They’re not calling it “Archtober” this year.
The Center for Architecture Sarasota’s third annual celebration will be known as “Architecture and Design Month” when it begins with an opening-night party on Oct. 1.
The series of events, including an online presentation called “A Building a Day,” is highlighted by a lecture and home tour by world-renowned architect Toshiko Mori, FAIA, of New York.
An exhibit of her work, titled “Dialogue in Details,” will be hung in the McCulloch Pavilion’s Don Chapell Gallery throughout the month. The exhibit includes
A tour of this house on Casey Key will be presented by its highly regarded architect, Toshiko Mori, on Oct. 17 as part of the Center for Architecture Sarasota's Architecture and Design Month. Courtesy photo / Paul Warchol.
photographs and drawings, but also the full-scale building details that she calls “totems.”
Mori speaks on Oct. 16 at the pavilion, which is CFAS’ headquarters, at 265 S. Orange Ave., Sarasota. The following day, she will lead a tour of the Casey Key house she designed as an addition to Paul Rudolph’s Burkhardt House, which was built in the 1950s. That tour is open only to CFAS members.
Yearly memberships start at $50 for individuals and $75 for families.
Included in the month’s activities this year is a children’s program called Architecture 101, on Saturday morning, Oct. 3. Accompanied by parents, up to 20 children ages 5 through 13 will use Legos to create buildings and a city under the direction of “Bricks for Kids” owner Wendy Chipman.
The participants will receive T-shirts and goodie bags.
On Oct. 10, local historian and energetic storyteller John McCarthy, former director of Parks and Recreation for Sarasota County and a patron of the city’s modernist architects, will give a walking tour of important buildings near the McCulloch Pavilion. It is titled “130 Years of Sarasota’s Architectural History,” and will focus on the Laurel Park and Burns Court areas, which were crucibles of Sarasota’s development in the first quarter of the 20th century.
A 1905 house made with faux stone on Cross Street in downtown Sarasota. The house was restored recently. Staff photo / Harold Bubil
The buildings have appropriate scale and intimate relationships with the grid streets and sidewalks, which are essential elements of these pedestrian-accommodating locales. Tour-goers are urged to wear walking shoes and sunscreen.
“He has some really cool buildings that are his favorites and are within walking distance of here,” Peterson said. “He will give the background information on each building. Wear comfortable shoes.”
CFAS, formed three years ago, is using the month of events to further its mission of fostering “dialogue and education for all those interested in the built environment,” according to its website, CFASRQ.org.
CFAS promotes the “preservation of our rich and diverse architectural heritage,” also promoting “innovative new design and sensitive urban planning.”
A Building a Day was inaugurated in 2014 as an online educational feature at cfasrq.org. Cindy Peterson, president and co-founder of CFAS, is compiling a list of 31 Florida structures that are important from an architectural, cultural or historical perspective.
“They have to be unique and have something cool about them,” Peterson said. “They don’t have to be designed by an architect.”
Last year’s list included several local icons, such as Rudolph’s Umbrella House and Sarasota High School Addition, Jack West’s City Hall and Arquitectonica’s Herald-Tribune building.
“Florida is broken down into regions and I try to hit each region,” Peterson said.
The month concludes with an Oct. 28 “Atelier Talk” at the Florida Avenue studio of concrete designer Jake Brady (see sidebar for all event details).
The main spotlight will fall on Mori, the former chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
“Mori is an incredible educator with an international influence,” Peterson said, adding that Mori’s appearance at the event “is huge.”
For the 2012 architectural festival in Venice, Italy, known as the Biennale, Mori first displayed the array of full-size building details she calls “Totems.” They are based on her renovations or additions to buildings, such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1905 Martin House in Buffalo, New York; Marcel Breuer’s 1951 Breuer House in New Canaan, Connecticut; Phillip Johnson’s 1949 Glass House in Connecticut; Mies van der Rohe’s 1951 Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois; and Paul Rudolph’s 1957 Burkhardt House on Casey Key.
She built models of wall cross-sections taken from those buildings, and, in the exhibit, stands them next to models of cross-sections from her own designs. The result is a study in how each architect solved basic problems, such as the design of windows and walls that link interior and exterior spaces. The Totems are, in fact, building slices, viewed from the side more than from the front.
At CFAS, they will be shown for the first time in the Western Hemisphere.
“Dialogue in Details,” said Peterson, “is her pulling out one very wonderful detail on each of those incredible buildings and comparing and contrasting them with her own details after she did her work on those buildings.
“They are about 6 to 10 feet tall. They are magnificent. Then she has fantastic photographs and original Wright and Johnson drawings. It is an incredible learning opportunity. We are refabricating two of them in a smaller scale and will have them in our permanent collection.”
CFAS’ October series is not affiliated with Sarasota MOD Weekend, to be held by the Sarasota Architectural Foundation on Nov. 6-9.
