Welcome to Columbia University's GSAPP Department of Historic Preservation

Columbia's Preservation Program - America's first - continues to deepen and extend its traditional focus on the public interest in Historic Preservation. The core of its curriculum continues to be the training of professionals in the understanding of historic architecture, artifacts and landscapes, their ability to read and argue for the important lessons historic buildings uniquely offer as public objects. Its two interdisciplinary First Year Studios - Understanding Historic Architecture and Planning for Historic Preservation - put in place the basic tools, first, for the appreciation of the meaning to be preserved in historic buildings, including the contributions of design, history and materials to the creation and communication of that meaning, and, second, for the process of the preservation of historic meaning, viewed always as a creative process for the management of change. Around this core are a strong array of required introductions to the history, theory and practice of preservation, including an exploration of all the techniques and disciplines of conservation in the Program's laboratory, the original preservation lab. Read More...

Historic Architecture NOW

Columbia University's GSAPP now offers concentrations in contemporary design with historic architecture, including interventions and additions at all scales, and lab and fieldwork in materials and structural conservation. The Program's four semester Master of Science in Historic Preservation provides an analytic grounding in the instructive and provocative meanings of old architecture, followed by the preparation of critical responses to representative contemporary development. Advanced work in the second year includes participation in the School's pioneering Joint Studio developing designs for interventions with world monuments like Chandigargh, Brasilia and the ATBAT in Casablanca, and concludes with the preparation of a major publishable independent design thesis.

Columbia invites inquiries from eligible students including post-graduate architects with experience and interest in crucial contemporary issues of design with historic architecture

Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Columbia University 1172 Amsterdam Avenue New York, New York 10027