Dear Students and Faculty,

As everyone enjoys the holidays, I would like to take a moment to share with you a review of the Historic Preservation Program’s Fall ’17 Semester activities, and your many praiseworthy accomplishments. Please scroll down to read in detail about the impressive list of publications, exhibitions, awards, and projects involving students and faculty, as well as program lectures, the Fitch Colloquium, alumni events, and career services initiatives. It is a testament to how you are collectively contributing original knowledge to the discipline.

Looking at the work of the semester, it’s important to note how much of it is aimed outwardly, at how to improve the world at large. Prof. Yao and Prof. Kavenagh’s Studio I students designed daring and creative preservation proposals that reimagined Bedford-Stuyvesant’s historic buildings into cultural anchors for a community in transition. Second year students in Studio III engaged in cross-cultural preservation exercises at some highly significant international sites. Prof. Avrami and Prof. Raynolds led research with communities working to save the Gingerbread Houses of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Students in Prof. Adam Lowe and Prof. Carlos Bayod’s Studio, deployed high resolution scanning to document Leonardo’s Last Supper, and experimented fabricating partial replicas that might relieve the site’s overburdened carrying capacity. Students in Prof. Mark Rakatansky’s and my joint preservation-architecture studio, worked with Oslo’s municipal government to develop adaptive re-use principles and strategies to preserve Eero Saarinen’s modern masterpiece: the US Embassy in London, which was recently decommissioned and sold. You can read more about the experimental projects coming out of the studios below.

One of the important student achievements, which is not listed below, is the progress second years made on their theses. Prof. Chris Neville and Prof. Bentel, coordinating closely with all the individual advisors, helped students develop the basic foundations for their thesis. Writing a thesis at Columbia is known to be hard work, and judging by the research thus far, I am pleased to note that the second years are well on their way to achieving their masterwork.

While each of you can be proud of your individual achievements, I invite you to pause and reflect on how your work benefited from the advice and support of your teachers, classmates, and staff. Think of the person that encouraged you to take a creative leap, that gave you feedback, that inspired you, that shared a book reference you had never heard of, that helped you perfect a drawing, or that helped you polish a paper draft. I mention this only as a reminder of how important our program’s nurturing scholarly culture is—of how important we are to each other. We hold ourselves and each other to a very high standard: to produce original work. The fact that all of us in the program, faculty and students alike, are committed to helping each other achieve our best work, to push the limits of our creativity, of our knowledge, and by extension to push the limits of what preservation can be, is what makes Columbia’s Historic Preservation Program unique.

It has been a great semester, filled with moments of intense work towards deadlines, and also moments of relaxation, as when we gathered for lunch after Thanksgiving. You are a special group of students this year, full of ideas and entrepreneurial spirit, as you’ve demonstrated by starting the program T-shirt competition, which will surely become tradition.

I look forward to seeing everyone back next semester. Please mark your calendars for our annual Potluck dinner to celebrate the New Year on January 18th.

I wish you all a very happy holiday season, and lots of new discoveries in 2018!

Jorge

Historic Preservation Studio 1

Professor Claudia Kavenagh, Professor Kim Yao

Students researched buildings on different sites within an eastern section of the Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy) neighborhood of Brooklyn. Known as a free black community in the 1830s, and as an area of high home ownership among its black residents in the 1940s onward, the demographics of Bed-Stuy have begun to shift, potentially impacting its sense of community. The historic fabric of Bedford-Stuyvesant is a contributing factor to sustained and increasing real estate value in the area. Changing local demographics call for increased commercial and retail, community services and support, and varied housing solutions. Each student assessed their individual site and proposed changes based on the needs of the building and the community. In their proposals, students were asked to consider preservation’s role in developing neighborhoods as well as ways to maintain neighborhood character and integrity.

