A New Year message from the SAHGB Chair and Honorary Secretary
The SAHGB’s 2023 came to a happy and festive end with our Awards Ceremony, which took place in December at Toynbee Hall, close by Spitalfields Market and the City of London. Winners and guests joined together to celebrate outstanding scholarship in architectural history on topics as varied as everyday modernism in Singapore, coal and modern architecture in the twentieth century and Elizabethan ruins in the eighteenth century.
Toynbee Hall was designed by the architect Elijah Hoole for the settlement founded by Henrietta and Samuel Barnett, and opened in 1884. As a centre for voluntary work, it was an appropriate setting for our Society, which, funded by our membership, relies on the work of volunteers to manage and carry out its activities. Our management team and Board of Trustees work incredibly hard and we want to thank them sincerely for what they do. And we hope to reach out to those who may interested in becoming involved in 2024 to work with us. Please get in touch and look out for the opportunities we advertise across the year.
The Awards Ceremony evening also saw the launch of the Girouard Fund for Publications. Founded in memory of the architectural historian Mark Girouard, who received several of the SAHGB’s major awards during his lifetime of writing , its aim is to support architectural history broadly defined, from academic articles to architectural workshops with schools, and forms part of the Society’s commitment to build a bigger and more diverse discipline and to achiever a wider outreach. We invite members to consider making a donation to the fund through the links on this website.
2024 will see the continuation of our partnership with the IHR for the IHR seminar series, an Early Career Researcher symposium in Birmingham and our Annual Lecture, which takes place on March 14th at Church House, given by Professor Paul Binski, as well as the annual September study tour, this year taking place in Norfolk. The Trustees and Management team will also be concentrating on developing the website with more content for members.
We are also pleased to announce the rescheduling of the RIBA Collections move Q+A with Oliver Urquhart-Irvine, Executive Director of Programmes and Collections at the RIBA, to Thursday 29 th February. Members who have already registered will be contacted about this, while further registrations will be possible from the end of January.
We look forward to working hard for the Society throughout 2024, and wish all members a happy and productive year.
Elizabeth Darling (Chair)
Doreen Bernath (Hon. Sec)
Front page image: the 2023 winners of the SAHGB Awards, photographed at Toynbee Hall (used with permission of Francesco Fiammenghi)
