Canceled! On Architecture: Ada Louise Huxtable, in conversation with Elizabeth Padjen

This event has been canceled and will not be rescheduled.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

ON ARCHITECTURE
Collected Reflections on a Century of Change

Ada Louise Huxtable, in conversation with Elizabeth Padjen
Tuesday, October 20, 2009, 6:00 p.m.

“Looking back, I realize that my career covered an extraordinary period of change,
that I was writing at a time in which architecture was changing slowly but
radically—a time when everything about modernism was being incrementally
questioned and rejected as we moved into a new kind of thinking and building.”
–Ada Louise Huxtable

In her latest book, Ada Louise Huxtable bears witness to some of the twentieth century’s
best—and worst—architectural masters and projects.

With a perspective of more than four decades, Huxtable examines the century’s modernist
beginnings and then turns her critic’s eye to the seismic shift in style, function,
and fashion that occurred midcentury—all leading to a dramatic new architecture of the
twenty-first century. Much of the writing in On Architecture has not appeared in book
form, and Huxtable’s many admirers will be delighted to once again have access to her
elegant, impassioned opinions, insights, and wisdom. 

Ada Louise Huxtable, former New York Times critic, winner of the first Pulitzer Prize
for Distinguished Criticism, and MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow, is currently the
architecture critic for the Wall Street Journal. She is recognized as the founder of contemporary
architectural journalism. Her books include The Unreal America: Architecture
and Illusion, Kicked a Building Lately? and, most recently, a short biography of Frank
Lloyd Wright for the Penguin Lives series. She served for many years on the juries of
the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the American Committee of the Japanese Praemium
Imperiale. She lives in New York City and Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Seward Padjen, FAIA, is the founding editor of ArchitectureBoston, a quarterly magazine published by the Boston Society of Architects. From 2003–2005, she was also the consulting curator of architecture and design at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.  Previously a practicing architect and firm principal for more than 15 years, she is a nationally recognized writer and speaker.  A past president of the Boston Society of Architects, Ms. Padjen has also served as the chair of the Boston Foundation for Architecture. She has served as a contributing editor for Architecture magazine, the architecture editor of Art New England magazine, and the editor of the Loeb Fellowship Forum, published by the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and has written for numerous other magazines and newspapers. She received an AB in architecture and urban planning from Princeton and an M.Arch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and became a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1992.  She is a longtime member of the Boston Athenaeum.

Reservations for Boston Athenæum Members: The fee for this event will be $10. Reservations are required but will not be accepted until October 7. Please call the Athenæum's reservation line, 617-720-7600.

Reservations for Non-Members:  The fee for this event will be $15. Reservations are required but will not be accepted until October 7. Please call the Athenæum's reservation line, 617-720-7600