Advanced Studio III: Joint HP/UP - Heritage, Education, and Urban Resilience: Building Alternative Futures in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Professor Erica Avrami, Professor Will Raynolds

The turn-of-the-century Gingerbread houses are an icon of Haiti’s rich past. While they remain an enduring element of the urban fabric of Port-au-Prince and proved resilient after the 2010 earthquake, more than half have been lost to redevelopment and the ravages of time. Many of these houses have been adaptively reused as educational and cultural institutions, presenting important opportunities for preserving and reactivating this heritage toward greater societal and environmental benefit. A studio of Columbia graduate students in historic preservation and urban planning, working in collaboration with students in the Haitian Education and Leadership Program (HELP), embarked on a study of how this Gingerbread heritage can serve an integrative and catalytic function in relation to urban form, creative placemaking, and community resilience.​ Faculty traveled to Haiti and students traveled to Curaçao and Amsterdam. Haitian students traveled to Columbia to collaborate on the studio research.

Advanced Studio III: Preservation Technology

Professor Adam Lowe, Professor Carlos Bayod Lucini

The Advanced Preservation Technology Studio included practical recording initiatives at the Cenacolo Vinciano in Milan and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and St mark’s Basilica in Venice. Students learnt to digitize and process diverse types of objects and surfaces using a range of non-contact technologies. Recent advances in photogrammetry and 3D scanning have made possible to produce increasingly high-resolution data that are essential for the documentation of art and architectural elements. The fieldwork included recording sections of the book-matched marble on the Trophy Wall on the southside of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, achieving remarkable results. The obtained data will be very relevant for monitoring the conservation state of this historical wall. Students processed the digital information with reality Capture software and used it to produce physical 3D samples as CNC-routed prototypes at the Fab Lab. In addition to this, some samples were produced with Océ’s Elevated Printing technology. As part of the course, a XIX C. Chinese fresco was also 3D scanned in class as part of a collaboration with Art Properties. The results of the work were on display at 200 Avery Hall for two weeks at the end of the semester.

Advanced Studio III: Joint HP/M.Arch - Adaptive Re-Modulation: Eero Saarinen’s United States Embassy in Oslo, Norway

Professor Jorge Otero-Pailos, Professor Mark Rakatansky

GSAPP was invited by the Byantikvar, Oslo’s Municipal Department for Cultural Heritage, to help them develop principles for the adaptive reuse of the recently decommissioned US Embassy in Oslo, a modern masterpiece designed by Eero Saarinen in 1959. Students traveled to Oslo to document the embassy and conduct a cross-cultural study of preservation practices in Norway and the US. Through research on Oslo’s contemporary social, economic and political context, students considered various programs that would be best to convert the former US Embassy in Oslo into a center for another purpose. The studio invited students to pursue a new design methodology for adaptively reusing historic buildings based on the re-modulation of existing character defining features, as opposed to traditional design methods based on formal imitation or material contrast. It also encouraged students to explore the degree to they can help advance contemporary social purposes by altering how people interact with politically charged historic buildings. it is important to note that in 1959, when the Embassy first opened, it had a strong cultural component for the public; some rooms therefore have special public significance, such as the library, film screening room, reception area and exhibition hall, which were all planned for the benefit of the citizens of Oslo.

Student News

Congratulations to our class representatives Whitney Bayers ‘19, Aura Maria Jaramillo '19, Jane Kang '18, and André Jáuregui '18 who represent the HP program in GSAPP Program Council.

Students’ research from Professor Jennifer Gray’s Spring 2017 American Architecture research class led to a major new exhibition on American Architects in Venezuela this fall.

Historic Preservation class representatives held their first Historic Preservation student sweatshirt design contest. Both first and second year students participated in designing and voting on design submissions. Of five submissions, students voted and chose a design featuring a 1974 photo of Professor James Marston Fitch and Professor Theo Prudon reviewing a student thesis project.

Allison Arlotta ‘18

The LPC just launched a new version of Discover NYC Landmarks which is the data project I worked on this summer. It includes data from the designation reports of all the historic districts in the city.

