John Ochsendorf
Director of the American Academy in Rome
Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The vaulted architecture of Rome has influenced builders for millennia.听 But the challenge of understanding and maintaining the cultural heritage of arches, vaults and domes is particularly acute today. Historic monuments are threatened by earthquakes, unsympathetic building codes, and well-meaning restorers, as well as widespread misunderstanding about the structural behavior of masonry vaults. This lecture will present case studies in the history, structural behavior, and architectural preservation of vaulted masonry architecture around the world.
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John Ochsendorf is the Director of the American Academy in Rome and is the Class of 1942 Professor of Architecture and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A structural engineer and historian of construction, Ochsendorf is the author of Guastavino Vaulting: The Art of Structural Tile (2010). He is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including a Fulbright Scholarship to Spain, a Rome Prize in Historic Preservation from the American Academy in Rome, and a MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Ochsendorf was trained at Cornell, Princeton University, and the University of Cambridge.
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