The Historic Preservation Program’s student work presented in this End of Year Show demonstrates the diverse intellectual interests, critical historical questions, technological experiments, policy research, and design innovations that have energized our conversations and collective learning this past academic year. The show focuses on the work produced in the three studios plus thesis that constitute the core sequence of the program.

The student’s work demonstrates the unique approach of the Historic Preservation Program at Columbia GSAPP to the preservation of built and architectural heritage. The program frames preservation both as an experimental form of creative expression and as a critical form of collective action guided by philosophical, ethical, and critical thinking, supported by evidence of its benefits to society, and enabled by emerging technologies and policy tools. In these studio projects and thesis books, preservation appears as an experimental practice testing the limits of what architectural heritage can do to spark society’s collective memory and imagination.

Remarkably, the students produced work of extraordinary quality despite the adverse conditions of the pandemic. This exhibition is a testament to their determination and creativity. It is also a challenge to the profession and the world to reimagine what is possible and never to settle for the status quo.

ANDRÉS ÁLVAREZ-DÁVILA

Modern Technology and James Martson Fitch’s Turn to Historic Preservation

Advisor: Jorge Otero-Pailos
Readers: Paul Bentel, Richard Plunz

Underlying much of James Martson Fitch’s body of work as a critic, historian, preservation activist and teacher is the assumption that the vastly expanded productive capacities of an industrialized economy were also accompanied by the structural tendency to degrade material culture by removing the social, economic, and environmental constraints operating in earlier modes of production. This thesis sought to trace how Fitch’s anxieties about modern technology led him from within the discourse of modernist architecture–from calls for the reform of industrialism and functionalist readings of the vernacular–to preservation and how these anxieties were channeled in the shifting cultural aims he envisioned preservation to serve. For Fitch preservation offered a set of practicable solutions to disparate cultural ills whose ultimate cause he, perhaps symptomatically, attributed to the unintended consequences of modern technologies: preservation was, for Fitch, variously, the precondition for a the reform of modernist design, an artificial means of reviving pre industrial craft traditions, a corrective to the effects of mechanized mass production on public taste, an incremental, participatory approach to urban development, and, lastly, part of shifting cultural attitudes towards what technology is–and what its role should be–in shaping the built environment. In the end, the curatorial approach to the built environment concretized in Historic Preservation is a symptom of both the anxieties about modern, industrial technology that form the genesis of Fitch’s shifting and polyvalent preservation project and of the discourse and practice of preservation when it was codified in the first decade of the Historic Preservation Act of 1966.

PREME CHAIYATHAM

And There Was Light: The Use of Projection Mapping for Historic Preservation

Advisor: Amanda Trienens
Readers: Mary Jablonski, Halley Ramos

Projection mapping is a technology that allows us to visually create the environment without physically altering it. Although it has been widely employed in the entertainment sector, its use in the field of cultural heritage preservation has been limited. With no physical contact and complete reversibility, this technology should be more widely used in the preservation field. Despite a few precedent cases, it was confined to large institutions. As the technology has become increasingly accessible, it allows small and underfunded institutions, such as house museums, to employ it. Physical restoration can be expensive, or sometimes impossible, and beyond the means of smaller institutions. As an interpretative tool, it enables these places to present their various histories, attract visitors, and provide interpretation in an innovative way. Its non-destructive and reversible manner distinguishes it from physical interpretation, which may require the removal or additions of materials. This allows us to temporarily and visually change the space into different time periods without requiring physical intervention allowing the space to remain in its current condition as a living document. Projection mapping has enormous potential but it is a little known technology. To begin promoting projection mapping, variables will need to be considered such as cost, size, calibration, and space limitations. The challenge of how to incorporate new technology without disrupting the historical environment as well as its implementation and maintenance need to be considered. These are issues that must be acknowledged before we can fully include this technology into our toolkit. This thesis attempts to establish a guideline to begin the use of this technology that is beneficial to the preservation of cultural assets and can be extensively adopted. It involves literature research, case study analysis, experiments and evaluation. This guideline attempts to clarify the processes of incorporating it into our interpretative toolboxes and advancing the discipline of preservation.