André Jáuregui '18

This semester I have been appointed as the first ever New Inc. “Fabrication Laboratory Fellow” as a part of the New Museums Incubator space, in addition to this I have been invited to speak at the NxN festival this coming April concerning RMS Resilient Modular Systems in which I the teams lead researcher and designer. I was interviewed for Wired Magazine as continuation of Pitch Distilled Entrepreneur challenge, an award I received last spring, in which I have been selected to represent Manhattan in a new pitch event taking place this coming year. Resilient Modular Systems [RMS] is a Public Benefits Corporation that leads innovative and sustainable modular components, using composite materials, for the building industry focused on emerging markets. Resilient Modular Systems is an attempt to bridge a closer connection between the creator and the AEC industry towards the future of localized manufacturing. I have also been involved with a design competition entry that rethinks NYC’s Chinatown gate titled “Gateway to Chinatown”, of which the winner will be announced this coming year. Additionally, I participated in London Design Fair 17’ that took place in the Old Truman Brewery in London in September, in collaboration with WE-DESIGNS LLC, on an exhibition titled “Who is Unknown” that focused on the digital and physical experiences of identity in a time of digital and social media dependency. Our project collaborated with 50 emerging creatives and innovators worldwide who are pushing the boundaries of art, design, culture and technology. Lastly, I have been selected to assist in the exhibition on the 50th anniversary of the protests and politics of 1968 this spring that hopes interpret the historic plans and construct an architectural model of the “Gym Crow” proposal, to be included in the exhibition. I was also profiled in Wired in the article “Resilient Modular Systems Introduces Innovation, Brick by Brick”.

Travis Brock Kennedy ‘18

Travis Brock Kennedy has been invited to give a paper to the Ruskin Seminar at Lancaster University on the findings of his research as a Stones of Venice Scholar at the Ruskin Library and Research Centre this summer, he has accepted a position with The Corcoran Group writing building histories as a part of their marketing team, and the monograph that he wrote for the Knickerbocker Club of New York on their art collection is expected to be published this spring. This fall, the provost appointed Travis to the Committee on Art Properties. The Committee advises the president and provost on Columbia’s holdings, acquisition, and displays of works of art and has long desired to include a graduate and undergraduate representative. Travis is excited to be the first graduate student selected to serve the University in this capacity.

Armon White '18

Armon attended President Lee Bollinger’s Fireside Chat as a representative of the Historic Preservation Program on October 23, 2017.

Student Activities

St. Bartholomew’s Scaffolding Tour

Historic Preservation students on the tour of the St. Bartholomew’s Church Dome Scaffolding.

United Nations Tour

On November 15, Professor Michael Adlerstein invited Historic Preservation students to tour the United Nations campus as a part of his class, Sustainable Retrofits.

HP Holiday Lunch

The Historic Preservation Holiday Lunch was held November 28, 2017. Students and HP Faculty gathered to share a meal before the start of final exams and reviews.

Professor Erica Avrami‘s talk at the APT Conference, Re-Aligning Heritage Policy Toward Mitigation: Barriers to Change, addressed the challenges to better aligning heritage policy with sustainable practices in the built environment, specifically in relation to energy consumption. There are strong motivations for moving the field beyond the paradigm of heritage as “resources to be protected in the face of climate change” and more directly engaging the role historic buildings can play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, this will require transformations in policies that exempt historic buildings from energy code compliance, as well as shifts in practices of heritage designation and management.

Prof. Avrami’s Spring 2017 Studio II produced a report of their findings, Preservation as a Tool for Social Inclusion in Poughkeepsie, New York, and the team presented their work to Poughkeepsie officials and community members at the Hudson Valley Design Lab on November 3, 2017.

Professor Paul Bentel’s firm, Bentel & Bentel, Architects/Planners, has recently published a book edited by John Morris Dixon and available on Amazon. Bentel Bentel Monograph - Single Pages is a sampling of some of the firm’s most recent work with essays on process. Also, newsworthy, Paul Bentel received the Teacher of the Year Award from the Long Island Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. It is the first time the same award was given to a mother, father and son. Bentel & Bentel’s project, Rouge Tomate Chelsea in New York City, received an Archi Award as best in the category of Historic Preservation/Adaptive Reuse by the Long Island Chapter of the AIA. Rouge Tomate was previously awarded in 2017 for excellence in historic preservation by the New York State Preservation League.

Professor Françoise Bollack’s firm, Françoise Bollack Architects, has recently completed the restoration of a 1927 apartment building lobby originally designed by Emery Roth and located in a historic district. FBA is also working on the renovation of an apartment in an 1885 building listed on the national register of historic places and an individual NYC landmark. Additionally, Francoise is working on an article about “rebuilding” in the aftermath of a disaster, to be published in 2018 in Confronti, a scholarly Italian magazine (peer reviewed) - working title: Reflections on the Design of Memory – The Alte Pinakothek in Münich and the World Trade Center in New York.

