World Heritage Site described by UNESCO as the ‘finest and most dramatically sited architectural and landscape ensemble in the British Isles’. We will be joined by eminent scholars, curators, and conservationists who will illuminate this key site in the evolution of classical architecture in England.

The day will be led by specialist in Wren’s architectural legacy, Dr David McKinstry, Lecturer in the History of Architecture and Design, Imperial College London, Conservation Officer London Borough of Camden, and former Secretary of the Georgian Group. David will introduce buildings across the site, by Webb, Wren, Hawksmoor, and Stuart.

In this busy year for him, we are lucky to have the expertise of drawings expert and Jones authority Dr Gordon Higgott, who will introduce England’s first fully realised classical building, Queen’s House (1616-35) including its Great Hall and the Tulip Staircase. Dr Allison Goudie, Curator of Art Pre-1800, Royal Museums Greenwich, will discuss her current exhibition The Van de Veldes: Greenwich, Art and the Sea.

Wren’s Hospital for Seamen design comprises matching pairs of courts separated by a grand visto the exact width of the Queen’s House. Our understanding of the hospital will be enhanced there through detailed notes and general discussion addressing the complex design and building sequence. Inside at the dining hall, William Palin, CEO of Bart’s Heritage Trust will introduce James Thornhill’s extraordinary baroque Painted Hall (1707- 26) recently the subject of an award-winning conservation project, led by Palin.

The Grade II listed Trafalgar Tavern (des. Joseph Kay, 1837) on the bank of the River Thames, is our spot for lunch. The entire pub is adorned with artefacts and paintings telling the story of Britain’s naval history, and Curator Emeritus of the National Maritime Museum, and maritime historian Pieter Van der Merwe, MBE, DL, will introduce some key pieces of the drawings collection.

In the afternoon we’ll experience James Athenian Stuart’s neo-classical remodelling of the Royal Hospital Chapel before walking to the Church of St. Alfege. The first church to be built by the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches (1712-14) to designs by Hawksmoor, St Alfege will be introduced by their expert guides. Finally, we will enjoy the 19th century Greenwich streets, and those who wish are welcome to come for a drink at the Gypsy Moth Tavern before returning home.

Please register by 23rd June, 12pm, as catering must be confirmed in advance

Accessibility

The tour will include several areas approached by stairs. The Queen’s House and Painted Hall have disabled access and there are disabled accessible lavatories across the site. However, there are several flights of external steps which are not wheelchair accessible.

Walking distances are moderate but periods of standing will be numerous. Please also note that this is a walking tour which includes periods outdoors, whatever the weather conditions. Clothing appropriate to this is strongly recommended. Those with specific access needs are strongly advised to inform the Society in advance so that arrangements can be planned, via info@sahgb.org.uk

The Painted Hall: All photos copyright Dr. Stephen Gage

Registration Form

Please process payment only once and look out for an email that confirms your booking. There is no instant pop-up window that follows the payment page.

Registration will be closed at 12pm on 23rd June, to allow confirmation of the catering for the event.

We invite you to register for an online session and Q&A to celebrate the Heritage Research Prize, and join in the virtual IHBC Marketplace: LIVE evening on Wednesday 21 June

Join Panel Chair John Cattell (Head of Research at Historic England, SAHGB Trustee) and IHBC Panel Judge Matthew Saunders for an online drop-in session to find out about one of our newest awards, the Heritage Research Prize (accepting entries online at the SAHGB’s Awards Pages until 1st September).

There will be a choice of 2 sessions to attend, kindly hosted by the IHBC as part of its Annual School 2023, taking place in Swansea. Entry to the Heritage Research Prize session will also allow you to attend other presentations as part of the Marketplace: LIVE Programme and an optional ‘Happy Hour’ with the IHBC and other participants from 6pm . This event is virtual and open to all but you must register in advance (details below).

Those registering will have opportunities to ask questions and also to visit other Zoom drop-in rooms for networking, heritage careers information, and opportunities to view architects’ and conservationists’ latest areas of interest and concern. Explore https://marketplace.ihbc.org.uk/ for a flavour of the presentations in store.

The full programme and joining details will be sent to you by email nearer the time. Access offered for this programme is only via Zoom, not for in-person or hybrid Annual School sessions

To participate, please register via the link below (now deactivated) and await a joining link at 4:30 on the 21st

Calling SAHGB Members!

Please explore our Summer events on our website: Study Visits to Greenwich and a Curator’s tour at the Soane Museum, and celebrations of Wren and Adam for 2023. Sincere thanks for your support. Please get in touch if you have any questions.