For the first time in its eleven-year history, the prestigious Biennale Architecture, Venice's International Architecture Exhibition, will present an architectural historian with its Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.

Former SAH President, Spiro Kostof (1936-1991), widely recognized as one of the world's leading architectural historians, taught his last course in the Spring of 1991 in the Architecture Department of UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design.  The 26 lectures of his course "A Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism" covering the period from the Florentine Renaissance to the post-modernism of the late 20th century were video recorded and have recently been digitized and made available for public viewing.  Kostof's lectures were hearlded for situating the architectural monument in a framework of vernacular buildings that give it new meaning.

The 2009 SAH Nominating Committee seeks your recommendations for new SAH Board members who would begin their terms in April 2009 and serve for three years.  The final slate of nominees should represent the diversity of the field of architectural history.  Self-nominations are welcome as are nominations of emerging scholars and independent and non-affiliated historians of architectural history, landscape history and their related disciplines.  Nominations of practitioners in architecture, historic preservation and related fields are also encouraged, as are nominations of people who chose architectural history as their avocation.

The Call for Papers for the Society's 2009 Annual Meeting in Pasadena is now open.  Members and friends of the Society of Architectural Historians are invited to submit abstracts by 15 August 2008 for twenty-three thematic sessions.   Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent directly to the appropriate session chair. Abstracts should define the subject and summarize the argument to be presented in the proposed paper. The content of that paper should be the product of well-documented original research that is primarily analytical and interpretative rather than descriptive in nature.