[Image via Tulane School of Architecture .]
Tulane School of Architecture is hosting a one day symposium at the end of January focusing on Historic Preservation. The keynote speaker will be Robert Ivy, FAIA and one of my favorite professors, Eugene Cizek, FAIA, will be providing commentary. This symposium is free and open to the public. If I was able to be in New Orleans, I would love to attend.
In light of the natural and governmental disasters in the past few years and the public policy debates currently raging within New Orleans, this symposium seems slightly overdue. I am glad to see that the new Dean of the Architecture School, Kenneth Schwartz, FAIA, is doing something that should have been done years ago. The historic preservation program is one of the few distinguishing elements of the Tulane School of Architecture, it helps ground architectural education at TSA to “the place” as well as “the time.” In the time I was at school, it felt as if the program did not get as much attention and funding as some of the more esoteric modernist pursuits. At times we felt like the red-headed step children of the school.
I may not personally agree with all the philosophical and ideological teachings I was taught during my historic preservation classes, but i do credit this program for helping me make the shift from design student to practicing professional. It was the only area of my education where material interactions with environmental factors as a function of building life were ever considered critical, or even discussed; it is also the only time we were able to, never mind required to, design an adaptive reuse project. This program helped introduce students to public planning officials and organizations and better inform our understanding of the political and legal process of building and protecting structures. It also broke the design bubble fostered in many of the other studios by merging design students with masters of preservation students (MPS) who were rarely design professionals.
3 thoughts on “Preservation, not just for berries anymore!”
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