Collections and Critiques

The annual series of Charles Eliot Norton Lecturers will be given this year by one of the most eminent writers on modern architecture, Dr. Siegfried Gidion.

He is a Swiss, and was trained as an engineer, but after taking his diploma he turned to the history of art and received his Doctor's degree. He has travelled throughout Europe, making investigations of the fundamental sources of all building problems, especially the social developments that have followed the introduction of the machine.

He is an eminent scholar, the author of a book on Late Baroque and Roman Classicism. Since then he has written "Bauen in Frankreich, in Elison, in Eisenbeton" and "Bauen and Wohnen." For the last three years he has been writing a study of the whole social background of modern times in relation to modern trends in building.

Dr. Gidion's lectures will be given in English, at 8.30 o'clock on Tuesdays, in the Fogg Museum, and will be open to the public. The titles and dates are: The Role of History Today, Nov. 15. Architectural Inheritance: Early Renaissance and Late Baroque, Nov. 22. Architectural Inheritance: The Organization of the Outer Space, Nov. 29; New Potentialities: Iron the New Material, Dec. 6; New Potentialities: Architecture and Construction, Dec. 18.