Monday / April 11, 2016 / 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Geoffrey Baer and Dan Protess - Presented by Pella Crafted Luxury
Pella Crafted Luxury showroom, Merchandise Mart, Suite 100
Geoffrey Baer and Dan Protess from WTTW will speak about their new PBS series, 10 THAT CHANGED AMERICA, a three-part multi-platform series that spotlights the special places that changed the way Americans lived, worked and played.
Broadcasting on April 5, 12, and 19, this new series builds on the success of WTTW Chicago’s 2013 production, 10 Buildings that Changed America. The series takes audiences on a lively exploration of American architecture, design and urban planning and illustrates how our built environment came to be, and how our homes, towns and parks reflect our nation’s history, values, ingenuity, and hopes for the future.
Episode details:
10 Homes that Changed America (broadcast Tuesday, April 5) highlights ten structures that transformed residential living, from grand dwellings like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, to the pueblos of Taos, New Mexico, and the tenements of 19th century New York. Not only a primer in residential architecture, the episode offers a fascinating lesson in the history of American domestic life, as the evolving design of these homes over time reveals Americans’ changing relationship with nature, technology, and each other.
10 Parks that Changed America (broadcast Tuesday, April 12) tells the story of innovators who took open canvases of land and transformed them into serene spaces that offer city dwellers a respite from the hustle and bustle of urban life. From the elegant squares of Savannah, Georgia, to a park built over a freeway in Seattle, to the more recent High Line in New York, each story introduces the heroes who brought these parks to life, and the villains who preferred to exploit the land for private enterprise. Over the course of the hour, audiences will discover the evolution of our nation’s city parks, and learn the history of landscape architecture – an art form in which human beings try their best to mimic nature.
10 Towns that Changed America (broadcast Tuesday, April 19) focuses on ten experimental towns that did not evolve organically over time, but instead were designed (or redesigned) from the ground up by visionary planners and ordinary citizens who sought to change the lives of residents using architecture, design, and urban planning. Some of these planners were driven by an ideology, others were trying to serve their own financial interests, but all had one thing in common: they believed in the power of our built environment to change the way we live. From St. Augustine to Levittown, from Salt Lake City to Portland’s new Pearl District, this episode inspires us to reconsider where we live, and how our towns and cities affect every aspect of our lives.
In addition to the three-part series on PBS, a mobile website will allow users to discover the homes, parks, and towns in an interactive and immersive way, explore additional places and spaces, and add their voices to the discussion.
Architecture and design are ideal vehicles for multidisciplinary education: these fields integrate knowledge from the sciences, humanities, and the arts and can employ the “four Cs” of 21st century learning: creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. A downloadable, multidisciplinary curriculum, geared to grades 6-12, will help teachers incorporate architecture and design into their subject areas and engage students across various subjects.
Geoffrey Baer at Marina City (Credit: Bill Richert)
5:30 social time; 6:00 program
Click here to register with Society of Architectural historians. This event is full, but a waiting list IS AVAILABLE.
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