ModernMicroCosmS - San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia

Furness 306, Fisher Fine Arts Library, 3rd Floor

220 S 34th St
Philadelphia, PA

Speakers

Hannah Simonson

Brittany Reilly

Doug Schaller

Image details

This is one of four parallel sessions taking place from 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM on Thursday June 2.

Speakers have been asked to pre-record their presentations and we will be releasing these videos to registrants after the Symposium so that you can watch sessions you weren't able to attend.


ModernMicroCosmS - San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia 

Twenty-first century American cities are the living result of political, environmental, economic and frequently aspirational operations, impositions, and transformations – often dramatic in scale and long in duration. Flourishing in the years immediately following WWII, American modernism spanned the gamut between prominent urban mega-projects to modest, lesser known “everyday modernisms”. This session explores how some of these narratives unfolded in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Pittsburgh post “Renaissance” reshaping, and the making of Philadelphia’s Temple University campus.


Speakers & Paper titles:

  • Modernism at the Corner in Pittsburgh, PA
    Brittany Reilly, Pittsburgh Modern Committee of Preservation Pittsburgh

  • Modernism in San Francisco’s Chinatown
    Hannah Simonson, Page & Turnbull

  • Broad Street’s Modernist Coming of Age: Temple University’s Late Expansion and the Community-Temple Agreement of 1970
    Douglas Schaller, Temple University

Moderator

Eric Keune

Eric has an unconventional stance on design: truly new ideas are tremendously rare. Hear him out—he’s not one to abandon innovation and creativity. Instead, Eric sees our shared past as a rich source of valuable lessons. It’s no surprise, then, that he’s an accomplished architectural historian, having authored Paffard Keatinge-Clay: Modern Architecture/Modern Masters and co-authored 100 Buildings Every Architect Should Know. Informed by this broad historical knowledge, Eric’s work exists at the intersection of design, architectural history, contemporary visual arts, and state-of-the-art building technology. And, despite dozens of design awards and international acclaim, his metrics for success are simple: impact people’s lives, improve the environment, and transform contemporary society—to the benefit of all.

 

Eric is the Design Director for the Boston studio of global architecture and design firm Perkins & Will. A self-proclaimed disciple and teacher of Modernism, he serves on the United States board of Docomomo, an international advocacy group focused on works of the Modern movement. Outside the studio, he’s a father, collector of antique modern furniture and miniature buildings, as well as a classic car enthusiast.

Speakers

Brittany Reilly

Brittany Reilly joined the Board of Directors of Preservation Pittsburgh in 2017 and established and leads the Pittsburgh Modern Committee in its mission to survey the city’s 20th-century modern and postmodern architecture, design, and integral public art as a groundwork for preservation and to engage public awareness and related community experiences through documentation, public programming, education, and advocacy. With a 15-year career in the visual arts, Brittany is the Executive Director of the Irving and Aaronel deRoy Gruber Foundation where she manages a collection of artwork by the late, Pittsburgh-based artist Aaronel deRoy Gruber (1918-2011), and curates the Foundation's gallery space in the historic Ice House Studios. Brittany received her M.A. in Visual Arts Administration from New York University, Steinhardt (2013) and B.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005), focusing on non-profit management combined with art, architecture, and design history. Brittany’s programming and advocacy efforts have included curating and coordinating walking tours of modern sites throughout Pittsburgh neighborhoods; a local launch event for Imagining the Modern (Monacelli Press, 2019) extensive Section 106 consulting party work for the successful preservation of artist Virgil Cantini’s large-scale abstract 1963 mosaic installation in Downtown Pittsburgh (recipient of the Modernism in America Award, 2020); an in-depth advocacy and nomination campaign and for the preservation of a modernist 1970s banking structure;  and authoring a 2021 article on Westinghouse’s SOM-designed, at-risk campus in Churchill, Pennsylvania, a site that will soon undergo Section 106 review.

Hannah Simonson

Hannah Simonson is a Cultural Resources Planner at Page & Turnbull in San Francisco, where she has worked on a range of projects from documenting the significance of the Transamerica Pyramid to developing design guidelines for Eichler neighborhoods. She received a Master of Science in Historic Preservation at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture in 2017 where her thesis, "Modern Diamond Heights: Dwell-ification and the Challenges of Preserving Modernist, Redevelopment Resources in Diamond Heights, San Francisco," was awarded the Outstanding Thesis in Historic Preservation. Her personal and professional research interests include Late Modernism, Bay Area regional Modernism, and San Francisco redevelopment and public art. Hannah is the current board president of the Docomomo US/Northern California chapter. She also regularly gives walking tours of the Modernist enclave of Diamond Heights and manages the Instagram account @moderndiamondheights.

Doug Schaller

Douglas Schaller, an art historian and writer, frequently teaches Philadelphia’s architecture and modern design history at Temple University. A business development director for the architecture firm MGA Partners, his research and writing focus on Philadelphia’s built environment, 19th and 20th-century design, and contemporary Philadelphia artists. His writing has appeared in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography and on the website Hidden City Philadelphia, and he has lectured at the Union League of Philadelphia. He serves on the Ego Po Theater Company board and has volunteered at Vox Populi, Bartram’s Garden, St James School, and St. Peters Churchyard.