Posted by vrcvanderbilt on Tuesday, June 27, 2017 in Conferences, Events, HART, VRC.

Hundreds of Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) members recently gathered in Glasgow, Scotland, to hear new ideas about the distant past and, in many cases, to learn from that past in order to affect the future. Tracy Miller, associate professor of history of art, chaired a session at the SAH 70th Annual International Conference held June 7-11 in a city with an urban fabric rich in Victorian-era architecture and increasingly studded with more recent projects by such architects as Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid.

The conference program featured paper sessions, keynote talks, round tables, social receptions, and public events, including thirty-three tours of architecture and landscapes in and around Glasgow and a seminar on heritage and sustainability held at Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Queen’s Cross Church.

Miller chaired the June 8 session entitled “Chinese Architecture and Gardens in a Global Context.”  Among the papers presented were “From Monastic Cells to Corridors: Historical Significance of Sixth–Seventh-Century Changes in the Chinese Buddhist Monastery” (Zhu Xu, The University of Hong Kong); “Hindu Features in the Vernacular Architecture of Southeast China” (Lizhi Zhang, Tsinghua University, China); “Hybrid Spaces Reconsidered: Knowledge, Identity and Publicity in Eighteenth-Century Jesuit Gardens in Beijing” (Lianming Wang, Heidelberg University, Germany); “Historical Study on Modern Textile Mills in Yangtze Delta (Yiping Dong, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China); and “Modern Chinese Association Buildings: Exit Nation, Enter Ethnicity” (Mark Hinchman, University of Nebraska).

In keeping with its mission to facilitate the study, understanding and conservation of architecture, landscapes and urbanism on a global scale, the Society of Architectural Historians has expanded its affiliations with a network of international organizations pursuing similar objectives and has increasingly attracted a more international membership. The SAH Annual International Conference has become in turn a hub for teachers and scholars, planners and architects, preservationists and policy specialists from all parts of the world.

*Queen’s Cross Church (courtesy of VisitScotland/Paul Tomkins)