Lecture: The Mathematics of Style and Taste

Charles Rosenblum
Writer and Architecture Critic

Thursday, November 14
6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Landmarks Preservation Resource Center
744 Rebecca Avenue, Wilkinsburg, PA 15221

There’s no accounting for taste, goes the old aphorism, and yet things go in and out of style with almost mathematical predictability. Likewise, style in architecture is a specific set of historic formal properties in which geometry and precision figure notably by their presence or absence. These days, new styles may be driven entirely by algorithms and their use. There could be too much math or not enough. This lecture addresses numerical precision across several related topics in historic and current architecture, perpetually discussing mathematics without doing too much of it.

About the presenter: Charles Rosenblum is a journalist, critic, and scholar writing about architecture, art and other aspects of visual culture. For the past 20 years, he has taught history of architecture and art at universities in Western Pennsylvania. His writing has appeared in books and publications nationally and regionally, including several for PHLF. He has won journalism awards for architectural writing in the Pittsburgh City Paper and Pittsburgh Quarterly. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia with a dissertation on the architecture of Henry Hornbostel.

This lecture is FREE to the public. RSVPs are appreciated: marylu@phlf.org or 412-471-5808 ext, 527.