Dear Columbia Preservation Community,

It is a pleasure to share with you the achievements of the historic preservation program during the Fall semester of 2023.

The recent final reviews of the three studios that ran this semester really showcased our students’ incredible deepening knowledge of preservation and their commitments to turning that knowledge into action. Prof. Andrew Dolkart and Prof. Debora Barros led the first year students in a Studio 1 focused on modern commercial buildings in Midtown (42nd Street to 57th Street, Third Avenue to Sixth Avenue). The buildings chosen date from the first years of the 20th century to the 1980s. I was so impressed with the students’ final presentations. Their research engaged with crucial aspects of our SLAB curriculum, from social histories to their materialization in building elements, from archival research to analyses of building design. The students were professional in their presentations and articulate in the Q&A. What impressed me the most was the way in which students were able to clearly articulate the consequences of their research through proposals for action. The proposals were wide ranging, from designation plans to renaming proposals (the Jane Doe building!) and design interventions. I was so pleased that all had in common an imaginative, creative, speculative core about how we can practice preservation not just differently, but better. This creativity and engagement is really at the heart of the Columbia Preservation ethos. As I said during the review, and I mean it, the class of ‘25 is already making the future of preservation look brighter.

Prof. Erica Avrami and Prof. Shreya Goshal, with Robert Edwards as their PhD teaching assistant, took the joint Preservation + Planning Studio III to Ghana where they focus on Earthen Architecture, Kumasi, Ghana to work on a community engaged research project to help preserve Ashanti traditional buildings. Their final presentation began with a masterful lesson on the history of these buildings, their importance both to the local community and beyond, as well as the multiple pressures that they are under. The clarity of their research methodology allowed them to achieve a remarkable depth of knowledge and understanding in a short amount of time. The learning curve was steep, but they all climbed it with flying colors. I was so impressed with the students’ ability to clearly present their research and assessment of their findings, leading the audience in a sequential and consequential way to understand the need for action. They then showed us the paths of action through proposals that imagined new policies, speculated on new digital archiving solutions to transmit traditional knowledge, built community coalitions, and on the whole gave us a promising new agenda for preserving earthen architecture. This studio embodied the highest ambitions of the program to teach students how to engage in cross-cultural preservation work.

In pursuit of those same cross-cultural pedagogical objectives, Prof. Mark Rakatansky and I, together with recent graduate Maria Candelaria Ryberg as our teacher in training, took the joint Preservation + Architecture Studio III to Venice. This studio work is part of a research collaboration with the Cini Foundation on the relationship between built heritage and climate change. A major focus of the studio is how heritage can be subtly redesigned to communicate old and new narratives. Students learned to design spatial narratives in a sequential and consequential way, such that when encountered and experienced by visitors the public can learn relevant historical knowledge about social and environmental issues. The studio focused on design methodologies to preserve and reimagine the modernist Gandini Pool building on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore into a new museum of water. I cannot say enough about the incredible depth of the students’ research, ranging from historical, social, material, technological and environmental issues–all dimensions of the SLAB curriculum. From this research emerged a curatorial strategy for artifacts that would make up the collection of the proposed museum of water, and help transmit to the public the deep knowledge about water that exists in Venice. The students carried out documentation on site, further developing the skills that Prof. Kyle Normandin had introduced them to in his Spring 2023 class Building Conditions Assessment. They then honed their design skills to produce designs that interpreted the character defining features of the existing building, making visible the histories latent on the site by enacting them in tectonic form. The level of resolution in the student work this year was extraordinary, from the site level to spatial design, to the details of exhibition design.

