Bio
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 Executive Director of the Preservation Trades Network and is a founding member of the Traditional Timberframe Research and Advisory Group and the International Trades Education Initiative. His experience includes participation in the Quingue Forum, numerous speaking engagements and instructing educational workshops as well as publication of various articles about historic conservation. A recent article entitled “Conservation of Historic Building Trades; A Timber Framer’s View” was published in the APT Bulletin, vol. XXXIII, No1 and his recent collaborative work with author Allen Noble entitle 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 Motor’s 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 are active adjunct professors at Palomar College in San Marcos, California and approved workshop instructors for the Timber Framers Guild.
Rudy’s professional experience as President of Christian & Son, Inc. includes 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 lead 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 Mall in Washington DC. Roy Underhill’s “Woodright’s Shop” filmed the event for PBS and Roy participated in the raising. Christian & Son’s recent 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 original was built. 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. In July and August 2008 Rudy and Laura directed and instructed a Field School in the Holy Cross Historic District in New Orleans in collaboration with the University of Florida and the World Monuments Fund. In July 2009 Rudy and Laura directed a field school in Lafayette Cemetery #1 in collaboration with Tulane School of Architecture.
