October is over. While I will be grading CRS reports for a while – and may well blog about that at some point – I want to celebrate my return to blogging by discussing more fun stuff. Last week, I was in Québec City for the Association of Preservation Technology conference (to talk about the … Read moreJ’ai même mangé un croissant
October is the spookiest month of the year. It’s also, for senior HISP students and yours truly, a very challenging and busy month. Every fall, I teach HISP405, arguably the most difficult course in the historic preservation department. The course has lots of challenging assignments, starting with surveying historic sites, and finishing with a National … Read moreThe spookiest – and workiest – month
You know the expression: “this is the [fill in the blank] bible”? In preservation, the bible is A Field Guide to American Houses. Sure, there are other books. Some would argue that Roth’s Understanding Architecture is more detailed and nuanced. Others – me included – would emphasize that McAlester is incomplete, since it only includes … Read moreBetter Late Than Never
In the five months since the acquisition of the LEGO collection, rechristened the MBL (mobile build lab), I’ve been pretty busy with a number of projects. Still, I’ve started putting those LEGO to work, with multiple plans coming up this fall and into the future. First, back in May, the MBL was put through its … Read moreGetting the LEGO collection to work
The title of this post is a bit of a misnomer, ’cause this wasn’t a vacation at all, really, or at least the destination wasn’t. I had a meeting and conference in Natchitoches, LA to attend. In midsummer. Yeah, think about that for a second. But I’m all for making lemonade out of lemons. Or … Read moreWhat I did on my summer vacation (Part 2)
Last week I went to Brooklyn and helped my sister settle into her new apartment. On a schoolteacher’s salary, she found a fantastic place, but it did need a little TLC. The week was beyond fun: sister bonding time, the world cup, an evening on Broadway, and general catching up with my old city and … Read moreWhat I did on my summer vacation (Part 1)
Almost twenty years ago, I saw my first Sanborn map. In the years since, I’ve used these maps for work in all sorts of contexts, and I keep coming back to how beautiful they are. They show the information they were meant for – assessing risk for fire insurance – but also so much more. … Read moreI ♥ Maps
Walking paid for my dissertation. It’s a centerpiece of my research. I teach walkability regularly in class. I figured it was about time I talked about it on my blog. When I was working on my dissertation, which really wasn’t that long ago, study participants had to wear an accelerometer/pedometer for a week. Those things … Read morePromenade
So I finally watched Urbanized. I often mock people who haven’t seen movies I think are seminal, so this was partially a self-protective move on my part. I’m pretty sure this documentary is the most famous planning documentary out there. I have to say I came away a tiny bit disappointed. Not that the movie … Read moreMovie Review: Urbanized
Gamification is not universally accepted or respected. However, LEGO and architecture go together like peanut butter and chocolate. There’s no need to convince architects. They’ve been on board for a while. Though I wasn’t exactly toy deprived as a child, LEGOs will forever hold the place of honor among the playmobil, action figures, pirate and … Read moreLEGO for work, or my idea of heaven