This studio work is part of a larger cross-program initiative to advance research at the intersection of heritage and climate change, which encompassed the Fitch Colloquium on “Atmospheric Heritage: Preservation Approaches Between Art and Science.” The symposium encouraged expanding notions of heritage to include the atmosphere, to recognize it as a human-made airscape, and to think creatively about how to protect it, which of course is also a way to help stop climate change. We heard inspiring lectures from international preservation experts, artists, curators, scientists and activists working in this area. Related to this, Prof. Erica Avrami’s “Adapting the Existing Built Environment” University-wide initiative continued to build capacity on how we teach this subject across campus. The initiative also encompasses existing courses such as Prof. Françoise Bollack’s Old Buildings New Energies, and new courses such as Prof. Bilge Kose and Prof. Kivanc Kose on Machine Learning for preservation, which collaborated with the New York Landmarks Commission on developing an algorithm to help identify suitable locations for solar panels in historic districts. Looking ahead to next Spring, Studio 2 will deploy community engaged research to examine energy consumption and the preservation of Columbia’s Morningside Campus buildings.

We have 27 thesis students who have been hard at work in Thesis 1 with Prof. Paul Bentel, Prof. Sarah Sher and Shuyi Yin, their PhD teaching assistant. They have identified research questions and started on their research. Many of the second years will be traveling to conduct further research over the holiday break, with support from Preservation Program’s Thesis Travel Research Grants. They will be completing their thesis in the spring semester.

Many of our courses use New York as a laboratory for teaching and learning. This year Prof. Tim Michiels’ Traditional Building Technology class, and my Theory and Practice of Historic Preservation class did a joint field trip to Ellis Island. With the former, they learned to identify building construction systems and understand their modes of decay. With me, they practiced their observation skills through a sketching exercise that helped them consider how preservationists construct narratives spatially. It was great to see that even students that had not practiced drawing before joining the program are now tapping into their inner artist, and drawing analytically, critically, and not just figuratively. Pieper also led a number of field trips for his legendary Conservation of Architectural Metals class. Fun pictures below!

Once again, our program had a strong showing at the international Association of Preservation Technology conference in Seattle. I want to take this opportunity to once again congratulate the two student teams who presented their research on bridge design under faculty lead Prof. Tim Michiels, and on documentation under faculty lead Prof. Bilge Kose. In my unbiased opinion, our teams were far superior to everyone else! The students on these teams demonstrated some remarkable ability to work together, employing their knowledge of preservation technology to solve practical applications. Congratulations to Eleanor Phetteplace (MSHP ‘24), Andrés Santana-Miranda (MSHP ‘24), Sophia Haynes (MSHP ‘24), Brooke Marinovich (MSHP '24), Madeleine Hagan (MSHP '24), Gray Danforth (MSHP '24); Blanca Balbuna (MSHP '24), Charlotte Boulanger (MSHP + MSUP '25), Yaozhi Liu (MSHP '24), and Di Zhu (MSHP '24).

At this APT conference and at the National Trust for Preservation conference in DC we had the pleasure to host students and alumni at receptions to celebrate their accomplishments and allow for networking in a relaxed atmosphere. Many of our students, recent graduates and faculty presented their research at these conferences including Anna Gasha, Michelle Leach,. Also Ester Wagner attended the National Preservation Law Conference 2023 in Washington D.C.

The preservation program also presented a robust program of lectures and events including Mechild Widrich, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Francoise Bollack and Lucia Allais. Students and faculty had the opportunity to engage with the speaker’s ideas and to discuss their work informally over convivial speaker’s dinners.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate everyone on these remarkable accomplishments. As always, we are grateful for our staff who support us all in these endeavors, especially Sarahgrace Godwin, Mika Tal and Leigh Brown! I also want to thank all the students who have been supporting the Program Office and the Preservation Technology Lab including: Ellie Phetteplace, Annie An, Charlotte Boulanger, Sophie Hass, and Lily Garcia.

I hope everyone has a restful holiday season, and wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year!

