Tag Archives: Steven Semes

Chicken, egg, preservation

Posted on April 15, 2018 by

Steven Semes is head of the new master’s program in historic preservation in the School of Architecture at Notre Dame, about which I wrote last year in “Preservation at Notre Dame.” Semes writes in the latest issue of Traditional Building … Continue reading →

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Rebuild the Roman Forum

Posted on March 17, 2018 by

Last October I described a master’s thesis on how to plan for a restoration of the Roman Forum – center of civic life in the capital of the Roman empire. The author, Eric Stalheim, was the first graduate of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Preservation, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

N.D. grad’s Rome restoration

Posted on October 20, 2017 by

Yesterday’s post, “Preservation at Notre Dame,” introduced readers to the new Master of Science in Historic Preservation at Notre Dame’s School of Architecture. The program’s inaugural graduate, Eric Stalheim, investigated, for his master’s thesis, the restoration of the Roman Forum … Continue reading →

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Preservation at Notre Dame

Posted on October 19, 2017 by

The University of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture has offered a concentration in preservation since 2007, but last academic year (2016-17) it offered for the first time a masters program in historic preservation. The new program is led by the … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Architecture Education, Preservation, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Duo vs. the “style wars”

Posted on July 6, 2017 by

Architect and commentator Duo Dickinson spends nine-tenths of his essay “Does the New Traditionalism Have a Point?,” on the website Common|Edge, describing new traditional architecture as if it were a recent novelty, a niche phenomenon worthy of a look but … Continue reading →

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Changing cities in China

Posted on July 5, 2017 by

Over a half century or so, China has changed from a largely rural to a largely urban country. The communists had brutal power and used it brutally, a sort of cultural revolution without the violence. China went from cities of … Continue reading →

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News for preservationists

Posted on June 28, 2017 by

The author of one of my bibles, The Future of the Past, is Steven Semes, the Notre Dame scholar whose thinking pops up on this blog a lot. In 2014, he was named chairman of the new graduate program in … Continue reading →

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Antidote to gentrification

Posted on June 17, 2017 by

The other day, in “Mehaffy on ‘gentrification,” I posted on that sensitive subject, directing readers’ attention to a post by urbanist Michael Mehaffy, “Beware of Voodoo Urbanism,” on the blog Livable Portland. In a comment on my post, Steven Semes, … Continue reading →

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Elusive ‘why’ of preservation

Posted on January 29, 2017 by

The Hotel Pennsylvania, in Manhattan, is said to be at risk of demolition again and of replacement by a building sympathetic to the current Penn Station. The old hotel, designed by McKim, Mead & White and opened in 1919, is … Continue reading →

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When there’s no there there

Posted on December 27, 2016 by

The headline on this post is supposed to refer to Gertrude Stein’s famous line about Oakland – “There’s no there there.” The Huffington Post has an essay that tries to show, rather absurdly, that Stein did not mean to denigrate … Continue reading →

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