Professor Brigitte Cook led a team at PBDW Architects as the executive architect in the transformation of the fourth floor galleries at the New-York Historical Society which was covered in the Architectural Record online in October. Additionally, Brigitte has been leading a cast iron restoration at PBDW with a 400 foot long facade the Soho Cast Iron District which is nearing substantial completion and soon to be unveiled in the coming weeks. As a part of a team at PBDW, Bridgette has also been working on the adaptive reuse of an apartment hotel into an expansion of Saint David’s School that has just completed its second topping off ceremony.

Professor Carol Clark, a Director in the Office of the Chief Architect at NYC’s Department of Design and Construction (DDC), is working with fellow Director James S. Russell on issuing a publication which promotes the use of green infrastructure in projects for DDC’s client agencies.

Professor Andrew Dolkart (‘77 MSHP) gave the keynote address at the Victorian Society in America’s 50th anniversary meeting in New York City in October. He also participated in a panel along with Ken Lustbader ('93 MSHP), Jay Shockley, Amanda Davis ('06 MSHP), Ryan Day ('16 M.Arch), and Lauren Johnson ('16 M.Arch) discussing the NYC LGBT Sites Project, the first initiative to document historic and cultural sites associated with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in the five boroughs.

Professor Belmont Freeman is a featured commentator in the film “Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect,” which premiered at the 2017 New York Architecture and Design Film Festival. A selection from Professor Freeman’s collection of 20th century Cuban architectural publications is included in the exhibition, “Mario Romañach: 'Do You Love Architecture?’,” which surveys the career of the great Cuban modernist; on view at the University of Pennsylvania Architectural Archives gallery through May 2018.

Professor Erik Langdalen taught a Masterclass called Urban Preservation. This one week seminar discussed the detection of experimental practices of urban preservation through time, and the search for ideas, principles and modes of operation that can guide preservationists in the future using examples from Europe and the United States.

Professor Adam Lowe and Professor Carlos Bayod Lucini‘s Factum Foundation recently opened Scanning Seti: The Regeneration of a Pharaonic Tomb on display at the Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig. Both Halley Ramos '18 and André Jáuregui '18 worked on this exhibition. It is open through May 6, 2018. Adam Lowe and his work with the exhibition were featured in a CNN piece.

Professor Jorge Otero-Pailos was selected to participate in the Chicago Architecture Biennial. His contribution to the biennial was reviewed in various national and international journals, including Architectural Record and Abitare. Together in Annabelle Selldorf he was a finalist in the international competition to restore Clandon Park, Leoni’s Neo-Palladian masterpiece, organized by the U.K. National Trust. He delivered lectures at University of Tennessee, AIA Knoxville, The School of Art Institute of Chicago, the Chicago Architecture Biennial. He published “The Not-Me Creation” in Harvard Design Magazine. He wrote and essay for the catalogue of Kasper Akhøj Welcome (To The Teknival) published by the National Museum of Monaco. He was featured in Metropolis Magazine in “Aging and Demolished Frank Lloyd Wright Projects Prompt a New Look at Experimental Preservation”. He served on final architecture reviews at Harvard, Yale and the Cooper Union. He served as external examiner on Joseph Bedford’s PhD dissertation at Princeton University.

Professor Mark Rakatansky received the 2017 Samuel H. Kress Fellowship from the Fitch Foundation.

Professor Bryony Roberts published “Performative Rebellions” in the Harvard Design Magazine issue “Seventeen,” No. 44, Fall / Winter 2017, and the book chapter “Inverting Neutra” in the book Lineaments, edited by Gail Borden and Michael Meredith, published by Routledge. She was featured in Metropolis Magazine in “Aging and Demolished Frank Lloyd Wright Projects Prompt a New Look at Experimental Preservation”.

In collaboration with Professor Mabel Wilson she choreographed “Marching On” performances at Marcus Garvey Park, on November 11-12, 2017. “Marching On” is a project commissioned by Storefront for Art and Architecture that explores the legacy of marching and organized forms of performance. More information about performance times and locations can be found here.

