February 9, 2011
My dear friends and colleagues,
I wish I could be with you today, but it is a good sign I could not be, since a lecture to over 200 architects in Boston yesterday meant I could not make a late evening flight to London. Indeed, while the years beginning in the fall of 2008 have been terrifyingly slow, over the last six to eight months there has been a palpable optimism that we will recover.
Speaking at the Pella Pro Expo in Boston yesterday, at the TD Garden was terrific fun. Thanks to Pete Miller at Restore Media for developing this break-out educational content at the 2011 Pella Pro Expos. While I didn’t do a head count we had a packed room that I estimate held about 200 folks, nearly all architects. My lectures focused on the relevance of classical architecture to contemporary American domestic architecture and a second session on marketing tactics with a particular focus on social networking.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Fort Worth, TX – September 20, 2010
Historic Fort Worth has awarded the Byrd Residence its 2010 Residential Award recognizing excellence in the rehabilitation of historic homes. Fort Worth homebuilder and master-craftsman Brent Hull of The Brent Hull Companies collaborated with New York-based design firm Christine G. H. Franck, Inc. to restore this historic home to its original charm.
When an historic Colonial Revival home in Fort Worth, Texas needed a gentle facelift to restore its original beauty, the homeowners called on Brent Hull of Hull Historical to head up the renovations. For classical expertise in renovating the facade, Hull Historical turned to Christine G. H. Franck, Inc.
Byrd Residence after renovation
Shearith Israel, the Oldest Jewish Congregation in North America, Unveils First Phase of the Preservation of Its 1829 Cemetery On West 21st Street
See coverage from DNAInfo.com
I’m so pleased the new publication New Palladians featuring the work of my friends and colleagues, as well some of my own, will be released on May 17, 2010 at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.
Image by Carl Laubin. Composite image of Palladio’s works
Winterthur Style Sourcebook: Traditional American Rooms
a lecture by Christine G. H. Franck and Brent Hull
Thursday, April 22, 2010, Gilliland Residence, 3720 Beverly Drive, Dallas, TX
The lecture will explore the Winterthur Museum’s period rooms, the role of the Colonial Revival throughout America and the South, and their relevance for the best of design and craftsmanship today.
This past Friday, in nine straight hours of intense work, my graduate architecture students at Notre Dame completed their first esquisse, en loge, designing a hypothetical urban residence which they will develop over the next four weeks. Being well-taught by Professor Richard Economakis and the other dedicated Notre Dame faculty, these first year graduate students with only a semester of architectural education under their belts, performed admirably! What a rare joy it is to have an architecture school that teaches students architecture, instead of abstract, incomprehensible, inconsequential, personal expression. Hope you enjoy these pictures of my delightful students hard at work creating beautiful, meaningful, appropriate architecture.
New Classic American Houses: The Architecture of Albert, Righter & Tittmann by Dan Cooper, with foreword by Robert A. M. Stern
The Vendome Press, New York, NY; 2009
224 pages; hardcover; 200 color and b&w illustrations; $50ISBN 978-0-86565-253-8
Reviewed by Christine G. H. Franck for Clem Labine’s Period Homes Magazine. JANUARY 2010
A History of Invention
In “The Burden of the Past and the English Poet” W. Jackson Bate questions whether the best way to address the history of modern English poetry, and the arts in general, might be to examine the anxiety felt by the artist in the face of past achievements as the artist asks himself: “What is there left to do?” From the diverse work beautifully presented in New Classic American Houses it is abundantly clear that Boston, MA-based Albert, Righter & Tittmann Architects (AR&T) suffers not from any burden of the past. Rather, AR&T respects and revels in tradition, converses knowingly with it, quotes from it, questions it, adds to it and in turn creates work equaling the tradition the firm’s principals clearly admire.