Scholarship Award Goes to Preservation Architects
The Frank Lloyd Wright home and
studio in Oak Park, Illinois.
The College Art Association/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation recognizes an outstanding contribution by one or more persons who, individually or jointly, have enhanced the understanding of art through the application of knowledge and experience in conservation, art history, and art. This year, Don Kalec and John Thorpe have been selected as the recipients of this award for their sensitive approach to architectural preservation and, more specifically, for their roles in the groundbreaking restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois.
John Thorpe
Don Kalec is the co-founder and first director of the Historic Preservation Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. John Thorpe is a widely respected restoration architect and a principal in the award-winning firm of John Thorpe and Associates. Kalec teaches the School of the Art Institute’s Restoration Design Studio and has published on Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his contemporaries and on Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in Madison, Wisconsin. Thorpe has been a prominent practitioner in the field of historic preservation in Chicago since the 1970s. He is the architect of record for the restoration of many important buildings in the Midwest, including houses by Frank Lloyd Wright in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Nebraska. He served as an advisor for restorations of H. H. Richardson’s Glessner House in Chicago and Ernest Hemingway’s boyhood home in Oak Park. Thorpe also was a consultant on the recent restoration of Wright’s Fallingwater located in Bear Run, Pennsylvania, and is involved with restoration of the Frederick C. Robie House in Chicago.
A room at Oak Park.
Kalec and Thorpe first joined forces in the early 1970s to oversee the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s earliest home and studio, one of the most important architectural landmarks in the United States. Using historic photographs, drawings, written records, physical evidence, and interviews, the two architects, along with a team of other volunteers, painstakingly documented the numerous changes that had been made to the property. Wright, who used the structure as an architectural laboratory, carried out many of these alterations himself. Kalec and Thorpe’s innovative work led to the publication of several books, most notably The Plan for Restoration and Adaptive Use of the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio (1978), which served as the master plan for the thirteen-year restoration of the property. As architectural historian Kevin Harrington has pointed out, Kalec and Thorpe’s “publication documenting the restoration of the Home and Studio remains the standard of excellence for such work around the world.” Their meticulous approach to the restoration has been so thoroughly integrated into the curriculum of historic preservation programs that most people have forgotten where it originated.
Kalec and Thorpe have continued to support the preservation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture. They were extensively involved in the creation of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy in 1989; a national non-profit organization that facilitates through education, advocacy, easements, and technical services the preservation of the remaining structures designed by Wright. Critical to generating broad support for the preservation of America’s architectural landmarks, Kalec and Thorpe generously share their knowledge and expertise beyond the academic environment by presenting public talks and by serving as lecturers for docent-training programs.
The deadline for nominations for next year's award is August 31, 2006. For nomination guidelines, click here. For previous recipients, click here.