Historic Preservation Studio Sequence

Historic Preservation Studios I & II are the core of the Historic Preservation Program's professional training in the basic business of Historic Preservation: the understanding, advocacy and protection of the public interest in the expression of old buildings, namely, what we can learn from what they are trying to tell us.

Studio I: Why Save This Building? trains students in (i) reading the argument made by old architecture by its function, form and ornamentation; (ii) finding out and documenting the history that tells us what the argument was about; (iii) recognizing and judging the importance of what we can learn from the argument; and (iv) making the case for saving it.

Studio II: How To Save This Building? makes the case for saving important buildings in the context of actual conflicts that put them at risk, including direct policy conflicts and the policy conflicts manifest in neglect; and prepares plans to protect their public contributions in the context of those conflicts by control, conservation and appropriate redevelopment.

Studios I & II seek to help students become informed, critical and effective analysts and advocates of the public interest in historic preservation, equipped for a professional role as participants in the public management of change. They seek specially to reinforce in students the critical imagination that gets the human contributions of the art they protect and finds or invents ways to convey, protect and bring home its value for all of us. They encourage exploration of other uses of the expression of old buildings as anchors in time that set standards for change and as elements in the formation and maintenance of personal and social identities. While they seek to bring new interests where appropriate within the ambit of historic preservation’s expertise and power, they likewise seek to protect historic preservation’s jurisdiction from political uses that undermine it.

Projects

2008 Studios
2007 Studios
14th Street and Union Square
Downtown Manhattan
Harlem River
Midtown South

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