On Wednesday, March 30, Tulane School of Architecture Emerita Professor Karen Kingsley will discuss the pioneering designs of two architects, Samuel G. and William B. Wiener, who introduced modern architecture to Louisiana.
First influenced by the avant-garde designs they saw during a tour in Europe in the 1920s, the architects translated and adapted these forms for a Southern context.
The evolutionary process of the Wieners’ designs in the decades that followed reveals much that is central to understanding midcentury modernism.
Kingsley will also show how the architects’ work illuminates issues central to the survival, demolition, alteration, and preservation of modernist buildings.
Her presentation draws on material from the recently published book she cowrote with Guy W. Carwile, The Modernist Architecture of Samuel G. and William B. Wiener, Shreveport, Louisiana, 1920â1960 (LSU Press 2016).
Kingsley is the author of Buildings of Louisiana (2003) and editor-in-chief of the Society of Architectural Historians’ Buildings of the United States series.
