Week 0: (Preamble) Purpose of this blog

The purpose of this blog is to follow week-by-week, the studies and findings of my Rome Prize fellowship project, as well as the personal, human interest, and cultural  reflections of an American transplanted to Rome with his family for an academic year.

What’s my project all about?  In the course of my 14 years of practice in historic preservation, the work of the Roman architect/engineer/planner/master builder Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Vitruvius), as set forth in his seminal text de Architectura (“The Ten Books of Architecture”), has provided me with a frequent touchstone for my own work.  Now, with the National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation awarded to me by the American Academy in Rome, I will seek to follow in the footsteps of Vitruvius, by utilizing his methodology of direct observation of existing buildings (the details, materials, and methods of their construction, and their current condition) to derive the lessons they have to teach us regarding long-term durability and preservation.  Vitruvius studied the durability of construction of buildings from ancient Greece, as well as prior Roman buildings.   I will resume his studies approximately where they ended in time, around the first century A.D. in Rome, and continue these studies  on various buildings through the centuries (and various periods of architectural history), concluding with notable 20th century modernist buildings in Rome).