Dear Students and Faculty,

It’s hard to believe all that you have accomplished this Fall semester. The second years are half way into their thesis and many are off to do research over the break. In barely four months, the first years have gone from novices to having a solid foundation of the profession. They benefit from the rollout of the new Integrated Curriculum. Two years in the making, the new curriculum brings together SLAB research methods (Social, Laboratory technology, Archival history, and Building design) in their required lecture courses as the foundation for the project-based learning that happens in studio. The whole program has been transformed by the beautiful new Preservation Technology Laboratory, and the arrival of Mika Tal, our dynamic Lab Manager. Mark your calendar for the official ribbon-cutting for the Lab on February 14th, Valentine’s Day, and come show your love for Norman Weiss who will give the opening keynote of the Fitch Colloquium that night. Our program’s research capacity has increased significantly with the presence of Shuyi Yin, the first student in our new PhD program. We also launched a new Columbia Preservation Podcast examining the ideas shaping our discipline and the world. These are not so much milestones as foundation stones, worth celebrating as new beginnings for our world class program. I was particularly impressed by the first years outstanding Studio 1 projects. Each of you successfully climbed the steep learning curve that Andrew Dolkart, Kim Yao and Claudia Kavenaugh set before you. You demonstrated that you can now synthesize vast amounts of research and complex information into a coherent preservation proposal with aesthetic ambition and social purpose. I was impressed by the range of creativity in those projects, from adaptive reuse strategies to designations, from maintenance plans to websites. You should be proud. In Studio 3, the second years have traveled the world and the country to put their advanced skills to work in real life cross-cultural projects. Erica Avrami’s and Will Raynold’s Joint Preservation-Planning studio went to Montgomery Alabama to rethink preservation in light of the complex history of slavery in America. Mark Rakatansky’s and my Joint Preservation-Architecture studio developed adaptive reuse strategies for the soon to be decommissioned US Embassy in Mexico, a building with great historical, social and political charge. Adam Lowe’s and Carlos Bayod’s Advanced Preservation Technology studio traveled to Seville to test new digital scanning and replication methods for the famous Renaissance tiles at the Casa Pilatos. I want to express my gratitude to all of you for participating in the program’s public events. Also to our faculty, and especially Pieper and Tim Michiels for putting together extraordinary new series of field trips to unique historic buildings in New York and hands-on learning opportunities.

Many of you mentioned to me that the Fall semester seems to have flown by. Certainly the intensity, rigor and rapid pace of classes, workshops, field trips and lectures has to do with it. But also because time flies when you are having fun! In my meetings with students, I heard a recurring comment: “coursework is very demanding, but I LOVE the work!”. I cannot overstate how pleased I was to hear this. As faculty, we work hard to share our knowledge and passion for preservation with you, and our biggest reward to see you gripped by the profession. Your sense of enjoyment also speaks to the collegial and fun-loving atmosphere in our program, which the winning design of the sweatshirt competition so perfectly expresses!

I wish you all happy holidays, a restful break, and safe travels.

Jorge

Mika Tal has joined GSAPP as the new Historic Preservation Lab Manager. Tal is an Architectural Conservator specializing in paint investigation, analysis and the treatment of sgraffito, fresco, secco, murals and decorative surfaces. Tal has previously worked in ‘Tchelet’ studio in Israel, and in EverGreene Architectural Arts as an architectural conservator. She earned her BA in Conservation of Sites and Monuments at The Western Galilee College in Acre, Israel, where she led a research project on Sgraffito paintings in Israel. She has presented at the following international conservation conferences: ‘The 3rd National Conference for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage’ at Bar Ilan University, Israel (2014), ‘The 6th International Architectural Paint Research’ at Columbia University (2017) and ‘Sgraffito in Change’ HAWK University, Germany (2017).

