Watch the film from home: September 20-23, 2021
Join zoom Discussion with Thomas C. Hubka: September 24, 2021 | Noon
When the acclaimed artists/educators Rick and Laura Brown decided that they would reconstruct a magnificent, 18th century, Polish wooden synagogue in Poland, even those who knew this remarkable couple well doubted it would ever happen. Raise The Roof follows the Browns and the Handshouse Studio team to Sanok, Poland, as they begin building the new Gwoździec roof. The crew has only six weeks to hew, saw, and carve 200 freshly logged trees and assemble the structure. Working against a seemingly impossible deadline and despite torrential downpours and exhaustion, the team must create the structure, and disassemble it again for shipping and eventual installation. After working for ten years with hundreds of students, educators, scholars, and craftsmen, the Browns’ Gwozdziec synagogue reconstruction project has become the iconic centerpiece of the new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Raise the Roof is the story of this epic journey.
Information regarding how to watch the screening will be sent out on September 20 to those that have registered by zoom.
If you have not received an email with information on how to access the film by Noon on September 20, please email akurson@ojmche.org. She will be monitoring signups that happen throughout September 20-23 and will try to get you the information for the film as soon as possible.
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We are grateful for your participation and encourage you to consider supporting our virtual programs.
Thomas C. Hubka is a Professor Emeritus from the Department of Architecture, University of Wisconsin−Milwaukee. Through almost forty years of scholarship and teaching he has attempted to link the practice and teaching of architecture to historical and cultural context. He has published widely on topics of popular, vernacular architecture including theoretical works and detailed studies of common buildings such as New England farms, bungalows, ranch houses, and workers’ cottages and he was a consultant on the film Raising The Roof. His latest book explores America’s most common housing such as workers’ cottages, bungalows, and duplexes: Houses without Names: Architecture Nomenclature and the Classification of America’s Common Houses (University of Tennessee Press). He is working on a new book: Modern Housing for a New Middle Class: The Transformation of Working-Class Housing, 1880- 1930. His two previous books are: Resplendent Synagogue: Architecture and Worship in an 18th Century Polish Community (University Press of New England and Brandeis University Press) for which he received the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s, Henry Glassie Award, 2006; and Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England (University Press of New England) for which he received the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award in 1985. He is currently living in Portland, Oregon where he has taught courses at the University of Oregon, Portland State University, and Portland Community College and continues to study the housing and neighborhoods of Portland and Oregon.