TFG Events & Workshops

Rudy R. Christian

Christian & Son, Inc., President

Rudy R. Christian is a founding member and past president of the Timber Framers Guild, founding member and past president of Friends of Ohio Barns, founding member and past Executive Director of the Preservation Trades Network, and a founding member of the Traditional Timberframe Research and Advisory Group and the International Trades Education Initiative. His experience includes national and international speaking engagements and instructing educational workshops as well as publication of various articles about historic conservation. An article entitled “Conservation of Historic Building Trades: A Timber Framer’s View” was published in the APT Bulletin, vol. XXXIII, No1, and his collaborative work with author Allen Noble entitled "The Barn: A Symbol of Ohio" has been published on the internet. In November 2000, the Preservation Trades Network awarded Rudy the Askins Achievement Award, for excellence in the field of historic preservation.

Rudy’s educational background includes the study of structural engineering at both General Motors Institute in Flint Michigan and Akron University in Ohio. He and his son Carson have also studied historic compound roof layout and computer modeling at the Gewerbe Akademie in Rotweil, Germany. He and his wife Laura Saeger Christian were adjunct professors at Palomar College in San Marcos, California, and are approved workshop instructors for the Timber Framers Guild. Rudy’s focus on the business of timber framing began in 1982.

Rudy’s professional experience as President of Christian & Son, Inc. includes the reconstruction of the historic “Big Barn” at Malabar Farm State Park near Mansfield, Ohio, and relocation of the 19th-century Crawford Horse Barn in Newark, Ohio. These projects featured “hand raisings” which were open to the public and attracted a total of 130,000 interested spectators. He also led a crew of timber framers at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival Masters of the Building Arts program in the recreation and raising of an 18th-century carriage house frame on the National Mall in Washington DC. Roy Underhill’s “Woodright’s Shop” filmed the event for PBS and Roy participated in the raising. Christian & Son’s work includes working with a team of specialists to relocate Thomas Edison’s #11 laboratory building from the Henry Ford Museum to West Orange, New Jersey, where it was originally built, and the restoration of the Mansfield Blockhouse, a hewn log structure built by the US military in 1812. During the summer of 2006, Rudy, his son Carson, and his wife Laura were the lead instructors and conservation specialists for the Field School at Mt. Lebanon Shaker Village during which the 1838 timber frame granary was restored. Since May 2015 Rudy and Laura have been working as consultants to the World Monuments Fund in the restoration of the Golden Palace Monastery in Mandalay, Myanmar. In the summer of 2017, they reconstructed the historic timber frame belfry at Glendale Cemetery in Akron, Ohio.

www.planexus.com

Presentation

Mass Timber: Problem or Solution?
This panel session is not meant to be for or against "Mass Timber", but more about public awareness of the difference between natural timber and manufactured timber framing, impact on natural resources, traditional timber framers, and the Timber Framers Guild. Attendees will learn more about the meaning of mass timber, its history, the difference between "natural" timber and mass timber, and the difference between shop cut and manufactured timber buildings.