WMAIA Film Series!
April 17 @ 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
THE WMAIA FILM SERIES RESUMES MARCH 20th
Wednesday March 20 | 6:30 PM | Zoom |1 LU
Leisurama
In 1963, All State Properties, capitalizing on publicity from an international debate between Nixon and Khrushchev, built a development of second homes in Montauk, New York. The homes were designed by architect Andrew Geller at industrial designer Raymond Loewy’s office and were sold through Macy’s Department Store. They came fully furnished, down to the toothbrush. A kitschy cold war architecture story.
Wednesday April 3 | 6:30 PM | Zoom |1 LU
New England Modernism: Revolutionary Architecture in the 20th Century
The United States saw a revolution in popular architectural style between the 1930s and 1970s. American Modernism, originally influenced by the work of European masters including Le Corbusier and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, began to establish footing in New England in early 1930-32. 32 in part with the construction of the Field House in New Hartford, Connecticut by William Lescaze and the Ralph-Barbarin House in the city of Stamford, designed by Le Corbusier protégé Albert Frey. By the 1940s, the region was a hotbed of modernism, led by a group of architects known as the “Harvard Five” who settled in New Canaan, Connecticut and included Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, John Johansen, Philip Johnson and Eliot Noyes. Other architects who designed notable mid- century modern structures in New England included Victor Christ-Janer, Andrew Geller, Alan Goldberg, Carl Koch, John Black Lee, Hugh Smallen and Edward Durell Stone. The work produced by this pool of talent had international and permanent influence. The story of New England Modernism is one of imagination, creativity and industriousness.
Wednesday April 17 | 6:30 PM | Zoom |1 LU
THE BEST PLANNED CITY IN THE WORLD: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System
COMMUNITY BY DESIGN: The Olmsted Firm and the Development of Brookline, Massachusetts
THE BEST PLANNED CITY IN THE WORLD This film explores the development of the nation’s first park system, designed for Buffalo by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1868. Drawing national and international attention, their scheme carefully augmented the city’s original plan with urban features inspired by Second Empire Paris, including the first system of “parkways” to grace an American city. Displaying the plan at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Olmsted declared Buffalo “the best planned city, as to its streets, public places, and grounds, in the United States, if not in the world.”
Olmsted and Vaux dissolved their historic partnership in 1872, but Olmsted continued his association with the Queen City of the Lakes, designing additional parks and laying out important sites within the growing metropolis. When Niagara Falls was threatened by industrial development, he led a campaign to protect the site and, in 1885, succeeded in persuading New York to create the Niagara Reservation, the present Niagara Falls State Park. Two years later, Olmsted and Vaux teamed up again, this time to create a plan for the area around the Falls, a project the two grand masters regarded as “the most difficult problem in landscape architecture to do justice to.
COMMUNITY BY DESIGN In 1883, Frederick Law Olmsted deserted New York City for Brookline, which had anointed itself the “richest town in the world.” Over the next half century, he and his successor firm became the dominant force in the planned development of this community. This film tells the story of the development of the wealthy Boston suburb through the planning initiatives of the firm. From Fairsted, the Olmsteds’ Brookline home and office, the office collaborated with an impressive galaxy of neighbors which included the architect H. H. Richardson and the horticulturalist Charles Sprague Sargent.
Through plans for boulevards and parkways, residential subdivisions, institutional grounds, and private gardens, the firm carefully guided the development of the town, as they designed cities and suburbs across America. While Olmsted Sr. used landscape architecture as his vehicle for development, his son and namesake, “Rick,” viewed Brookline as grounds for experiment in the new profession of city and regional planning, a field that he was helping to define and lead.
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