Traditional Building Conference: Part II

So an important fact I forgot to say last post was this years Traditional Building Conference was themed Growing Green: Traditional Building and Sustainable Development. The last day of the conference I went to a great lecture By Aaron Lubeck, author if Green Restorations:Sustainable Building in Historic Homes. Aaron lives and work on historic homes in Durham North Carolina. He was refreshingly honest, funny and not an architect. His book is hands-on and discusses the convergence of America's conservation movements, historic preservation and green building.

Overall I think that the Traditional Building Conference was a success. Thanks to Bill and PTN for thinking of me to represent them and my friend Jeff for helping me at the booth.

Traditional Building Conference

Greetings from Chicago, Illinois! I guess I can say I am the Midwest correspondent for preserve and restore now. Today I have been working a booth for The Preservation Trades Network , at the annual Traditional Building Conference.

PTN is a non for profit membership organization founded to provide education, networking and outreach for the traditional building trades. PTN works with North American and international partners to provide educational resources, events and workshops that build opportunities for collaboration, and exchange of skills and knowledge. PTN is well known in the preservation field and I was fortunate to talk to a lot of interesting people at this conference. Besides working the exhibition hall, I also got to attend some lectures. One seminar I enjoyed in particular was transforming the past to save the future, presented by Tom Liebel, an architect from Baltimore. Liebel discussed an adaptive reuse of an old factory building. This project was a perfect mix of preservation, sustainability and establishing community. Check out Miller’s court, I was inspired, and they worked on a tight budget.

More to come soon, including day two of the conference and my recent trip to a historic Mies van der Rohe.

Blue Ox Millwork

Blue Ox has one of the largest collections of human powered tools.

Here is the Barnes Velocipede #2 (1886), This is probably the most efficient scroll saw ever built.

Custom-made Victorian Millwork

Blue Ox is a custom shop specializing in Victorian architectural details and historic reproductions. Blue Ox manufactures everything from hand carved newels to custom wood windows, from 24 foot columns, to custom redwood gutters, gable decorations, siding, corbels, moulding, and more. They will help make your ideas a reality.

Authentic Functioning Blacksmith Shop

Ornamental iron work is produced in the blacksmith shop as well as hardware such as nails and bolts. Items necessary for repairs of our antique machinery are made in the blacksmith shop and machine shop.

Ceramics, Boat Building, Shingle Milling, a Working Print Shop and more.

These antique printing presses are still used by the students to print their yearbooks. Tourists can peak into the shop, see drawers of antique type and paper cutters so large that they can cut through stacks of phone books. If they are lucky they might even see the 1890's press in operation.

All of this plus they are a School of Traditional Arts. At Blue Ox School, students get a regular high school curriculum with a full component of hands-on projects and creative learning opportunities. Blue Ox students earn their high school diploma while participating in a family environment, creating original works of art, building feelings of self-accomplishment, and learning valuable skills that will be of use to them in all walks of life.

Visit Blue Ox today and step into the past. Where Even the Run of the Mill is Extraordinary