Bard Observer, Vol. 22, No. 4 (March 2024)

https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/observer_20s/1003/thumbnail.jp

“The Old Gym.”

Completed in 1920, the Georgian-style Memorial Gymnasium was constructed in memory of five alumni who had died in WWI. For years the lack of a proper gymnasium was seen as a drawback for the College, effectively curtailing enrollment. This represented Bernard Iddings Bell’s first major effort, declaring, in characteristically decisive terms, that “the College [could not] work properly, or even passively through another winter without a gymnasium and recreation building.”https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/bardbw_ststephensnewcentury/1003/thumbnail.jp

Theodore Weiss

Theodore Weiss giving a reading at Bard College, 1969. Audio quality poorhttps://digitalcommons.bard.edu/poetry_at_bard/1180/thumbnail.jp

Table of Contents

(2023) Table of Contents, Early College Folio: Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 1. Available at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/earlycollegefolio/vol3/iss1/

Louis Zukofsky

Poetry reading given by Louis Zukofsky at Bard College. Undated.https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/poetry_at_bard/1190/thumbnail.jp

On Space

Our architecture is becoming more and more abstract; financial speculation, square-footage, zoning, taken-for-granted shapes, and the repetition of trivially differentiated prefabricated components represent an increasingly (supposedly) adequate description of our architecture - a description largely divorced from the lived reality of its social inhabitation or, in other words, what it means to us and how we use it. Meanwhile, the extraction of more new materials and the production of more, new, and different buildings has always been unsustainable. A practice is needed that reverses and resists this force of abstraction and that does not involve new construction but instead involves creative and transformative engagements with our existing architecture. This project argues that epigraphy, or graffiti, points to the sort of practice we need - one that makes and maintains constitutive links between our perception of space and the lived realities of its social inhabitation. This is achieved through a short introductory text and the architectural documentation of two sites in Pompeii. The project is presented in the form of a book to be exhibited at the Bard Architecture open house following submission