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Barns of Western Pennsylvania: Vernacular to SpectacularDespite rampant suburban sprawl in Western Pennsylvania, twenty-nine of the thirty-three counties in this half of the state are classified as rural, and agriculture remains a leading industry.
Barns are thus an important component of this region's landscape, as well as extremely evocative icons in the popular mind.
This exhibition traces the development of barns in the region from the late 18th century to the present through an exploration of their forms, functions, technological evolution, and role as barometers of change in the agrarian economy.
The Heinz Architectural Center's first exhibition to focus on a single vernacular building type, Barns of Western Pennsylvania: Vernacular to Spectacular presents a wide variety of objects to reveal the complexity of a deceptively straightforward building form.
Models, photographs, barn-building tools, examples of barn decoration, replicas of the intricate joinery that account for the remarkable stability of barns, farm journals, and architectural pattern books are among the artifacts that document barns' evolution from simple log structures to the large, often stately edifices that continue to be significant landmarks on the rural scene.
The exhibition also demonstrates the ways in which this everyday building type recently has been adapted and transformed
more: Barns of Western Pennsylvania: Vernacular to Spectacular
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17/3/2006 | Viewed 37,778 time(s)
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