Master of Science Degree in Historic Preservation

Director: Paul Spencer Byard, Esq., F.A.I.A.

The Program

The Columbia Master of Science in Historic Preservation, the oldest degree of its kind in the United States, trains leaders for advocacy of the public interest in old architecture, landscape and other artifacts of the human environment. Its graduates are experts in the protection and development of the value of these works of art as instruments of social disclosure and public leadership and as agents in the formation of personal and community identities - the human values that justify historic preservation's extraordinary political and legal power.

Columbia educates its practitioners in the why, what and how of historic preservation. In its work the Columbia program benefits from its long experience in all aspects of the discipline it founded. The program's interest in the purposes of historic preservation - the "why" of it - goes back to the seminal works of its founder James Marston Fitch and his pioneering response to the felt need for preservation in the critical years of the 1960's and '70's and for a broader understanding of the social benefits of the discipline he was inventing. This exploration continues at Columbia in the on-going theoretical work of its faculty, including the work of its Director, Paul Spencer Byard, in the Architecture of Additions and other publications.

The "what" of historic preservation receives at Columbia the broadest of interpretations, from works of high art to cultural landscapes, archeological sites and the humblest, oldest traces of ordinary life. Columbia has been among the first to acknowledge the expanding ambit of historic preservation as it takes in elements of popular culture that have increasingly defined life around the world. Columbia takes it as its special challenge to maintain the high level of theoretical and historical inquiry that enables its practitioners to understand the meaning of artifacts in their jurisdiction - the key to the artifacts' significance that will motivate and control all their preservation work. The work of the faculty here includes explorations in the theory of meaning by Jorge Otero-Pailos, an architect with a special interest in phenomenology, and the on-going work of distinguished historian Andrew Dolkart, the first James Marston Fitch Professor of Historic Preservation.

The bulk of the training of the Program is devoted to the "how" that is central to practice. Columbia sees historic preservation as a creative discipline that devises and applies the broadest range of appropriate provisions for the management of inescapable change. A central part of its discipline has to do with the art of architecture and particularly the architectural paradigm of combined works, where new architecture is added to old to extend its life and makes in the process new works of substantially increased significance. In its attention to architectural design, Columbia program benefits particularly from its place in the School of Architecture, possibly the most innovative architectural design school in the country.

Central, too are issues in preservation planning and implementation, the creative use of historic preservation's extraordinary legal power and the proven value of historic preservation for real estate finance and development. Columbia has a long tradition of public advocacy for historic preservation and expects its practitioners to take active roles in public life. The Columbia program benefits from a wide array of graduates in practice, and most importantly from a faculty of distinguished practitioners who have been pioneers in the development of preservation planning as a discipline and in the creation and protection of the law of historic preservation. All the faculty are actively and continuously involved in projects in New York and elsewhere which give the Program the continuing benefit of a direct tie to real life.

The final large part of the "how" of historic preservation is the art and science of conservation. Columbia created and operates the original architectural conservation laboratory. This conservation laboratory is now in the process of recombination and expansion as the Avery Laboratory in connection with a major initiative of the GSAPP to explore the fabrication of innovative architectural materials as well as the conservation of old ones. George Wheeler, a distinguished scientist from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, now leads the Program's work in conservation as its Director of Conservation Research and Education. The Program benefits from the University's extraordinary array of scientific laboratories, maintaining collaborations with Engineering and numerous other faculties.

As part of its service to scholarship, teaching and practice, the Historic Preservation Program has recently founded the discipline's first learned journal, Future Anterior, a publication expected to appear twice a year. The Historic Preservation Program has been a leading participant in the School's on-going initiative to explore the value of joint programs within its walls. In addition to joint Degree programs with Architecture and Planning, the Program established the first of these new collaborations with the Architecture Program, the pioneering Joint Advanced Architectural Design/ Historic Preservation Studio, the first of its kind in the nation. The Program has for years collaborated with the Planning Program, this year for the first time joining with Planning and Urban Design to consider the preservation of the cultural landscape of Brisbane, Australia. The Historic Preservation Program established and continues to maintain a post-graduate Certificate in Building Conservation.

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