Dr. Laura Hollengreen
Barbara Starrett
The SaddleBrooke Freethinkers Club is proud to have Dr. Laura Hollengreen speak on “Design for Change: When Places and Objects Invite Transformation” on Sunday, Nov. 2. The meeting is held at the SaddleBrooke One clubhouse Vermillion Room, with a coffee social at 9:15 a.m. and the program beginning at 9:45 a.m.
The talk will focus on those “threshold experiences” in life when an encounter with a place, a ritual, or a work of art is strong enough to change us. Although we cross thresholds every day as we move from space to space or moment to moment, not all experiences of thresholds are routine. Some are conditioned by designed elements and deliberate practices that elicit particular attention, care, and reflection. Those threshold experiences can be truly transformative.
In the contemporary world, a superabundance of shrill stimuli undermines perception, reflection, and learning; instead, they foster a feeling of surfeit and saturation, indifference, or passive surrender. At this moment, then, rediscovery of designed thresholds and rich threshold experiences, whether individual or communal, suggests ways to recover perceptual attentiveness and a path to powerful knowledge of oneself and the world. The lecture will feature examples of past works of architecture and art—-big and small,famous and little-known—–that have conditioned threshold experiences. These experiences have resulted in life and community affirming changes of status, security, social roles, physical health, frame of mind, and cultural expression.
Dr. Laura Hollengreen is Associate Professor of Architecture and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona. She founded and chairs a faculty group and curricular cluster for advanced architecture students entitled (Meta)Physics of Light. She did her undergraduate work at Princeton University and earned her M.A. and PhD in history of art at UC, Berkeley. Dr. Hollengreen is currently working with a colleague in digital media on a book entitled Thresholds: Liminal Design from the Premodern to the Present.
SaddleBrooke Freethinkers provides a forum for the responsible search for truth and meaning in understanding and solving human problems by applying science and reason. We believe that tolerance, compassion, equity, and civility should characterize interactions among people and organizations. We strive to achieve these goals through meetings, lectures, and discussions.
You can become a member of the SaddleBrooke Freethinkers for $15 per calendar year. This fee includes all lectures and other Freethinkers events like the book club and social events. The lecture program runs January through April and October through December. Lectures are open to all SaddleBrooke residents and their guests as space is available. Non-members are encouraged to make a $5 donation to defray costs.
Attendees are encouraged to bring non-perishable food items and/or cash donations for the Tri-Community Food Bank.
For dates of future programs, go to our website SBFreethinkers.wordpress.com.
For questions or to be added to the email list, please send your contact information to saddlebrookefreethinkers@gmail.com.