Session Information
Contribution
Julia Morgan was one of the most famous, and prolific, female American architects of the 20th Century. Although her work included a wide range of building types, this paper will focus on her designs for schools.During the early part of the 20th Century in America, progressive practices in education began to require new environments in which to teach and learn. The pedagogy of educational reform, contemporary considerations of curriculum and instruction, and the use of new materials, influenced the more progressive school designs of the time, and the work of Julia Morgan reflected this new perspective.During Morgan's lifetime, study and travel abroad were standard aspects of the professional training of an architect. Existing archives consisting of oral histories, prersonal papers and a limited number of working drawings of buildings, include records of her experiences in Europe and South America but the potential influence of her travel abroad on her school designs appears to have had limited scholarly attention. The purpose of this paper is to investigate Julia Morgan's responses to building programs for educational environments and to attept to analyze the potential of Europena influences on her design decisions. The effects of her exposure to the architecture of Europe and South America, the extent to which she may have been exposed to learning environments apart from those in the US, and her interaction with educators, students and other architects both domestically and abroad will be considered in studying the possible ramifications vis-à-vis her school designs in the United States.Study of existing schools and "educational environments" in situ, and documentation of same; analysis of Julia Morgan's sketchbooks and travel journals; access to archives and oral histories in collections at the Univ. of California at Berkeley; the Univ. of California, St. Luis Obispo; and Avery Library, Columbia University, New York; review of public records at libraries of Boards of Education for which Morgan designed schools; interviews with individuals connected personally or professionally with Morgan. Julia Morgan trained as an architect in Paris and there is evidence that she traveled extensively through Europe and South America. Her school designs are atypical of other designed educational environments of her time and the rationale for such a departure has not been studied to date. Initial investigation has revealed that there are similarities in the massing, details, and spatial considerations of her schools to documentation found in her travel sketchbooks and journals. The experience of her educational spaces and the socially conscious intentions of Morgan in her response to a building's program are further evidence that her design decisions were driven by more than building type. This investigation is intended to analyze and correlate Morgan's formative experiences studying in Europe, her exposure to cultures apart from her own, and the cumulative effects of her extensive travel abroad with her approach to school design in the United States. Boutelle, S.H. Julia Morgan, Architect. New York: Abbeville Press, 1988. Oral Histories: Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Julia Morgan Manuscript Collection, Robert E. Kennedy Library, California Polytechnic State University, St. Luis Obispo, CA Periodicals to include: Architectural Forum, Architectural Review, Architectural Record, Educational Researcher, American Educational Research Journal, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle.
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