Jorge Otero-Pailos

The M.S. HP program welcomed the first year students:

(Aaron) Zhaosen Luo, Brandy Nguyen, Cecelia Halle, Charlotte Crum, Conrad Grimmer, Doei Kang, Fahim Nazari, Frederick, Illy Auerbach, James Oberting, Lia Kane, Lily Garcia, Lindsey Johnston, Liza Hegedus, Marieke Van Asselt, Nadir Puccinelli Sannini, Nicolas Moraga, Shereen Al Mater, Sophie Hass, Wenqin Meng, (William) Huan Yu Kuang


…and welcomed back returning students:

Andres Santana-Miranda, Blanca Balbuena, Brooke Marinovich, Cassidy Kraft, Daniela Martinez, Daoxin Chen, Di Zhu, Dingyi Zhang, Eleanor Phetteplace, Esther Wagner, Gray Danforth, Guy Marie Wroy, Jieli Zhao, Madeline Hagan, Naomi Dressler, Pitchaya Kointarangkul, Roberto Villasante, Sophia Haynes, Stephanie Snell, Weijie Sun, Yaozhi Liu, Yuan Chen, Zihao Zhang, Ziyu Liu, Charlotte Boulanger (MSHP + MSUP), Chris Kumaradjaja (MSHP + M.Arch), Drew Citron (MSHP + MSRED), Esteban Cardona-Alberty (MSHP + M.Arch), Isabella Libassi (MSHP + M.Arch), Xiao Rui An (MSHP + M.Arch), Jacqueline Danielyan (MSHP + M.Arch), Jerry Schmit (MSHP + M.Arch)


PhD students:

The PhD in Preservation welcomed Deqah Hussein-Wetzel as a first year student. She joins Anna Gasha, Shuyi Yin, and Robert Edwards as a first year student in the PhD cohort.

Deqah Hussein-Wetzel:
As a first-generation American from Somali-Kenyan background also pursuing a Certificate in Comparative Literature and Society, her research interrogates the socio-political role of urbanism and development on East African v. African American cultural landscapes, focusing on topics that explore the meaning and symbolism of place-associated storytelling within the African Diaspora. Deqah received a Bachelor of Urban Planning from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning and a Master of Historic Preservation with a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Oregon. She is also the founder of Urbanist Media, a nonprofit dedicated to elevating and preserving underrepresented voices and places, and the co-host/producer of its flagship podcast, Urban Roots, which aims to preserve these places (the tangible) through story (the intangible).

Prof. Debora Barros joined the teaching team for Studio I

Debora Barros is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP and a Senior Associate at PBDW Architects working on historic preservation, adaptive reuse and new construction projects for cultural, institutional, educational, and residential clients. Her experience in the United States, England, Italy, Turkey, and Brazil, bridges architecture, historic preservation, and cultural heritage. She has been the project manager in charge of the works on the landmarked Palace Theatre, which was elevated 30 ft. above ground on Times Square as part of the TSX Broadway development. Debora’s portfolio features iconic and complex sites such as the Park Avenue Armory, the Guggenheim Museum and includes the design of a new memorial plaza for the relocated Manchester Cenotaph, in England.

Prof. Sarah Sher joined the teaching team for Thesis I

Sarah Sher is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Historic Preservation program at Columbia GSAPP and an associate at Higgins Quasebarth & Partners, a leading preservation consulting firm based in NYC. Her work at HQ is wide-ranging from small restoration projects requiring extensive historic documentation and on-site assessment, to new buildings that affect the built environment on an urban scale. Prior to joining HQ, Sher was the Jewish Heritage Program Associate at World Monuments Fund. She has lectured at national and international conferences on topics relating to conservation and adaptive re-use of historic buildings.

Prof. Kivanc Kose co-taught the elective course “Machine Learning”

Kivanc Kose is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP and works as a senior research scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Kose’s research focus shifted towards developing machine learning and computer vision tools for skin cancer applications, aiming to significantly improve the early detection and treatment of cancer through novel imaging and AI-assisted diagnostic interpretation methods. Dr. Kose maintains his zeal for machine learning and AI in cultural heritage and art domains, continuously exploring related literature alongside his primary research focus.