The Experimental Preservation Technology Laboratory

After renovation over the summer and half of the Fall semester, the renovation of the HP Lab has finished. The space has been completely redone with all new facilities including a new layout, furniture, and analytical equipment. Filling the lab’s new cabinets is the material science collection comprised of: Limestone, Sandstone, Granite, Marble, Bricks, Concrete, Paint Finishes, Wood and Metal. This collection is now organized and easily accessible to every student or faculty member who are interested in examining and studying these materials. As part of the renovation, the Lab now has a designated area for the Lucida scanner, most used by students in Professor Carlos Bayod Lucini’s Advanced Studio III, and now open to all. To process data gathered through the Lucida or other analytic methods, the Lab now has 6 computers equipped with all necessary processing softwares.

The Lab update is not limited to the room itself, but also includes the purchase of new equipment such as: binoculars, flashlights, rulers, laser measures, contour gages, photography scale sets, cross line lasers, and tripods. In the spring semester, two new courses, GIS and Survey Data Management, and Investigative Techniques will have the opportunity to use this equipment, like the newly acquired Handheld XRF, purchased together with the Sociology Department.

PhD Program

The HP program is pleased to welcome Shuyi Yin as GSAPP’s first PhD student in Historic Preservation. Shuyi has previously studied at University of Pennsylvania, earning her M.S. in Historic Preservation with a concentration on Conservation Science, and at Yale University, earning her Master’s in Environmental Design and Architecture. Her theses at Penn and Yale, respectively, discussed the efficacy of wood preservatives and the politics of cultural heritage. During her studies, Shuyi co-taught the Contemporary Architectural Discourse Colloquium at Yale, worked as Editorial Assistant for Cabinet Magazine, and was Student Editor of Paprika! Journal of the Yale School of Architecture. Welcome to GSAPP Shuyi!

Future Anterior

This fall, the latest two editions of Future Anterior were released. Volume 14, Issue 1 inquires into how war shapes how we practice and understand preservation and, vice versa, how preservation shapes how we practice and think of war. Taking a wider view of the relationship between preservation and war, the authors, including Azra Akšamija, Zainab Bahrani, Julián Esteban-Chapapría, David Gissen, Trinidad Rico and Rim Lababidi, Dr. Laurie Rush, Andrew Shaken, and Tim Winter, look deep into the past to explore how the patterns and stakes of this relationship have unfolded over time. Featuring Clive van den Berg’s Men Loving, an artist’s sculptural response and commemoration of the murders of men accused of being gay by ISIS. Also included is a review of Pioneer Works’ exhibition The Present Is the Form of All Life: Time Capsules of Ant Farm and the LST by Richard Rinehart, a review of Daniel M. Abramson’s Obsolescence: An Architectural History by Jonathan Levy, and panel discussions focusing on prewar and postwar from the 2016 Fitch Colloquium, moderated by Erica Avrami.

Elizabeth Stainforth and Helen Graham write in the introduction to Volume 14, Issue 2, “Heritage has a long-standing association with notions of continuity and preservation. Utopian, future-oriented aspects of heritage is both an acknowledgment of the inevitability of change and an opening for thinking about the changes envisioned by past societies. In other words, heritage practices make it possible to diagnose a history of how people imagined the future might be.” In this issue revolving around the theme of utopian currents in heritage, authors Inger Birkeland, Gabriel Fuentes, Timothy Hyde, Tracy Ireland, Elizabeth Stainforth, and Elif Mihcioglu Bilgi bring forth topics including heritage preservation in Antarctica, valuing industrial heritage, and Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence and the heritage of love to offer an alternative critical perspective on debates about sustainability and historic preservation.

New Faculty

Bilge Kose has joined GSAPP for academic year 2018-19. She is a preservationist, designer, and interior architect. She received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Program of Conservation of Cultural Heritage at Middle East Technical University (METU) in 2018, with the dissertation titled “Responding the Challenges of Preservation an Industrial Network As Heritage: Turkey Cellulose and Paper Factories”. Her major research interest is focusing on the challenges of preserving the complex nature of industrial heritage places originated from their interrelations with different aspects in different periods and scales. In her research, she discusses the physical, socio-cultural and economic interactions of industrial heritage places in the object, interior, building, urban and/or country scales throughout different time periods they exist. Prof. Kose will be teaching Digital Heritage Documentation: GIS, Building Surveying & Data Management in Spring 2019.

