Center for Historic Architecture and Design

The Formidable Barn

Saturday December 3rd marked the end of another fall documentation class. This year’s final took the students to Kacanda Farm in Birdsboro, PA. A recent graduate of the program, Leah Kacanda, invited the class to her father’s old farm complex. In the tradition of documentation finals, none of the students had seen the property before.

The fall 2010 documentation class also drew parts of Kacanda Farm for their documentation final last year. The previous class focused their efforts on a very early log house. While this years documentation class focused on a beautiful stone bank barn. One crew drew the second floor of the bank barn, another the elevation of the barn that the two floors are visible, and the last team drew a gable-end elevation, as well as an interior framing section.

The weather was beautiful especially for December, and the Kacandas cooked and provided everyone with lunch! Leah made sausages with fixings, pasta salad, green salad, and a coffee crumb cake. Copious amounts of coffee were also available throughout the day!

2011 Documentation Class

CHAD would like to extend a super special thank-you to the Kacandas for inviting us into your house! See everyone in Fall 2012 for another Documentation Class!

This past Saturday marked the last regular class for UAPP 631. The class has been meeting bi-weekly on Saturdays at the John Dickinson Plantation. Previously the class learned how to draw floor plans in the tenant house, front elevations on the double corn-crib granary, they completed an interior of framing section of the barn, and this Saturday the class focused their efforts in learning how to draw a site-plan.

Unlike the previous documentation skills the class had been exposed to site plans, and how you draw and measure them are completely different from the other drawings. Unlike everything else, you draw first. The class got acquainted with this alternate and new approach to field documentation. The went forth and drew, and collectively came back together. Unlike other field drawings, sometimes how site plans are drawn varies from person to person.

After drawing the class was split up in to two teams. Each team started on a different side of the John Dickinson Plantation, and eventually crossed paths in the center. Also unique to site plans is the fact that you can start just about anywhere on site, and still end up with the same results. How you measure for site plans is also completely different than any other field documentation technique. Because the primary concern revolves around place the buildings in relation to one another, instead of getting one measurement for a point you get three. You literally created a triangle for each point on site, to place it within the larger context!

After completing the site plans, the class discussed their final. The final won’t be at the John Dickinson Plantation, instead it is at a mystery location! The class has been asked to put some forethought into what type of drawing they will be working on for the final, section, elevation, floorplans, etc. The documentation final will be Saturday December 3rd!

Another fall, another Documentation of Historic Structures Class. Documentation (UAPP631) focuses on learning to create scaled, annotated field notes of historic resources in preparation for making measured drawings of buildings. Students work as part of a team to record a variety of buildings through plans, sections, elevations and details. Documentation meets every other Saturday during the fall semester, and this past Saturday marked the third meeting.

This year’s class has been learning how to draw at the John Dickinson Plantation in Kitts Hummock Vicinity, De.  The class has been focusing their efforts on drawing some of the reconstructed outbuildings on the site. So far the class has drawn the tenant house, as well as the corn crib/granary.  At  the next session of class (October 29th) the class will be working on the barn.

On October 1st, the class started with floor plans on the tenant house.  This past Saturday (Oct. 15) the class completed their first elevation drawings of the front elevation of the corn crib/granary combo building.

The John Dickinson Plantation is a perfect place to learn to document. It is a state-owned property, with working bathrooms, as well as historical re-enactors, and a large public audience, who ask a lot of questions.

For more information on the UAPP631 and JDPlantation please visit :

http://history.delaware.gov/museums/jdp/visitors.shtml

http://primus.nss.udel.edu/CourseDesc/info.action?searchKey=2011|UAPP631