Program
Introduction: Nicholas Lowe, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Historic Preservation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Guest Speaker: Arijit Sen, Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Thesis Presentations:
MS Historic Preservation Candidate Alyssa Frystak: "“Small but Mighty: Combating the Affordable Housing Crisis Through Small-Scale Rehabilitation." Learn more here.
MS Historic Preservation Candidate Palak Shah: "The Adaptive Re-Use of the Pol: Indigenous Residential Architectural Types of Ahmedabad, India." Learn more here.
Discussion: Alyssa Frystak, Palak Shah, Nicholas Lowe, Arijit Sen, and Carla Bruni
Reception
Meet Our Guests
Arijit Sen is an architect and vernacular architecture historian who writes, teaches, and studies urban cultural landscapes. His research explores immigrant histories, post disaster reconstruction, and community-based design. He directs the Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures Field School. a multi-disciplinary project where students, faculty, scholars, and community members explore ways to see and interpret their city by engaging in storytelling, ecological conservation, heritage preservation, and civic engagement. Sen cofounded Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures, an interdisciplinary doctoral program area shared by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW Milwaukee, and has served on the boards of Vernacular Architecture Forum and the Society of Architectural Historians. His writings include articles and book chapters on South Asian immigrant cultural landscapes and early 20th Century immigration in the United States. He has coedited Landscapes of Mobility: Culture, Politics and Placemaking (Ashgate Publishers, UK, 2013, Jennifer Johung coeditor) and Making Place: Space and Embodiment in the City (Indiana University Press, 2014, Lisa Silverman coeditor).
Carla Bruni specializes in community outreach and assessing the qualitative contributions of cultural heritage. Bruni has published numerous articles, led workshops, and created blogs focused on the changing face of historic preservation, the need for increased diversity across the movement, and the ways in which cultural resources are crucial to our environmental and social wellbeing. Her work with housing organizations, environmental organizations, and community groups has culminated in the creation of local history and home maintenance publications, a video series, hands-on workshops, and several historic districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Bruni holds a MS in Historic Preservation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008) and a BA from Loyola University Chicago in English (2000).