Amanda Trienens is an architecture conservator providing preservation design and conservation construction for historic buildings, monuments, and sculptures. She is a conservator in private practice at her firm, Cultural Heritage Conservation LLC. Her experience is gained from many years in the field working on a variety of structures and art, spanning time from the 11th century to the modern age, both locally and internationally. Amanda specializes in concrete and stone conservation testing, analysis, quality control, and implementation. She received a Masters Degree in Historic Preservation and an Advanced Conservation Certificate from the University of Pennsylvania. She will be teaching Investigative Techniques in Spring 2019 with Norman R. Weiss.

Historic Preservation Studio I

Professor Claudia Kavenagh, Professor Kim Yao, Professor Andrew Dolkart

Studio I engages students in questions of preservation and its role in the larger context of the built environments of New York City. The studio offers models for approaching preservation questions and exploring the diverse roles of the preservationist in contemporary practice. We do this by the collective study of a neighborhood as well as through individual student study of historic resources. The goal for Studio I is to equip students with skills and techniques in order to engender leadership, interpretation, and advocacy – the ability to use critical thinking, exercise judgment and propose informed solutions.

Studio I began with archival and biographical research at Woodlawn Cemetery, through the study and documentation of mausoleums. The remainder of the semester focused on the West 40s blocks of Hell’s Kitchen. Each student researched two distinct existing buildings of varied typology, culminating in individual research, conservation or design proposals for each site.

Advanced Studio III: Joint HP/UP

Professor Erica Avrami, Professor Will Raynolds

Montgomery claims to be the most “historically marked” city in America due to its profusion of interpretative signage, monuments and historical structures. Its history is undoubtedly rich, though it has been contested from the beginning: the Muscogee (Creek) Nation were forcibly removed from the land during the Trail of Tears. It developed as a hub of slave trading, and became the first capital of the Confederacy, as well as an epicenter of the Civil Rights Movement. A studio of Columbia graduate students in historic preservation and urban planning embarked on a study of how these often divergent narratives have been made tangible through interventions within the urban landscape. In the context of a city-wide master planning process currently underway, the students propose pathways to highlight the role of narrative in future decision-making about the built environment.

Advanced Studio III: Preservation Technology

Professor Adam Lowe, Professor Carlos Bayod Lucini

Considered the prototype of the Andalusian palace, Casa de Pilatos serves as the permanent residence of the Dukes of Medinaceli. The building is a mixture of Italian Renaissance and Spanish Mudéjar styles. Casa de Pilatos has around 150 different azulejo designs from the 1530s, one of the largest antique azulejo collections in the world. For the Advanced Technology Studio, digital technology was used to document the current state of the building as well as to propose alternative approaches for its preservation and dissemination. The studio worked on recording of the walls of the Casa de Pilatos with different 3D and color systems including LIDAR, Lucida scanning, and photogrammetry. Students then processed their data to generate both virtual and physical output. Additionally, students experimented with digital restoration using high definition color photos of a severely damaged room of frescoes in the Casa. Each student also proposed an individual project that addressed the use of digital technology in preservation. Output from the studio’s findings was exhibited in Avery Hall during final review to show both the studio process and findings.

Advanced Studio III: Joint HP/M.Arch

Professor Jorge Otero-Pailos, Professor Mark Rakatansky

There was a time in the postwar period when United States Embassies were beacons of openness, with access to libraries, exhibitions, film screenings. While these exchanges had their own ideological agendas, the design of these buildings by a number of modernist architects put into play the social and spatial boundaries of politics and culture, local and global, public and private. Sixty years later these embassies are surrounded by layers and layers of security barriers and fencing. Indeed, many have now been decommissioned, precisely because of their non-defensive openness are deemed a security risk. Students traveled to Mexico City to engage the re-opening of the soon-to-be decommissioned US Embassy in Mexico City, designed in 1957 by R. Max Brooks and Llewellyn Pitts of Southwestern Architects. Students engaged in a creative renewal of this modernist building, proposing alternative uses for the Embassy that consider the multitude of issues and exchanges its political origins exposes, pushing the boundaries of an adaptive re-use of the values that an architectural artifact always enacts.

