Photos of Worldwide Vernacular Architecture to be Exhibited

Melissa Mitchell, Arts Editor, UIUC News Bureau

Photographs by James Warfield, ACSA Distinguished Professor of Architecture Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will be on view March 14 through April 8 at the School of Architecture.

“Stone Poems: Architecture and the Land,” will be exhibited in the Temple Buell Architecture Gallery of the Architecture Building, 608 E. Lorado Taft Drive, Champaign.

An opening reception for the show will take place on Monday, March 14, following a talk by San Francisco architects Steven and Cathi House at 7 p.m. in the Temple Buell Architecture Gallery in the Architecture Building, 608 E. Lorado Taft Drive, Champaign. The Houses are authors of the book Mediterranean Villages: An Architectural Journey.

“Stone Poems” explores and celebrates worldwide architectural works, which, according to Warfield, “exemplify the very best in culture, nature, architecture and land relationships.”

“It illustrates issues of design with nature, of sustainability, of integrity in architecture, and of materiality and time,” he said. “The original images are selected from a personal archive of vernacular and historic architecture for their ability to illustrate how some cultures around the world have, though time, established principles of design that honor nature, how some cultures have found a balance between what they take from the land and what they return to it.”

The images, he said, “are intended to stimulate thought among the educated public as well as to challenge process and product among today’s design professionals.”

“Stone Poems” was previously exhibited last spring at I space, the College of Fine and Applied Arts's Chicago gallery.

For more information, call the School of Architecture at (217) 333-1330.