We would like to congratulate everybody who participated in the 2023 APT Conference in Seattle. It was a delight to see the hard work of our students, alumni, and faculty showcased.

In recognition of their work and efforts, we want to highlight the members of our two student teams who were successfully selected and given the opportunity to compete in Seattle:

Second Year Students are making progress and working on their theses

This semester, our second year students presented their research to faculty during two review sessions in the months of October and September. We are looking forward to seeing their progress during mid-review in January.

PhD candidate Anna Gasha presented at APT Seattle

Anna Gasha presented as part of a session on Perceptions and Assumptions about Traditional Construction in Post-Disaster Engineering Reconnaissance. Her talk, considered the post-earthquake reconnaissance activity of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), based in Oakland, California. This track discussed structural engineers’ roles in influencing post-earthquake decisions around traditional and historical construction as well as the fallacies of categorizing the built environment in a strict dichotomy of newer “engineered” structures and older “non-engineered” structures.

PhD candidate Deqah Hussein-Wetzel presented as part of the DocTalks x MoMA forum

Deqah Hussein-Wetzel presented as part of the Session 2 entitled Reclaiming Lost Spaces: Reckoning with Natural Disasters and Erasure in the Built Environment on October 23, 2023. Looking at the history of Ms. Bea Gilmore in Vanport, she explored the physical erasure of place and culture in the built environment, about humans and natural resilience, and about the power of telling the truth and sharing stories. Moreover, Deqah made a case for the use podcasting as a tool for historic preservation—one that amplifies the voices of marginalized community members and identifies pathways for community input for future development.

James Oberting (MSHP ‘25) was the Fall 2023 Intern for ACHP

James Oberting, interned with ACHP, working on a project under the supervision of Chair Sara Bronin. His focus was on researching state/local burial laws and developing recommendations for incorporating principles from ACHP’s burial policy at the state/local/nongovernmental level.

Nicolás Moraga (MSHP '25) was selected as a recipient of the 2023 Vectorworks Design Scholarship for his project entitled “Over the Coal Ruins”.

Paul Bentel

Bentel & Bentel Architects/Planners received the SARA national award for adaptive reuse for the project for the restoration of and adaptive reuse of a Haybarn (Fienile) in Lucca, Italy. The project also received an award for adaptive reuse from the Long Island Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Linden House, a renovation of a 1957 modernist house on Long Island, also received an award from the LI AIA for Historic Preservation. The firm is currently working on the renovation of the Walter Issacson Center at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado, designed by Herbert Bayer and constructed in 1958.

Françoise Bollack

Adjunct Associate Professor Françoise Bollack’s new book Old Buildings, New Ideas: A Selective Architectural History of Additions, Adaptations, Reuse and Design Invention was named one of the three best books of 2023 by author and architect Simon Unwin.

Andrew Dolkart

Professor Andrew Dolkart was interviewed by WNYC with project co-founder Ken Lustbader to introduce The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project and discuss some lesser known LGBT history.

Jorge Otero-Pailos

On October 12th, Professor Otero-Pailos gave a Lecture in Seattle at the University of Washington, where he discussed his approach to art as a method of experimental preservation, arguing its relevance in imagining a future for the built environment centered on mutual care. Using his artworks in series, he presented a selection of dust casts taken from the Doge’s Palace, Westminster Hall, and other buildings around the world, and discussed the unexpected histories that each unveils.

In November, Professor Otero-Pailos was a part of a panel at the National Council for Preservation Education (NCPE) conference in Washington DC where he presented his book Historic Preservation Theory: An Anthology.

Program director Jorge Otero-Pailos was also quoted in publications such as the New York Times in an article entitled When the Skyscraper You Hate Blocks the Skyscraper You Love and the Washington Post.

