We only buy tiny amounts of spices, so we don’t usually notice that per pound they are the most expensive items in the supermarket. This Springfield Museums class on November 2 at 10:30 am with instructor Claire Hopley explains why they are so costly and explores the three most expensive: saffron (at over $2,000 a pound), vanilla, and green cardamom. Tastes are provided. $42 for Museum members, $48 for nonmembers. Register at https://springfieldmuseums.org/program/pricey-spices/
The Springfield Museums presents an adult art class on Friday, October 25 from 10 – 3 with instructor Lisa Regopoulos on Autumn Wildflowers in Soft Pastel. The change occurs quietly along the side of the road in August. Queen Anne’s Lace, Joe Pye Weed, and Goldenrod signal the change in season. This workshop focus will be on capturing the essence of these roadside wildflowers utilizing composition, attention to value, and simplification of background. The workshop will begin with a one-hour demo, followed by uninterrupted time at your easel with lots of individual instruction. Everyone will leave with a finished pastel. All levels welcome. Springfield Museums members $85, nonmembers $100. Register at https://springfieldmuseums.org/program/autumn-wildflowers-in-soft-pastel/
Founder and CEO of Coen+Partners, Shane Coen aims to redefine how we interact with people and place. His firm’s ethos was founded on the commitment to always help define and push the boundaries of landscape architecture to bring earth and cultural equity to the forefront. The firm continues that journey today, leading and collaborating on some of the most complex urban and ex-urban landscapes in the world.
Coen will illustrate Coen+Partners’ design evolution through different project scales, highlighting works including—Heart of the City in Rochester, Minnesota, a car-centric thoroughfare reimagined into a vibrant streetscape; Peavey Plaza in the City of Minneapolis; an iconic center revitalized to provide tranquility and accessibility for the community; and Sports Boulevard, a transformed transit corridor that promotes wellness and social exchange in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
He will also share insight into an equity-based urban planning project, Healing Landscapes, which proposes a new lens and method for planning open space systems in our cities. This NYBG webinar takes place October 29 at 6:30 pm Eastern, and is $35 for NYBG members, $39 for nonmembers. Register at www.nybg.org
The Fall-o-Ween Festival invites you find your way out of the Haunted Fun House Maze, hop on the train, and make your way over to our glow in the dark play space for some nighttime fun featuring LED illuminated swings, seesaws, cornhole and lots more, on October 18 starting at 5 pm at the Boston Common Parade Ground at the corner of Beacon and Charles Streets on the Boston Common.
Adults and children are encouraged to wear Halloween costumes and participate in a wide range of free, fun, and spooky family-friendly activities. Free. The Fall-o-Ween Children’s Festival is presented by the Boston Parks and Recreation Department in partnership with the Skating Club of Boston. Key sponsors are HP Hood LLC and more to be announced. Additional support is provided by LEGO® Discovery Center Boston and more to be announced.
For more information, please call the Boston Parks and Recreation Department at (617) 635-4505 or visit www.facebook.com/bostonparksdepartment or www.boston.gov/parks.
The Harvard Graduate School of Design presents the Aga Khan Program Lecture on October 22 in Gund Hall’s Piper Auditorium in Cambridge. Jala Makhzoumi will speak on Landscape, Garden, and a Colonial Legacy. The program is free and open to the public. Complete details may be found at www.gsd.harvard.edu
Jala Makhzoumi’s search for a grounded language on landscape architecture relies in great part on the search for Arabic terms that capture the complexity of the layered English meaning of “landscape.” Until then, we must contend with inadequate translations—and sometimes transliterations—that reduce “landscape” to scenery and narrow the professional scope of the landscape architect to urban beautification. Moving away from the “borrowed” landscapes in cities, we encounter “rooted” conceptions in rural cultures. These ideas have endured over time and are in tune with the regional ecology and cultural values. Here, we find many iterations of “landscape,” even if they can’t be captured in a single word. For example, the traditional house garden typology, the hakura, which originated in the eastern Mediterranean, combines production and pleasure and is grounded in a love of nature and caring for the land. Can these examples inform and inspire a contextualized landscape architecture in the Middle East and beyond?
Jala Makhzoumi is an adjunct professor of landscape architecture at the American University of Beirut, and Acting President of the International Federation of Landscape Architects, the Middle East Region. Teaching and practicing in a region where landscape architecture is still an emerging profession has brought many challenges but freed Jala to engender a definition of landscape architecture that is responsive to the ecological, socio-cultural, and political context of the region. She applies this contextual landscape approach to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage, to framing human rights and citizenship and in her approach to postwar recovery.
Her publications include Ecological Landscape Design and Planning: The Mediterranean Context, co-author Pungetti, The Right to Landscape: Contesting Landscape and Human Rights, co-editors Egoz and Pungetti, and Horizon 101, a collection of paintings and prose, reflections on landscape and identity. Jala is the recipient of the Tamayouz Women in Architecture and Construction Award (2013), was profiled by the Aga Khan Women Architects (2014), received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (2019) and is the 2021 laureate of the IFLA Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award for her outstanding contribution to education and practice in landscape architecture.
This event is co-sponsored by the GSD and The Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University.
