2018 ACSA Fall Conference

Alexandra Lange is the architecture critic for Curbed. Her essays, reviews, and profiles have appeared in numerous design publications including Architect, Design Observer, Dezeen and Metropolis, as well as in New York Magazine, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. She was a 2014 Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her new book, The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids was published by Bloomsbury USA in June 2018. Research for the book was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. She is also the author of Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012), the e-book The Dot-Com City: Silicon Valley Urbanism (Strelka Press, 2012), and Design Research: The Store that Brought Modern Living to American Homes (Chronicle Books, 2010), which she co-authored with Jane Thompson.

“A Modern Education: Learning from Froebel, Frank Lloyd Wright, Anne Tyng and Isamu Noguchi”

Frank Lloyd Wright liked to tell the story of how his interest in form was piqued by early encounters with wooden blocks. In this lecture, based on her new book, The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids, architecture critic Alexandra Lange will discuss the origins and development of wooden blocks, why they came to dominate American kindergartens, and how designers and educators including Caroline Pratt, Anne Tyng, Isamu Noguchi and Charles and Ray Eames thought they could improve upon them.