EAHN committee members and others visiting Alberti’s Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini in February
Photograph: Karin Theunissen

The EAHN publications subcommittee meeting in original library of the Facoltà di Ingegneria, Bologna (Giuseppe Vaccaro, 1931-35)
Photograph: Mauro Bonetti

The annual business meeting of the EAHN Committee at the Collegio Erasmus, Bologna
Photograph: Karin Theunissen

EAHN Fifth Annual Business Meeting Held in Bologna

The Fifth Annual Business Meeting of the EAHN committee took place at the Università di Bologna from 19-21 February 2010; the meeting was co-sponsored by the university’s Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione Territoriale (DAPT) in Bologna and its Facoltà di Architettura “Aldo Rossi” from its Cesena campus.  Committee member Maristella Casciato along with her colleagues Francesco Ceccarelli and Giovanni Leoni organized a full and varied program for the weekend, coordinated with the assistance of Andrea Morpurgo, Denise Tamborrino, and Andrea Ugolini.  Twelve committee members attended, and seven new committee members were elected on the weekend, including the EAHN’s Westminster Editorial Assistants Davide Deriu and Josephine Kane along with their supervisor Murray Fraser who joined us from London.  Other new committee members are Javier Martínez (Spain), José Medina (Spain), Daniel Millette (Canada), and Giulia Ceriani Sebregondi (Italy).   Isabel van der Zande from the EAHN office at ®MIT, TU Delft, also attended the meeting, her last as the organization’s office manager.

In conjunction with the EAHN business meeting, our Bolognese colleagues organized a day of events on 18 February commemorating the first anniversary of the death of the distinguished scholar Richard J. Tuttle, professor of architectural history in Bologna.  The highlight of the day was a memorial lecture by Richard Schofield (IUAV, Venice) entitled Leonardo architetto. Una invenzione storiografica?  Many EAHN committee members, newsletter correspondents from Italy, and general members attended this touching tribute to Professor Tuttle.

Subcommittees met during the day on Friday to prepare material for the general business meeting on Saturday and Sunday.  The Publications Committee could welcome many members of the newsletter editorial committee as well as four of the six newsletter correspondents from Italy in addition to the regular subcommittee members; the Publications Committee enjoyed lively discussions about the future EAHN journal and enhancements to the EAHN website.  The EAHN 2010 conference advisory committee met all afternoon on Friday to make final decisions about the program for the Guimarães conference while the rest of the group enjoyed a rainy but fascinating tour of early modern architecture in the historic center of Bologna.

Saturday morning committee members were treated to presentations by six recent graduates of the Ph.D. program in Bologna.  The projects discussed ranged across five centuries and covered a rich variety of themes and approaches: fifteenth-century villas in the Po Valley, the seventeenth-century Bolognese architect Agostino Barelli, Ticinese architects in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bologna, Jewish cemeteries in Italy, the training of Pier Luigi Nervi in Bologna, and Max Bill’s exhibition spaces in Italy.

Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning were devoted to the main annual business meeting of the organization.  Among the important decisions made at the business meeting was the introduction of a system of varied membership levels to take effect after the Guimarães conference, with a membership fee required for all but the most basic level of membership.  The committee also elected new organizational officers whose terms of office will begin at the Guimarães conference: Adrian Forty (president); Mari Hvattum (vice president); Tom Avermaete (treasurer); and Maarten Delbeke (secretary).  Before the conference in June, the list of committee members will be revised to reflect more accurately those currently active in organizational business.  On Sunday afternoon following the business meeting, several committee members travelled to Rimini to visit Alberti’s Tempio Malatestiano, bringing the weekend’s official program to a close.

A full report on the EAHN business meeting will be published in the June newsletter, and the minutes of the meeting will be posted on the EAHN website.  The Explorations rubric in the June issue of the EAHN Newsletter will examine architectural history throughout Italy, and at the Università di Bologna in particular.