Join The Gibson House Museum on Beacon Street on October 19 for a séance reenactment exploring the history of spiritualism and guided by renowned Boston medium Mina “Margery” Crandon (1888-1941), as portrayed by actress Laura Rocklyn. Crandon’s séances captivated audiences, sparking controversial and heated debates about the existence of paranormal abilities. This hour-long journey delves into the world of Harry Houdini, the legendary escape artist and illusionist who dedicated his life to exposing fraudulent mediums, and the dual persona of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, acclaimed author of Sherlock Holmes and a staunch advocate for spiritualism. As you tour the Gibson House Museum, you’ll experience the rituals and practices that intrigued and confounded Crandon, Houdini, and Doyle, unravelling the intertwined lives and beliefs of these three extraordinary individuals. You may choose from four time slots, 4:30, 5:30, 6:30, or 7:30. $28. Register through Eventbrite HERE.
Julia Child’s kitchen in her Cambridge, Massachusetts, home was a serious workspace and recipe-testing lab that exuded a sense of warm mid-century comfort. On display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History for most of the past 20 years, museum goers have made it a top destination.
The kitchen contains more than 1,000 parts and pieces—tools, appliances, utensils, furniture, artwork, knick-knacks, books, and bits of whimsy—all reflecting Child’s status as an accomplished chef, gastronome, delightful cooking teacher, television trailblazer, women’s advocate, mentor, and generous, jovial friend.
Drawing on her new book, Julia Child’s Kitchen, curator Paula Johnson, one of the original collectors and keepers of the 20′ x 14′ kitchen, provides an intimate portrait of Child at home and remembrances of cooking with her and examines how the kitchen’s layout, design, and contents reflect Child’s philosophy of cooking as well as a period of social and cultural change in the United States.
Hear Johnson, curator of food history and director of the museum’s American Food History Project, discuss the beloved cookbook author and television star’s favorite place in the world—her home kitchen. In conversation with Jessica Carbone, a food writer and historian, she also examines how the legacy Child created in this iconic room continues to influence the ways we cook today.
This Smithsonian Associates Zoom presentation takes place October 28 at 6:45 pm Eastern. $20 for Smithsonian Associates members, $25 for nonmembers. Register at https://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/programs/julia-childs-kitchen
They can feed and enlighten you – or sicken and kill you. They’re mushrooms, the mysterious eruptions from an otherwise entirely hidden world of life and death. Join Opacum Land Trust, Holland Trails Committee, and amateur mycologist, Jonathan Kranz, On October 26 at 10 am on a woodland walk-and-talk where we explore the joys and hazards of the fungus among us, discovering:
Note: What we find depends on what’s out there, weather and climate permitting. Please take common sense precautions against insects (e.g., mosquitoes and ticks) and sunburn. We will meet at the trailhead parking area on the left-hand side of Blodgett Rd, Holland, MA. Cost $15. Register at https://www.opacumlt.org/events/mushroom-identification-walk-at-stevens-brook/
Celebrate the artistry of craftsmanship. Mark your calendar and be prepared to immerse yourself in the finest handcrafted ceramics, prints, jewelry, weaving, and more. Entry to the fair is included with general admission. Your admission also gives you access to New England Botanic Garden’s gardens, trails, and Enchanted Forest exhibit. This event will be held indoors, rain or shine. For a list of participating artists visit https://nebg.org/american-craft-fair/ Pictured below – a customized fabric floorcloth from Kelly Fabric Creations.
The Harvard Graduate School of Design presents the Kenzo Tange Lecture with Sean Godsell on October 17 at 6:30 pm in Gund Hall in Cambridge. The event is free and open to the public. Complete information is available at www.gsd.harvard.edu
Australia is hot and dry. Over 70% of the country is arid or semi-arid and sparsely populated. We are basically a giant desert about the same geographical size as the mainland US but with approximately the same population as greater Los Angeles. Despite our vast mineral wealth, water remains our most precious commodity, and fire and floods are our constant concern. For us, “the bush” is a mystical, mythical place. Australians know of the Outback, the Never Never, the Dreamtime, and the Songlines of our Indigenous communities. Here, “the bush” mediates between our colonial coastalism and the endless emptiness of the rest. These are dreamy, half-real skies.
Sean Godsell was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1960. He graduated with First Class Honours from The University of Melbourne in 1984. He spent much of 1985 traveling in Japan and Europe and worked in London from 1986 to 1988 for Sir Denys Lasdun. In 1994, he formed Sean Godsell Architects. His work has been published in the world’s leading Architectural journals, and he has lectured and exhibited in the USA, UK, China, Japan, India, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, and New Zealand as well as across Australia.
In July 2002, the influential English design magazine Wallpaper* listed him as one of ten people destined to “change the way we live.” His Future Shack housing prototype was exhibited at the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York in 2005 and the facade prototype of the RMIT Design Hub is on permanent display at the V+A Museum in London.
He has received numerous local and international awards, including the 2022 Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal. His work has been published in the monographs Sean Godsell (Electa, 2005), Sean Godsell: Tough Subtlety (El Croquis, 2013), and Sean Godsell: Houses (Thames and Hudson, 2018). In 2013 and 2014, he was visiting professor at the IUAV in Venice. He is adjunct professor of architecture at Deakin University. Photo below by Earl Carter.
