Westcott House to kick off virtual conference

The Westcott House will have an online PechaKucha event Wednesday evening to lead off the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy's 2020 Virtual Conference. Courtesy photo

The Westcott House will have an online PechaKucha event Wednesday evening to lead off the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy's 2020 Virtual Conference. Courtesy photo

The Westcott House, the Springfield historic building designed by celebrated architect Frank Lloyd Wright, is receiving international recognition through virtual means.

Following a virtual PechaKucha event it hosted in June that attracted more than 2,000 registrants from across the world, the Westcott House will kick off the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy’s 2020 Virtual Conference with “Wright Sites x PechKucha vol. 2”

The event is free and will be presented at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 11. It will feature eight speakers who own, live or work in Wright-designed buildings, both public and private, that represent multiple phases of Wright’s career.

PechaKucha is a storytelling platform in which speakers present 20 image-based slides shown for 20 seconds and have 400 seconds to speak about them. Westcott House has presented similar events in Springfield for several years and become a go-to on the subject for the Wright community, which studies, celebrates and preserves his work.

The June event showed a virtual conference after many weeks of lockdown was a welcome way to unite for many of the participants.

Westcott House executive director Marta Wojcik said she’s honored the Conservancy reached out to partner again to start the four-day conference.

“It’s so wonderful that our little house in Ohio attracted a global audience and to see the demand to know more about Frank Lloyd Wright and his work,” she said.

The conference gathers the global community of Wright specialists and aficionados and will feature panel discussions, photographic tours and videox of Wright’s work domestic and internationally.

PechaKucha presenters will represent various areas of the U.S. Wojcik is particularly excited to have participants from New York’s famed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum involved as it’s considered by many to be Wright’s most significant design.

Wojcik said one of the attendees of the previous PechKucha event commented they were worried the subject matter would be above their head, but was grateful for the way it was presented.

“It’s for anyone with architecture interest, but it’s very personal and done with a good sense of humor,” she said. “We’re hoping it will be a really nice night.”

Access to the PechaKucha event is available at the Westcott House’s website. Wojcik said a virtual Springfield-based PechaKucha event is in the planning stages for December.

To learn more about the full conference, go to savewright.org/conference.

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