| 12 Nov 2009 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm | CRASSH | |
- Description
Description
A talk by CRASSH Visiting Fellow Richard Hayes ( Rafael Vinoly Architects)
In 1967, the first-year class of graduate students from the Yale School of Architecture travelled to an isolated region of Kentucky to build a community centre they designed for impoverished residents of a hamlet called New Zion. The project was an unprecedented experiment in learning-by-doing and community service that was one of the educational innovations introduced by architect Charles Moore after being named chairman of Yale’s Department of Architecture. This small community centre inaugurated a program that recently celebrated its 40th anniversary: The Yale Building Project, in which every year since 1967 students have designed and constructed a building for a community-based client. The program originated in the context of student activism and volunteerism during the 1960s, and reflected the initiatives of President Johnson’s 'Great Society'. Richard Hayes has documented each of the projects in the program’s forty-year history, which has served as a mirror for changes in American society over four decades. After building community centers and a health clinic in rural Appalachia, Yale students shifted their focus to providing recreation projects throughout Connecticut, turning in 1989 to building affordable housing in New Haven’s poorest neighborhoods. The Yale Building Project has contributed to the education of many of America's leading architects while serving as a model for numerous universities that now incorporate similar programs in their curricula. Hayes’s book, The Yale Building Project: the First 40 Years (Yale University Press, 2007) is the first comprehensive history of this important initiative.
The event is free to attend and there is no need to register. There will be a reception after the talk.
Please address administrative enquiries to mm405@cam.ac.uk.