Cleo & James Marston Fitch Prize

Congratulations to Maura Whang for winning the Fitch Prize, awarded by Preservation Alumni. Maura’s winning paper was titled, “The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: A Preservation Controversy in Color,” written for Historic Preservation Theory & Practice, taught by Jorge Otero-Pailos.

Sweatshirt Design Contest

The HP Program held its annual sweatshirt design contest. Congratulations to Maura Whang and her winning design, “The Faculty Feast at Cana”.

HP Holiday Party

On November 28, the HP Program came together to celebrate the end of the semester and coming holidays with food and music

Prof. Jorge Otero-Pailos presented “Répétiteur”, a new experimental preservation art installation at the New York City Center Theater, October 15-21.

Prof. Tim Michiels has been consulting on a preservation and seismic stabilization project on Kuño Tambo Church in Peru for the Getty Conservation Institute. His work was featured in The New York Times.

Prof. Belmont Freeman published an essay in Places Journal titled “Concrete Utopia,”, a review of the MoMA exhibition “Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980.“ The piece examined the architecture of the socialist world and the current reappraisal of international Brutalism. This December, Monty led a tour of Cuba for the Society of Architectural Historians, traveling the length of the island from Havana to Guantánamo.

Prof. Andrew Dolkart was honored by the New York State Historic Preservation Office for the work of NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, an organization he cofounded. The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project continues their initiative to research, document and educate the public about New York City’s LGBT history. HP alumni and professor Andrew Dolkart, HP alumni Ken Lustbader and Jay Shockley founded the organization in 2015. Other HP Alumni are involved with the organization like Project Manager Amanda Davis and Social Media Team member Cristiana Pena.

Summer Cuba Workshop

Belmont Freeman and Beatriz Del Cueto led a group of HP and other GSAPP students on a workshop in Havana, Cuba this June. The aim of the workshop was to look at Havana’s distinctive and influential modern architecture and to explore contemporary preservation challenges. Students were exposed to Havana’s rich architectural evolution from its roots as a Spanish Harbor through the 20th century when modernism proliferated. Pre-revolutionary extravagance and experimentation continued into revolutionary forms which were superseded by socialist modesty and practicality. Workshop participants visited a number of sites including the city’s old forts, historic town center, universities, private homes, apartment buildings, hotels, a socialist satellite development, and the city cemetery. Spending so much time in the city allowed students to absorb the city’s vernacular architecture and the socio-economic landscape of Havana today. Challenges to preservation particularly highlighted the tension between the regime’s political and social priorities and the country’s rising economic dependence on tourism and image to the outside world.

Orientation Week

Field Trips

Historic Preservation Lecture Series

October 4: Roger Beeston, RBA Architects and Conservation Consultants (RBA): Australian Heritage Management In Practice

October 9: Ines Weizman, Bauhaus-Institute for History and Theory of Architecture and Planning: The Matter Of Data

October 18: Andrew Johnston, University of Virginia: Learning from Heritage Practice in China: Tourism, Authenticity and Deep History

October 25: Martin Ashley, Martin Ashley Architects: ‘Passion, Craft And Wonder’ – A Philosophical Approach To Building Conservation In The UK

November 1: Richard Pieper, Jan Hird Pokorny Associates: A Conservator’s Call-to-Arms: Material Selection in a World of Substitution

December 6: Amalio de Marichalar y Sáenz de Tejada, Soria 21 Forum: Numancia: Paragon of Universal Human Freedom

The HP Program is pleased to announce a new initiative, the Historic Preservation Podcast Series is now available for streaming on Soundcloud.

Preservation Alumni Fall Party

Preservation Alumni hosted current and former students at the 79th Street Boat Basin to reconnect with HP alums and welcome the newest class of GSAPP preservationists into PA.

APT GSAPP Alumni Reception

The HP Program and GSAPP Alumni hosted a Cocktail Reception at the Association for Preservation Technology Conference on Monday, September 24th in Buffalo, NY.

Alumni Speed Networking Event

Preservation Alumni and the HP Program organized a night of networking between alumni and current students. Alumni working across multiple industries met with currents to offer career advice and discuss job prospects.

A special thanks to all the students and faculty for providing photos to include in this year’s semester in review!