By Deanne Revel
SCAD President Paula Wallace held a lecture titled “Let’s Take This Outside: Outdoor Living in the 21st Century” for her new book, “Perfect Porches: Designing Welcoming Spaces for Outdoor Living,” at 5 p.m. in the Student Center on April 29.
The event was part of SCAD Style. Wallace said that this year’s theme, REVEAL, reveals something about the professions students are going into. She began her lecture encouraging students to attend SCAD Style events and that last year a student was hired by a SCAD Style speaker.
“My message to students is you never know what can happen from an introduction, smile and handshake,” she said.
“Perfect Porches” celebrates Wallace’s favorite outdoor living spaces around the country. In her lecture, Wallace showed unique porches on SCAD buildings, including a new terrace in SCAD-Hong Kong. She talked about the sustainability of porch design, furniture design and even showed her own porch in Savannah.
Wallace said porches are “part of the American experience” and that porches are “enchanting” and “built for storytelling.”
She even told her own story about the porch she had as a child. She and sister, Pam Rhame, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Enrollment Management would perform a Mexican hat dance. Wallace would play piano while her sister danced.
Wallace said there are four elements that make an outdoor living space great: a porch must have perspective, practicality, punctuated with design and have personal meaning.
“If you can do all that, then your porch will be perfect,” she said.
Third-year architecture major Mark Miller enjoyed hearing Wallace talk about design that applied to the school of building arts.
“It was good to see her and hear her thoughts on design and what we study because so often we don’t,” he said.
Miller plans to apply some of Wallace’s porch elements into his designs.
“Architecture is all about experience,” he said. “I’m designing an urban plaza right now so I’ll take her practicality and perspective into consideration for a public gathering place.”
Following her lecture, Wallace held a book signing at The Paris Market Brocante.
