Location: Thwing Center Ballroom, 11111 Euclid Avenue
Have you ever wondered where the rocking chair came from, or why cheap plastic chairs are everywhere? The way we choose to sit and what we choose to sit on speak volumes about our values, our tastes, and the things we hold dear. Architect and writer Witold Rybczynski chronicles the history of the chair from ancient Egypt to the present-day. He shows how design, construction, social mores, and aesthetics come together in this ordinary, everyday object.
Free and open to the public.
About the speaker:
Witold Rybczynski was born in Edinburgh, of Polish parentage, raised in London, and attended Jesuit schools in England and Canada. He studied architecture at McGill University in Montreal, where he also taught for twenty years. He is Emeritus Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania. Rybczynski has designed and built houses as a registered architect, as well as doing practical experiments in low-cost housing, which took him to Mexico, Nigeria, India, the Philippines, and China. He has written for the Atlantic, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, and the New York Times, and has been architecture critic for Saturday Night, Wigwag, and Slate. From 2004 to 2012 he served on the U. S. Commission of Fine Arts.