NEW
YORK
ARCHITECTURE+ DESIGN
BOOK
CLUB
Join New York’s only architecture and design book club (that we know of!)
The New York Architecture + Design Book Club, organized by Head Hi and the design journal Untapped, is a lively public program and book subscription series that explores remarkable new titles in the field. The books’ authors and industry experts lead a discussion at each quarterly gathering, which seeks to build deeper connections between people, ideas, and the world in which we live.
HOW IT WORKS
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
UPCOMING EVENTS
Join us on Thursday, April 4 from 6-8pm!
The first title for the 2024 New York Architecture + Design Book Club subscription and quarterly event series is Minerva Parker Nichols, In Search for a Forgotten Architect (Yale University Press) with contributions by Heather Isbell Schumacher, Molly Lester, Franca Trubiano and William Whitaker and foreword by Despina Stratigakos.
Minerva Parker Nichols (1862–1949) was the first American woman to practice architecture independently. Her specialty was residential spaces—though her commissions also included an iron foundry and a macaroni factory—and she was a significant figure in the design of the emerging railroad towns just outside of Philadelphia, where she was in active practice from 1883 until 1896. She was also a writer, teacher, and active participant in several reform movements of the era.
Creating an archive in the absence of one, this book recovers Nichols’s forgotten story to document a career that spanned seven decades, engaging with contemporary questions about absences in the historical record, the challenges of architectural history and preservation, and the need for new tools and frameworks to address these gaps. This catalogue raisonné of her completed architectural works includes illustrations drawn from historical materials as well as newly drawn plans for five of her most significant designs. Archival material, paired with new photography documenting more than 30 extant buildings in the Philadelphia and beyond, offer a full and fully illustrated reconstruction of Nichols’s life and career.
The book was published by Yale University Press in March 2024 and designed by Olivia de Salve Villedieu.
UNTAPPED BOOK REVIEW
Ahead of each event, Untapped publishes a review of the featured book, written by a leading design critic. We are pleased to announce that the review of Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect has been written by Mimi Zeiger.
Questions about how the book club works? Email us at hello@headhi.net.
EVENT GUESTS
Heather Isbell Schumacher (Editor) is archivist of the Architectural Archives at Penn. She oversees stewardship and access for more than 400 design-related collections, including those of Louis I. Kahn, Ian McHarg, Venturi Scott Brown, Lawrence Halprin, and Anne Tyng. Schumacher received her master’s degree in public history from Temple University in 2010. She served as co-curator of Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect and editor for the accompanying publication. She is particularly interested in the gaps, absences, and silences found in archival collections, and investigating new ways of approaching the stories of marginalized individuals and communities.
Bill Whitaker (Editor) is the curator and collections manager of the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design. Trained as an architect and architectural historian at the University of New Mexico and the University of Pennsylvania, Whitaker primarily works on documenting and interpreting Penn’s design collections, including holdings related to the of life and work of architect Louis I. Kahn and landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, as well as that of the husband and wife design team of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. He has organized and co-curated over 30 exhibitions, co-authored various books, and lectured on a wide range of subjects related to twentieth century architecture, landscape, and community design to locally and around the world.
Elizabeth Felicella (Editor + Photographer) is a New York-based architectural photographer. She photographs architecture and landscape with particular interests in public space and preservation. She works on assignments for designers and on long-term research projects which include a catalog of New York City’s branch libraries, a survey of the city’s shoreline, and an atlas of the periphery of Kennedy Airport. The treatment of photography as information through presentation and installation is a central aspect of her artistic practice. She previously collaborated with the Architectural Archives at Penn on the exhibition Shofuso and Modernism and the accompanying book, Uncrating the Japanese House.
Margaret (Molly) Lester (Editor) is the associate director of the Urban Heritage Project at Weitzman. In addition to her role with the Urban Heritage Project, she has been researching architect Minerva Parker Nichols for over a decade. As part of that project, she was a guest curator for the exhibit Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect, organized by the Architectural Archives at Penn and supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Lester was also a 2019/2020 Fellow for the James Marston Fitch Foundation, for which she produced a multi-media project about Minerva, and a 2020/2021 grantee of the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation for her ongoing Building Ghosts project. She holds a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Penn and a Bachelor of Architectural History from the University of Virginia.
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Loren Daye is empathetic by character and driven by an academic rigor to understand and listen. Loren is a true chameleon, adapting to her environment and intuitively responding to audience, history, locale and site. Where the shelter industry is breeding a surge of furniture, objects, ‘art’ and image-making, Loren is singly interested in space itself. She believes space is formed through the sensual and how it engages the human body in three dimension. In her early career, Loren worked with renowned firms Roman & Williams and Aero Studios, served as Creative Director and Head of Interiors for Ace Hotel Group and founded and developed Atelier Ace. In 2017, Loren returned to her own studio, LOVEISENOUGH. Loren received a BA in Chinese Studies from Ohio State University and a MS in Interior Design (ID) from Pratt Institute and is a member of the faculty in the graduate school.
2023 NEW YORK ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN BOOK CLUB PICKS
The Advanced School of Collective Feeling
A Dark, A Light, A Bright The Designs of Dorothy Liebes
Touch Wood: Material, Architecture Future
Stephen Burks Shelter in Place
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS
Head Hi is an organization dedicated to art and design specializing in publications and cultural programming with an espresso bar located in Fort Greene, Brooklyn by the Navy Yard. We feature a curated selection of publications from around the globe. Working with local and international artists, designers, publishers, community members and organizations in various fields, Head Hi is a space for exploration and interaction that hosts talks, book launches, art shows, music performances and other events.
Untapped is a new design journal that looks back to look forward. Their stories identify the most important knowledge about improving the built environment, and contextualize it for today and tomorrow.
We believe that both the near and distant past hold valuable insights for architects and designers. People have already solved, or are making headway on, many of the challenges the industry currently faces—but such achievements are often overlooked among an excess of data or in the pursuit of innovation, or when they are presented in convoluted ways. Our stories unpack and add a fresh critical perspective to those achievements, explaining why they’re significant and how they can be useful right now.
Untapped is not anti-innovation. We believe that the most efficient path to progress begins with building on what we know. This is the information that the journal is dedicated to gathering, making sense of, and reflecting on, and that we can’t afford to forget.
Collectively, Untapped’s stories form an encyclopedia of ideas: a gateway to knowledge that serves as a timeless, ever-growing resource for all.
www.untappedjournal.com
@untappedjournal