What we do.
At the BLC field school, as we explore urban neighborhoods we discover their complexity. Neighborhoods are physical locations, material artifacts of everyday life, centers of symbolic action and domestic activities, and community spaces of interaction and social life.
In 1982 Jules Prown asked, “Are there aspects of mind to be discovered in objects that differ from, complement, supplement, or contradict what can be learned from more traditional literary and behavioral sources?” Prown was referring to the importance of the material world around us in telling us stories of our culture in ways that words, texts, and traditional historical sources did not. Our study of this neighborhood begins with an analysis of the world of homes, streets, gardens, gates, and asphalt. We want to find out if the physical character of the Historic Water Tower neighborhood may tell us something about its history that written accounts and official histories fail to describe.
In such a study mere stylistic and aesthetic categories of analysis fall short because these issues merely parrot what the canonical sources of architecture tell us. Describing a building merely by its style—Neo Classical, Tudor revivals—seem less useful since these categories say nothing about how the meanings and interpretations of these buildings changed over time. Questions such as “who was the architect?” or “what is the aesthetic style of a building?” may well explain the initial context and reasons why an architect built a mansion. But these questions say nothing about social life in these spaces and a pittance about the experiences of those who live in these spaces. Stories of women, children, gardeners, butlers, and maids remain untold. Esoteric information about classical details and building morphologies may enhance the significance and value of the building, but they are not the sole registers of architectural connoisseurship.
Attending to this gap in our knowledge of the built environment, the BLC field school turns towards the study of cultural landscapes as a way to interpret this neighborhood. The term cultural landscape is one that is difficult to define. We use it loosely and geographers, anthropologists, and material culture scholars understand the term in different ways. Geographer Carl Sauer in his essay “The Morphology of Landscape” defines cultural landscape as “fashioned from the natural landscape by a cultural group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape the result.” Others focus on the human experience of place rather than merely studying its physical characters. Scholars such as J. B. Jackson and Kevin Lynch draw our attention to symbolic, cultural and cognitive cues in such landscapes while Dolores Hayden and Setha Low argue that understanding cultural landscapes necessitates an exploration of how we perceive those landscapes and how such practices of spectatorship may be contested.
To us, cultural landscape is phenomena materialized in space. We define cultural landscape as the materialization of a complex relationship between an individual and her larger cultural and material contexts. Cultural landscapes need not be physical, tangible and visible. Indeed, much of what we search for may be symbolic, experiential and sensorial–invisible to our eyes. And just as we make our cultural landscapes, these landscapes influence who we are.
We do not merely read cultural landscapes. We experience it in multisensory ways. In our field school we respond to Dell Upton’s cautionary note that our overdependence on reading, that is the act of visual decoding, may not be a fruitful approach towards a critical study of cultural landscapes. Indeed, unseen forces, political alliances, and non-visual cues may play an important role in our engagement with our cultural landscapes.
The projects from the 2013 BLC field school will engage your senses. Field school students, using hand-rigged recording equipment, captured the sounds you will hear in their documentaries. Their analysis of the buildings will alert you to the sense of touch and the material qualities of the buildings more than the visual and stylistic features of the architecture.
At the BLC field school we begin with vernacular architecture scholar Paul Groth’s argument that cultural landscape studies, “focus most on the history of how people have used everyday space–buildings, rooms, streets, fields, or yards–to establish their identity, articulate their social relations, and derive cultural meaning.” Groth’s emphasis on relationships challenges the often-singular focus on architectural authorship and style used by architectural historians. In this field school we explored the experiences of myriad inhabitants and underscored their role in the making of this neighborhood.
In 1982 Jules Prown asked, “Are there aspects of mind to be discovered in objects that differ from, complement, supplement, or contradict what can be learned from more traditional literary and behavioral sources?” Prown was referring to the importance of the material world around us in telling us stories of our culture in ways that words, texts, and traditional historical sources did not. Our study of this neighborhood begins with an analysis of the world of homes, streets, gardens, gates, and asphalt. We want to find out if the physical character of the Historic Water Tower neighborhood may tell us something about its history that written accounts and official histories fail to describe.
In such a study mere stylistic and aesthetic categories of analysis fall short because these issues merely parrot what the canonical sources of architecture tell us. Describing a building merely by its style—Neo Classical, Tudor revivals—seem less useful since these categories say nothing about how the meanings and interpretations of these buildings changed over time. Questions such as “who was the architect?” or “what is the aesthetic style of a building?” may well explain the initial context and reasons why an architect built a mansion. But these questions say nothing about social life in these spaces and a pittance about the experiences of those who live in these spaces. Stories of women, children, gardeners, butlers, and maids remain untold. Esoteric information about classical details and building morphologies may enhance the significance and value of the building, but they are not the sole registers of architectural connoisseurship.
Attending to this gap in our knowledge of the built environment, the BLC field school turns towards the study of cultural landscapes as a way to interpret this neighborhood. The term cultural landscape is one that is difficult to define. We use it loosely and geographers, anthropologists, and material culture scholars understand the term in different ways. Geographer Carl Sauer in his essay “The Morphology of Landscape” defines cultural landscape as “fashioned from the natural landscape by a cultural group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape the result.” Others focus on the human experience of place rather than merely studying its physical characters. Scholars such as J. B. Jackson and Kevin Lynch draw our attention to symbolic, cultural and cognitive cues in such landscapes while Dolores Hayden and Setha Low argue that understanding cultural landscapes necessitates an exploration of how we perceive those landscapes and how such practices of spectatorship may be contested.