Lectures

2017 Fitch Colloquium - Ex-Situ: On Moving Monuments

With the title “Ex-Situ Preservation: On Moving Buildings”, the 2017 Fitch Colloquium examined the history, practice and theoretical implications of moving historical buildings. The distinguished national and international speakers convened included: Can Bilsel, Professor, University of San Diego, Maite Borjabad López-Pastor (MSCCCP ‘16 ), Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design, The Art Institute of Chicago, Mary Ellen Carroll, Artist, MEC, studios, Mari Lending, Professor, Oslo School of Architecture, Alexander Levi, Co-Founding Principal, SLO Architecture, Krister Lindstedt, Lead Architect, White Arkitekter, Anthony Mazzo, President, Urban Foundation/Engineering, Ryan Mendoza, Artist, Berlin, Janet Parks (GSAS '76), Curator and Archivist, Columbia University, Amanda Schachter (CC '93), Co-Founding Principal, SLO Architecture, Constance S. Silver (MSHP '88), Fine Arts and Architectural Conservator, Preservart, Inc., Dean Sully, Lecturer and Programme Co-ordinator, University College London, Institute of Archaeology, and Mabel O. Wilson (M.Arch '91), Professor, Columbia GSAPP. The colloquium was organized by Jorge Otero-Pailos, Professor and Director, Historic Preservation Program, Columbia GSAPP.

The historic preservation program hosted public lectures by distinguished speakers from the US and abroad to share their knowledge on cutting edge preservation research and projects. The lectures took place in Avery’s Ware Lounge and were well attended by students, faculty, alumni and the interested public. After each lecture, faculty and students took speakers out for a convivial meal. The speakers and titles of their talks were:

9/21 - Clare Hughes, Creative Director, Thinc Design: Fudgehenge: Spatial Storytelling and Designing for Heritage

9/23 - Jennifer Gray, Project Research Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art - Private Tour: Frank Lloyd Wright At 150: Unpacking the Archive

9/28 - David Brown, Chief Preservation Officer of the National Trust for Historic Preservation: A People-Centered Preservation Movement

10/5 - Ai WeiWei, Artist: A Conversation With Amale Andraos, Dean of Columbia GSAPP and Carol Becker, Dean of Columbia School of the Arts

10/19 - Adele Chatfield-Taylor, Former President and CEO of the American Academy in Rome: The American Academy in Rome

11/2 - Robert Kirkbride, Dean of Parsons School of Constructed Environments, and Associate Professor of Architecture and Product Design at Parsons School of Design: The Many Phantoms of the Kirkbride Hospitals for the Insane

11/9 - Jordan Kauffman, Lecturer in Architectural History at Brandeis University and Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Architectural Drawings as History, Between Concepts and Objects

11/14 - Michael Hess: Cultural Heritage Structures: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Digital Documentation

11/15 - Lynne B. Sagalyn, Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor Emerita of Real Estate at Columbia Business School: Artifacts of Destruction and the Politics of Preservation at Ground Zero

11/30 - Interpreting LGBT Sites

Andrew Dolkart '77 MSHP, Professor, Columbia GSAPP, and Project Co-Director

Ken Lustbader '93 MSHP, Historic Preservation Consultant and Project Co-Director

Jay Shockley, Historian and Project Co-Director

Amanda Davis '06 MSHP, Architectural Historian and Project Manager

Events

10/13 - APT Alumni Reception

Columbia HP Alumni met for a cocktail reception at the Association for Preservation Technology Annual Conference in Ottawa, Canada.

11/15 - HP Alumni Reception at National Trust

GSAPP Development and Alumni Relations hosted a cocktail reception during the Past Forward, National Trust Conference in Chicago.

HP Mentorship Program

The Historic Preservation Program, Preservation Alumni and the GSAPP Alumni Office are piloting a new and exciting mentorship program that will pair current students with Alumni mentors.

The intent of the program is to match current students with experienced alumni based on mutual interests, geographic location preferences, student career goals, and other considerations. Mentors will help students explore their career interests, discuss the transition from MSHP to the professional world, give feedback on their preparation and strategy for the job search, and often help make introductions to others in the field.