Halley Ramos

Adjunct Associate Professor Halley Ramos is currently the lead architectural historian consultant for the Amtrak Susquehanna River Rail bridge replacement project in Maryland,overseeing the Section 106 review. A major aspect of this endeavor involves the HAER documentation of the historic bridge and eight contributing undergrade bridges. To achieve this, they have employed cutting-edge technology such as laser scanning to create precise as-built drawings, as well as documenting these structures through large format photography. In parallel, Professor Ramos is actively collaborating with the New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA) on the development of a Section 106 Programmatic Agreement (PA). She is also leading the environmental and cultural resource review work for select projects associated with FIFA 2026 in New Jersey.

Andre Jauregui & Halley Ramos / SOE Studio

The most recent project by faculty members André Jauregui and Halley Ramos, entitled “Broken Cities,” has been launched. In collaboration with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), their studio collaborated to train teams in Aleppo, Mosul, and Gaza to capture data located in zones ravaged by war. ‘Broken Cities’ 3D models rely on photogrammetry, one of the most powerful and accurate surveying technique that exists today. It is the first time this technology has been used to take viewers inside buildings ravaged by the horrors of war.

‘Broken Cities’ aims to:

Profs. Andrew Dolkart & Debora Barros

Teaching Assistants: Andrés Santana-Miranda & Pitchaya Kointarangkul

Studio I is the central focus of the first semester of the Historic Preservation program, and a foundational course within the program. It is simultaneously broad in reach and narrow in focus. Studio I both complements and benefits from other first semester coursework; it is the space for engaging overarching historical and contemporary issues in preservation. The goal for Studio I is to equip students with skills, techniques, and critical thinking so that each student can gain the ability to exercise judgment as to the historical significance of a building or site.

For their final project, students chose one building among the preselected choices made by the faculty and used the skills acquired over the course of the semester as the foundation for the analysis and assessment of their building. Students analyzed the building’s functional organization, its aesthetic organization, character-defining features, its relationship to its historical and physical context, its materiality, and its history, and, finally, assessed the building’s significance and made an argument for whether or not the building should be preserved.

Profs. Erica Avrami & Shreya Ghoshal
Case Study area:

Teaching Assistant: Robert Edwards

The Joint Historic Preservation & Urban Planning Studio for Fall 2023 engaged an exploration of earthen architecture, using the Asante Traditional Buildings, near Kumasi, Ghana, as a deep dive case study. This study examined histories of heritage practices and urban policies, to better understand why conservation efforts over the past decades have been inadequate. This involved deeply interrogating the evolution of Kumasi’s built environment and constructive cultures to understand how and why earthen building traditions were historically erased and devalued. Students also explored how, based on comparative analyses of other contexts, re-investment in the Asante Traditional Buildings, and in earthen architecture more generally, might be advanced.

Students traveled to Kumasi in October to undertake fieldwork with local collaborators, allowing them to engage with the architecture and land use of the city, Asante heritage, and the surviving earthen buildings in this growing urban context. In the field, the studio team engaged with local institutions, including the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB) and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology’s (KNUST) School of Architecture, Town Planning, and Building.

Profs. Jorge Otero-Pailos & Mark Rakatansky
Case Study area: Gandini Indoor Swimming Pool Building, Venice

Teaching Assistant: Zhaosen Luo

Enacting our Environmental Entanglements: Museum of Water

In response to the challenges posed by climate change, students familiriazed themselves with how to produce an experimental preservation plan, a method that brings together art, science and technology in the process of documenting, assessing, and designing adaptations to historic buildings. Students designed architectural and preservation interventions, orchestrated within the framework of an experimental preservation plan for the long-term future of the building. The plan builds on the previous 2009 conservation intervention carried out by Cataruzza Milosevich Architects on the Gandini Pool building.

Columbia GSAPP Historic Preservation hosted hybrid lectures through the 2023-2024 Preservation Lecture Series. Descriptions can be found on our Events page!

Fitch Preservation Colloquium “Atmospheric Heritage: Experimental Preservation Approaches between Art and Science.”