To us, cultural landscape is phenomena materialized in space. We define cultural landscape as the materialization of a complex relationship between an individual and her larger cultural and material contexts. Cultural landscapes need not be physical, tangible and visible. Indeed, much of what we search for may be symbolic, experiential and sensorial–invisible to our eyes. And just as we make our cultural landscapes, these landscapes influence who we are.
We do not merely read cultural landscapes. We experience it in multisensory ways. In our field school we respond to Dell Upton’s cautionary note that our overdependence on reading, that is the act of visual decoding, may not be a fruitful approach towards a critical study of cultural landscapes. Indeed, unseen forces, political alliances, and non-visual cues may play an important role in our engagement with our cultural landscapes.
The projects from the 2013 BLC field school will engage your senses. Field school students, using hand-rigged recording equipment, captured the sounds you will hear in their documentaries. Their analysis of the buildings will alert you to the sense of touch and the material qualities of the buildings more than the visual and stylistic features of the architecture.
At the BLC field school we begin with vernacular architecture scholar Paul Groth’s argument that cultural landscape studies, “focus most on the history of how people have used everyday space–buildings, rooms, streets, fields, or yards–to establish their identity, articulate their social relations, and derive cultural meaning.” Groth’s emphasis on relationships challenges the often-singular focus on architectural authorship and style used by architectural historians. In this field school we explored the experiences of myriad inhabitants and underscored their role in the making of this neighborhood.
In order to study the cultural landscape of the Historic Water Tower Neighborhood we divide the region into four discrete but interdependent and overlapping case studies–a commercial strip, a beach, a residential area, and a cultural institution. These cases are geographically and socially distinct; so much so, that we refer to them as ecological biomes. Yet the overlaps between these zones show their interdependence– and it is in these interconnected worlds that we find the identity of the Historic Water Tower neighborhood.
The first zone, a commercial strip along Downer Avenue, is both a main street and a marketplace akin to many similar streets in small towns across America. Friendship, social interaction, social life and experiences along Downer Avenue are formed around trade, transaction, and consumption incessantly framed within larger global and national trends. Yet the social and material culture of this street is a product of unique local conditions. Downer is a product of local residents' memory and imaginations as much as it is a place made of brick and mortar.
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Bradford beach defines the extents of the second zone. This artificial beach is indeed an ecological boundary between land and water; but it is also a human borderland where residents of this neighborhood encounter strangers from the outer reaches of the city. That encounter between the neighbor and the stranger may not always be congenial, yet the politics of this border zone brings forth central contradictions of diversity, urbanity and civility that plague our contemporary cities.
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The residences loosely define the third category of space. Careful architectural measurements, material culture analysis and kinesthetic engagement with the homes framed our quest to capture the sense of place of this residential domain. The narrow lens of architectural style and historical traditions do not capture the uniqueness of this neighborhood. We argue that the neighborhood is best described via the residents’ emotional attachment to their homes and the careful labor of those who maintain and sustain these domestic spaces.
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The final case study is Villa Terrace, once a home and now a museum. Villa Terrace serves as a bridge between the neighborhood and a larger cultural world. Even in its distant past, a mimetic attempt to recreate an Italian home in the snowy shores of Lake Michigan was an act of cultural exchange and appropriation. But the process of cultural bridging is present today too, as this iconic landmark hosts art exhibits and events from across the city and the world. As part of Milwaukee’s annual Museum Mile, Villa Terrace is part of a group of arts and culture museums located on Milwaukee’s historic East Side.
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Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method,” Winterthur Portfolio 17: 1 (Spring, 1982), 3.
Carl O. Sauer, ' The Morphology of Landscape,' In Land and Life: A Selection from the writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer, J. Leighly (editor), pp. 315-350 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 343.
Paul Groth, “Frameworks for Cultural Landscape Study,” In Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi Eds., (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 1.
Richard Longstreth, The Buildings of Main Street: A Guide to American Commercial Architecture, (Washington DC: Preservation Press, 1987).
JB Jackson, “By Way of Conclusion: How to Study the Landscape,” In Landscape in Sight: Looking at America, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Ed., p. 307-320 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).
Dell Upton, “Seen, Unseen and Scene.” In Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi, Eds., p. 174-79. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977).
Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996). Setha Low, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000).
Carl O. Sauer, ' The Morphology of Landscape,' In Land and Life: A Selection from the writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer, J. Leighly (editor), pp. 315-350 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 343.
Paul Groth, “Frameworks for Cultural Landscape Study,” In Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi Eds., (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 1.
Richard Longstreth, The Buildings of Main Street: A Guide to American Commercial Architecture, (Washington DC: Preservation Press, 1987).
JB Jackson, “By Way of Conclusion: How to Study the Landscape,” In Landscape in Sight: Looking at America, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Ed., p. 307-320 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).
Dell Upton, “Seen, Unseen and Scene.” In Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, Paul Groth and Todd W. Bressi, Eds., p. 174-79. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977).
Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996). Setha Low, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000).