Richard Pieper is a principal and Director of Preservation for Jan Hird Pokorny Associates, Inc., an architecture, planning and historic preservation firm in New York City. He has a degree in geochemistry from Cornell University and specializes in metal and masonry conservation issues. He has also studied at ICCROM in Rome and as a UNESCO Fellow in Venice.

Professor Pieper authored Preservation Brief #42, The Maintenance, Repair, and Replication of Historic Cast Stone, as well as Tech Note: Repair of Metal Roof Cornices for the National Park Service. He has written articles for the CRM Bulletin, the APT Bulletin, and Forum of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Pieper contributed the chapter on masonry conservation in Caring for your Historic House, published by Heritage Preservation.

Pieper is a member of the Board of Directors of the Historic Preservation Education Foundation. He has been on the conservation faculty of Columbia's Historic Preservation Program since 1996.