April 13-14, 2012
East Gallery, Buell Center
In 1951, the cultural critic Lewis Mumford delivered the Bampton Lectures in America at Columbia University, which were published the following year as Art and Technics. Sixty years later, the Buell Center invited scholars in architectural and urban history, American studies, environmental history, and the history of technology to reflect on some of the themes outlined by Mumford there and elsewhere. The two-day workshop offered an opportunity for scholars across these and other fields to consider knowledge, and insights on the interactions of technology, aesthetics, urbanity, ecology, and politics under a variety of historical circumstances involving the North American context. The conference was free and open to the public.
Friday, April 13
10:00 - 10:20 Welcome and Opening Remarks
Reinhold Martin, Director, Buell Center, Columbia University
10:20 - 11:10
Daniel A. Barber, Department of Architecture, Barnard + Columbia College, "What is a House? The Solar Suburb and the End(s) of Mid-Century Modernism"
11:10 - 12:00
Julie Sze, American Studies Program, University of California, Davis, “It’s a Green World After All? Marketing Nature and Nation in a Transnational Suburban World”
12:00 - 1:30 Lunch
1:30 - 2:20
Shannan Clark, Department of History, Montclair State University, "Modernism within Our Means: The Left and Design in the Depression-Era United States"
2:20 - 3:10
Gaia Caramellino, Department of Architecture and Urban History, Politecnico di Torino, “Shaping the New Deal Architectural Discourse on Modern Public Housing: 1930-1940”
3:10 - 3:30 Break
3:30 - 4:20
Joseph Heathcott, Committee on Historical Studies, The New School for Social Research, “Ephemeral City: Technologies and Meanings at the 1904 World's Fair”
4:20 - 5:10
John Harwood, Department of Art, Oberlin College, “Organ, Organic, Organized: Mumford's Technical Subjects”
5:30 Reception
6:00 Keynote Discussion, “Mumford after Mumford”
Casey N. Blake, Department of History, Columbia University
Richard R. John, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University
Alan Lessoff, Department of History, Illinois State University
Moderator: Reinhold Martin, Buell Center, Columbia University
Saturday, April 14
10:00 - 10:20 Introduction
Reinhold Martin, Buell Center, Columbia University
10:20 - 11:10
Felicity D. Scott, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University, “Aspen Proving Grounds”
11:10 - 12:00
Laurent Stalder, Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich, “François Dallegret’s Madcap Machines”
12:00 - 1:30 Lunch
1:30 - 2:20
Orit Halpern, Committee on Historical Studies, The New School for Social Research, “Paranoid Formations: Rationality as Infrastructure”
2:20 - 3:10
Michael Osman, Department of Architecture and Urban Design, University of California, Los Angeles, “Thermostatics”
3:10 - 3:30 Break
3:30 - 4:20
Mabel O. Wilson, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University, “Urban Tactics: Detroit's Afro-American Mobile Museum”
4:20 - 5:10
Nick Yablon, Department of American Studies, University of Iowa, “‘Uniting times past, times present, and times to come’: The City, Posterity, and the Invention of the Time Capsule”
6:00 Reception