This conference focused on preservation’s productive exchanges with the earth sciences and contemporary art, exploring a range of experimental preservation practices engaged in atmospheric heritage.

SPEAKERS

Michael Morris, producer, co-director emeritus Artangel (UK) and co-convenor of World Weather Network

Sharolyn Anderson, Physical Scientist, Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division, National Park Service

Gisela Winckler, Lamont Research Professor and Associate Director of the Geochemistry Division at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Shona Illingworth, artist and Professor in Art, Film and Media at the University of Kent (UK), and co-founder of the Airspace Tribunal

Giuliana Bruno, cultural theorist, Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University and author of Atmospheres of Projection: Environmentality in Art and Screen Media (Chicago, 2022)

Nerea Calvillo, architect and Associate Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick (UK) and author of Aeropolis: Queering Air in Toxic Polluted Worlds (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2023)

David Gissen, author, designer, Professor of Architecture and Urban History at The New School, and author of Manhattan Atmospheres (Minnesota, 2013)

Lindsey Wikstrom, architect, co-founder of Mattaforma, and author of Designing the Forest and Other Mass Timber Futures (Routledge, 2023)

Mark Wasiuta, architect, writer, curator, co-director of Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices program at GSAPP, and co-designer of “Instructions for the Reconstitution of Historical Smog” (2011)

Anna Lea Albright, Postdoctoral Researcher, Laboratory for Dynamic Meteorology, Sorbonne University (France);

Alice Sharp, Artistic Director and founder of the art and environment organization Invisible Dust.

Click here for the event page and the recording.

Mechtild Widrich Lecture

Professor Wildrich joined us on September 14th to give a lecture entitled “Conservation and Monumental Cares.” Widrich discussed case studies by Emilio Rojas and Ana Lupaş related to her new book, Monumental Cares. Sites of History and Contemporary Art, which considers the monument debates of the past decade in light of phenomena that strike us as monumental or overwhelming, such as climate crisis, migration, and local and global political tensions.

Click here for the event page.

Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi Lecture

Professor Iyer Siddiqi is an architectural historian at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the author of Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement (Duke University Press), on the spatial politics, visual rhetoric, and ecologies of the UNHCR-administered camps at Dadaab, Kenya.

Professor Iyer Siddiqi joined us on September 28th to give a lecture entitled “Drawing the Dadaab Refugee Camps: A Critical Archive”

Click here for the event page.

Françoise Astorg Bollack Lecture

Shining a light on the hidden side of the accepted narrative of architectural histories, this book talk by Professor Françoise Astorg Bollack entitled “Old Buildings - New Ideas: A Selective Architectural History of Additions, Adaptations, Reuse and Design Invention” explored works that transform existing buildings to build a way forward, through adaptations, additions and visual shifts.

Click here for the event page.

Lucia Allais Lecture

Professor Lucia Allais is Associate Professor of Architecture at Columbia University, the Director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, a member of the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, and an editor of the journal Grey Room.

In this talk entitled “The Protective Matrix: Sandbags, Monuments, and Law in the Twentieth Century,” Professor Allais traced the evolving legal and technical justifications that were given for the international practice of covering monumental structures with lattices of sandbags, including in debates about the “humanization of war” at the League of Nations, ultimately proposing to detect a distinct spectrum of aesthetic ideologies behind this protective matrix.

Click here for the event page.

Workshops were also organized throughout the course of the semester, providing students with hands-on learning experiences.

Welcome Back Reception
September 8th, 2023.
The Italian Academy

Columbia GSAPP Alumni Breakfast at APT Conference 2023
October 13th, 2023
Alder & Ash, Seattle

GSAPP HP Alumni Reception at PastForward Conference
November 9th, 2023
Doyle Bar, Washington D.C.

Click here to check out the Preservation Technologies newly uploaded 3d scans!

These buildings were scanned using our Faro scanner and processed using the Preservation Technology Lab’s powerful computers.

