Enduring Places: Little Houses and Big Dreams in the Holy City

with Witold Rybczynski

In November 2023, the ICAA hosted the national conference Enduring Places. For three days, 225 participants from around the country gathered in Charleston, South Carolina and engaged in a robust program of talks, panel discussions, working sessions, and tours focused on three themes: craftsmanship, preservation, and sustainability.

The conference's feature lecture was delivered by Witold Rybczynski, an architect and writer as well as the recipient of the 2023 Arthur Ross Award in Publishing. "Little Houses and Big Dreams in the Holy City," based on his book Charleston Fancy, is set in the colonial city of Charleston and brings together two interests: architecture and urbanism. Beginning in the 1980s, a motley crew of builders—a lover of Byzantine architecture, an Air Force pilot, a fledgling architect, and a bluegrass mandolin player—undertake a variety of unusual projects: a domed Orthodox church, a fanciful medieval castle, a restored freedman’s cottage, a miniature Palladian villa, and a new street based on Porgy and Bess. And in the process of remaking an old city, they invent a new one.

From April to June 2024, the ICAA will be releasing all of the recordings from Enduring Places. Part I and Part II are available now. Sign up for the ICAA's biweekly newsletter, World of Classicism, to be notified when other installments are released in the coming weeks.

Witold Rybczynski, architect and writer, is Meyerson Professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of more than twenty books, including A Clearing in the Distance, a prize-winning biography of Frederick Law Olmsted. His latest is The Story of Architecture, which the New York Times called “an expansive account traces the influence of social, technological, and economic shifts on architecture across centuries.” In 2014 he received a Cooper- Hewitt National Design Award and in 2023 he received an Arthur Ross Award in Publishing from the ICAA.

Sponsors

The ICAA is very grateful to John F.W. Rogers for generously making this program possible along with our supporters:

Classical American Homes Preservation Trust

Historic Charleston Foundation

Oliveri Millworks

Traditional Building

Schafer Buccellato Architects

CONTRIBUTING SPONSORS

A Classical Studio, Inc.

Benedictine College

Gaston & Wyatt

Goodwin Classic Homes

Jared Goss

Historical Concepts

ICAA Northern California Chapter

Leeds Custom Design and Seabreeze Building

Anne Kriken Mann

John B. Murray & Elizabeth Brooke Murray

Poggenpohl

Reis Contracting

Skurman Architects

Peter J. Talty

Tucker & Marks

The Urban Electric Co.

Vallette & Russell Windham

LECTURE SPONSORS

Ankie & Fran Barnes

Stan Dixon

Marsha & David Dowler

Barbara Eberlein

Kirk Henckels

Jeff Allen Landscape Architecture, LLC

Anne Lazar

Marmi Stone

Suzanne R. Santry

Tammy Connor Interior Design

Urban Design Associates

Whitlock Builders

Bunny Williams

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE

Russell Windham, Chair

Ankie Barnes

Andrew Cogar

Richard Economakis

Ray Gindroz

Alexa Hampton

Thomas Lloyd

Michael Mesko

Eric Osth

Suzanne Santry

IN COLLABORATION WITH ICAA NATIONAL OFFICE STAFF

Peter Lyden, President

Caroline Slaten, Vice President, Development

Julia Sucher, Manager, Development & Special Events

Lexi Hoglund, Assistant, Development and Office of the President

Tags: enduring places, sustainability