Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 25, 2008|Volume 36, Number 27

Judith Dupré's best-selling books on skyscrapers, bridges, churches and monuments are a study of "the nature of human creativity," she says.

Divinity student’s books pay
homage to architectural marvels

Before Judith Dupré enrolled in the Yale Divinity School three years ago, she was already well known as the author of three bestselling books about some of the world’s most outstanding edifices: “Skyscrapers” (1996), “Bridges” (1997) and “Churches” (2001).

It was her love of architecture that led her to the Divinity School and its affiliated Institute of Sacred Music, Dupré says. “I came to the Divinity School because I needed a background in liturgy and theology to understand why houses of worship are built the way they are,” explains the architectural historian. “Constructing churches is all about making faith tangible. A church is a physical expression of faith.”

Dupré credits her work on “Churches” with steering her onto a new road on her own faith journey, because her research for the book introduced her to “people and ways of being” that ignited in her a need to better understand her own beliefs. Since coming to Yale, she says, something unexpected has happened.

“As my understanding of building as a spiritual quest grew, I became less interested in baldachinos and gargoyles and more interested in exploring the question: How do we construct buildings that will shelter and uphold the human spirit? I’m now looking more at the social and ethical issues associated with architecture,” she says.

Last fall, Dupré published her fourth architectural book, “Monuments: America’s History in Art and Memory,” a collection of illustrated narratives that examines the aesthetic, political and emotional aspects of civic commemoration. The book juxtaposes classic American landmarks — such as the Lincoln, Jefferson and Roosevelt memorials — with more unconventional commemorations, including, among others, the traveling AIDS Quilt, Bruce Springsteen’s song “Empty Sky” (a tribute to those who died Sept. 11) and an above-ground time capsule designed by Santiago Calatrava.

Dupré, who was born in Rhode Island into a family of architectural preservationists, says she has been fascinated with architecture since she was a child. After earning degrees in English and studio art at Brown University, she studied at the Open Atelier of Design and Architecture in Manhattan, and since then has created visual arts programs for the public. Her programs have been used to educate schoolchildren at the American Museum of Natural History, among other venues. Her first book, “The Mouse Bride,” is an adaptation of a Maya folktale.

For Dupré, her study of any form of architecture — be it bridges, skyscrapers, churches or monuments — is really a study of people.

“‘Churches,’ for example, asks the question of how and where people’s spiritual longings are being met,” explains Dupré. “‘Monuments’ chronicles a living American democracy in all its glorious, creative, messy and moving process, examining how memorial design has changed as Americans grapple anew with questions about who we are as a nation.

“Ultimately, my works are about the nature of human creativity,” Dupré continues. “Creativity at its most transcendent — when there is no separation between maker and object, when the artist is being re-formed by the very thing he or she is making — is comparable to the mystical state of prayer.”

An excerpt from a chapter in “Monuments” about the 101-acre Hart Island, the nation’s largest public burial ground, reveals Dupré’s interest in capturing the human element. The author and her photographer were the first visitors in a decade allowed into this publicly off-limits cemetery, located in Long Island Sound. She describes how prisoners from nearby Rikers Island bury the anonymous or unclaimed dead, along with those whose families are too poor to purchase a plot:

“Dressed in Day-Glo orange jumpsuits and under armed guard, prisoners remove the simple pine coffins, one at a time, from the morgue wagon,” writes Dupré. “A name, if known, is written in indelible ink and also gouged into the coffin before it is lowered into a long trench that eventually will accommodate dozens. Although buried without ceremony, the marginalized are interred by the marginalized with dignity. The necropolis is quiet but for the rattle of dirt mixed with mussel shells when it falls on the caskets.”

Likewise, as part of her narrative about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., Dupré describes personal memories about the life of one soldier listed there, Rickey Caruolo, who was her childhood neighbor in Rhode Island. Caruolo was killed as he attempted to save the lives of two fellow Marines during an attack by the Vietcong.

Dupré says she hopes her books “inspire curiosity and love” in people who ordinarily might not pick up a book about architecture. In keeping with her books’ themes, she had each of them designed to create a connection with the topic for those who hold them in their hands. Thus, “Skyscrapers” is 18 inches high; “Bridges,” opened, is three feet across; “Churches” has a split binding that opens like a church’s center doors; and “Monuments” features a sculpted cover that evokes carved, inscribed stone and the tactile experience of running one’s fingertips over a memorial.

“An important function of my books is to create joy,” Dupré says. “Hopelessly naïve, perhaps. But people will want to learn more about, and protect, what they love.”

For each book, Dupré devoted years to researching the featured architecture, interviewing others about the structures and visiting most of the sites herself. For her book on churches and chapels, she traveled to these structures on several continents. Creating “Monuments,” she notes, was a six-year endeavor that began, coincidentally, with a meeting with her publisher in New York City the day before the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. The book includes an interview with Nicholas Benson, a third-generation stone-carver who designed and carved the inscriptions for the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Dupré’s books also feature some of her own photographs of the featured sites.

At the Divinity School, Dupré has found an outlet for her passion for art, design and architecture as the curator or coordinator of several exhibits, including an outdoor installation in 2007 of Global Village Shelters, an inexpensively manufactured shelter used as transitional homes and health clinics in developing countries.

“This exhibit illustrated how theological concepts can be brought into the present moment and applied to the world around us,” says Dupré. “The refugee shelters served during Advent as a contemporary nativity or crèche. The situation Mary and Joseph faced 2,000 years ago, after all, still confronts refugees around the world today, and the exhibit was a way to raise consciousness about that. That exhibition married many of my interests — in structures and in the ethical function of architecture.”

This summer, Dupré will travel to Mexico on a Josef Albers Traveling Fellowship to work with a Maya women’s collective that uses local plants and flowers to make paper and bind it to create books. She will help the collective’s members make books, and record their folktales and stories. She also hopes to find fresh inspiration for the designs of her own books.

The Yale divinity student says she has experienced many poignant personal moments in connection with her books. While at Hart Island on a crisp autumn day, she was able to take photographs that captured the beauty and serenity of the site for a neighbor whose stillborn child was buried there anonymously decades ago. The neighbor, Dupré says, was comforted when she finally saw the place where her baby was laid to rest.

Yet another healing experience took place when Dupré finished “Monuments,” the author says.

“After my neighbor Rickey died in Vietnam, the Caruolo family experienced some hard losses and eventually its members became estranged,” explains Dupré. “While writing the book, I talked to the family members, and later heard from the wife of the soldier who held Rickey as he died. Members of the Caruolo family actually reunited as they came together to verify some facts in my book. Then, at a book-signing party hosted by my sister, they finally had the chance to meet — for the first time — the soldier who so many years ago had written to them to describe Rickey’s last hours.

“It was an incredible moment for all of us, one that demonstrated how architecture is not just about stone or brick or cement but about a lot of intangibles — light and feeling and human life and things that move us.”

— By Susan Gonzalez

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