The Preservation Technology Lab continues to welcome donations of “hand held” size materials and fragments as pictured below.

David Peterson publishes a new book, US Embassies of the Cold War: The Architecture of Democracy, Diplomacy and Defense

The book offers a survey of the U.S. Embassies built during the Cold War, designed by some of the world’s most celebrated architects, including Walter Gropius, Eero Saarinen, and Edward Durell Stone. It continues Peterson’s Thesis research at Columbia University (2018). Read this article from Bloomberg news for more information about the book.

Adam Brodheim, class of 2023, featured by several news outlets for his thesis research on NYC housing.

Brodheim’s groundbreaking research found that the city had lost more than 100,000 homes, highlighting the impacts of space combination in historic properties in the city. These findings have been featured in local news outlets such as The City and The New York Times.

In an interview, Brodheim noted that “[he was] not trying to begrudge folks who are trying to build a larger apartment as their families grow,” but rather trying to bring attention to the way these actions across the entire city make a meaningful impact on our housing crisis.”

Alumna Kirsten Reoch named director of the Glass House

The Glass House, a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, announced today the appointment of Kirsten Reoch as the site’s Fourth Executive Director starting September 11, 2023.

Reoch is an experienced non-profit leader with expertise in cultural resources, preservation planning and managing complex historic facilities and operations with high public engagement. She is the Director of Capital Planning, Preservation, and Institutional Relations for the Park Avenue Armory, a city, state, and national landmark in Manhattan.

Alumna Mayssa Jallad featured in Arab News for her new Album “Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels”

Jallad’s debut solo album and, in many ways, an extension of her Columbia University master’s thesis. That thesis detailed the Battle of the Hotels, which took place during the early stages of the Lebanese Civil War, and argued that architecture be viewed as a principal character in the world’s first high-rise urban battlefield.

Inspired by a practice known as experimental preservation, which suggests that if you are unsure of something’s historical value, you should intervene, Jallad initially worked with the oud player and singer Youmna Saba. Together they set about trying to express silence through vocal melodies, as well as how best to play the guitar silently.

Read the full article here

Alumna Michelle Leach M.S.HP ‘23 presented at APT Seattle

Michelle Leach presented as part of a session on Preserving and Stabilizing Historic Materials. Her talk, entitled Lessons from a Salt Crystallization Inhibitor Inquiry presented her graduate thesis work focused on the evaluation of Diethylenetriamine penta(methylene phosphonic acid) (also called DTPMP) and potassium ferrocyanide for preventing sodium sulfate damage to Indiana Limestone and Berea Sandstone. This track explored the purpose of a crystallization inhibitor, the concerns related to inhibitor use as well as the effect that temperature has on crystallization tests using sodium sulfate.

MSHP/MArch Alumni Allison Fricke (‘20) spoke at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association Building Energy NYC 2023 Conference

Allison Fricke presented as part of the session entitled Embodied and Operational Decarbonization Trade-Offs in the Building Envelope which explored potential opportunities of cutting-edge biogenic building materials and their potential to advance decarbonization.

Program alumna Maura Whang M.S HP ‘19 welcomed her daughter this past August.

Congratulations to the family!

Preservation Alumni Events

Preservation Alumni supported the professional development of students through awarding two Program Enhancement Fund grants. Funds from this program are used to cover travel, registration fees, or other expenses related to student attendance at a preservation-related conference. The Columbia Design-Build Team received a grant to attend the 2023 APT International Conference in Seattle, Washington, and Esther Wagner received a grant to reimburse expenses accrued while attending the National Preservation Law Conference 2023 in Washington D.C., hosted by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the D.C. Bar Association.

Preservation Alumni also engaged students through a robust series of fall events, including the Fall Party honoring Michael Henry Adams; a preservation happy hour in collaboration with preservation alumni from the Pratt Institute and the University of Pennsylvania; and the return of in-person speed networking.