In November I had a whirlwind visit to Chicago for the National Trust conference and the NCPE annual meeting. I spent a great deal of time in conference rooms and classrooms, but I did get to walk around the city a little bit.
I had the pleasure of catching up with a few UMWHISP alum while I was there, which made me a proud prof indeed. But I also spent a good chunk of time staring up at buildings and sites that make regular appearances in my classes.
It’s a surprisingly weird feeling to interact with a building within days of discussing it in class. The Monadnock Building has been a favorite of mine since I first learned about it, but until this trip I hadn’t really spent much time in its presence. This is unavoidable, really: no one has unlimited time and travel budget. But really, when you’ve interacted with a place in person, it changes the way you discuss it. I think it makes the teaching better. Having the sheer *brick-ness* of the Monadnock seared in my retina my mind made me better at talking about it.
This brings me to a deeply-held belief about teaching: I think it’s better when a teacher makes clear their opinions on the matter. Let me back up: when I was a student, I had plenty of instructors who espoused the “objective at all costs” approach. I hated it. It made rote memorization – an unfortunate necessity in architectural history – deadly boring. For me, being able to articulate emotions and associations with various styles of architecture made it much easier to learn and really understand.
For instance: you can teach Richardsonian Romanesque and Queen Anne by just talking about arches and shingles respectively. Or you can say the former looks like a place where you’d have a boar-and-beer based feast, while the latter is a Barbie doily in building form.
I’m the daughter of a Method actress, and I gotta say there’s something to that whole “sense memory” thing. Association helps you memorize, but it also gets you to really internalize.
For instance: I always really loved Louis Sullivan’s Guarantee building in Buffalo. A few years ago I got to visit, and took the opportunity to see the building in person. I bought my lunch and sat in the shadow the building, savoring the food and the view. Now the Guarantee Building is not just delightful in my memory, it’s *delicious pastrami sandwich* delightful.
Last fall’s visit to Chicago had good food, and good company, and truly exceptional buildings. It will hopefully make my teaching three-dimensional and memorable. I certainly got lots of pics. It was very much a worthwhile trip. And then, on the way home, my flight was excruciatingly, fabulously, awesomely late. I didn’t get home until 2am. But hey: time at the airport is time to grade.