JONATHAN CLEMENTE

Leaf-Induced Damage to Finishes for Outdoor Bronze Sculpture

Advisor: Richard Pieper
Readers: Heather Hartshorn, Norman Weiss

In wooded locations, leaf accumulation on bronze sculpture is not uncommon. Leaves are very complex natural materials, with variable chemical compositions. When they sit on bronze surfaces for prolonged periods of time, they may retain moisture, decompose, release organic compounds, and encourage localized microbiological growth. In order to study the relationship between leaves and the finishes commonly used on outdoor bronze, 16 coupons (of an alloy similar to those that were used historically for outdoor sculpture) were patinated with Birchwood Casey M-38 Antique Brown solution. Four of these coupons were left uncoated with a patina (patina-only), another four were treated with a microcrystalline wax coating (patina/wax), four more were given an acrylic clear coating (patina/lacquer), and four received a combination of acrylic and wax coatings (patina/lacquer/wax). Each coupon was partially immersed in either a leaf paste—prepared from three different types of leaves–or rainwater for several weeks. After only two days, patina-only coupons within leaf pastes showed significant loss of patina. The coated coupons within the leaf paste also showed signs of failure and patina loss after several weeks. More research into the cause of this deterioration and the specific compounds affecting the coatings is needed. These tests merely confirm that leaves can cause an effect that is more pronounced than the effect of rainwater alone.

CHRISTINE HOTZ

Preserving Places of Hip-Hop in the Bronx, 1973-1983

Advisor: Kate Reggev
Readers: Erica Avrami, Morgan O'Hara

Hip-hop’s history is tied to the Bronx during a time when the bough faced extreme challenges. This thesis examines the preservation of sites of early hip-hop and its associated physical spaces and sites in the Bronx from 1973 to 1983. This thesis will identify the significant locations and urban conditions that contributed to the creation of this piece of American culture and New York’s identity, analyze the commonalities that these locations share, and ultimately explore the challenges and possible solutions for preserving the sites of early hip-hop.

This body of research is focused on the decade of hip-hop development during which the music went from being known as a version of Disco the children, teens and young adults were creating to being named “hip-hop” and becoming a global phenomenon. During this period, hip-hop was solidified into four elements, each of which depended on occupying publicly accessible space: DJing, MCing, Breakdancing and Graffiti. Because a large majority of Bronx residents lacked ownership of property, the young hip-hop community utilized parks, community rooms, abandoned buildings, streets, and public transportation for hosting pirates or painting on public services. Indeed, they were responding to their disadvantaged situation by using hip-hop as a means to claim space.

Hip-hop’s spatial relationship presents an interesting challenge for the field of preservation. Most of the spaces that were used are seemingly unspectacular. Artists used parks, community rooms, and school gymnasiums – amenities that are found in every residential neighborhood of New York City. There was nothing architecturally significant about these spaces, and common forms of memorialization and preservation lack the ability to represent this subculture heritage in a way that benefits and speaks meaningfully to the community. Yet, this was a culture that has an intrinsic relationship to the spaces in which it formed –one that can still be seen today.

The final section of this thesis analyzes the issues of preserving the early spaces of hip-hop culture within the Bronx. This thesis follows a historic context-based research approach in which a significant history was identified and then researched to understand its relationship with space. This is not the approach policy-based preservation takes in New York City. Additionally, this thesis discusses the way hip-hop culture has already been preserved within the borough through different programs and events unrelated to formal, top-down preservation practices. However, preservation as a professional practice has the power of lasting representation and should consider its role in representing histories and cultures like hip-hop.

JESSE KLING

Solid Brick Homes: The Continuing Row House Tradition of Postwar Brooklyn and Queens

Advisor: Andrew Dolkart
Readers: Thomas J. Campanella, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

This thesis extends the historical investigation of the New York row house past the Second World War—contextualizing and analyzing its development within concurrent planning and zoning initiatives, outer neighborhood development in Brooklyn and Queens, mid- to late-twentieth century residential architecture, and neighborhood social history. A typical form of New York’s residential architecture since the city’s early history, the speculative row house is a well-studied preservation subject up through the early twentieth century, and recent scholars have further extended the Brooklyn row house’s history into the 1930s. The built fabric of numerous neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn—including Kew Gardens Hills, Canarsie, and Flatlands—indicates that row house development not only persisted past the Second World War, but remained a widespread architectural form in the city in the postwar era. Enabled by the availability of cheap, still-vacant land within New York’s city limits, the postwar row houses of Brooklyn and Queens are simultaneously products of the auto-oriented growth of mid-century America and the particular tradition of speculative residential development in New York City. As they exist today, these houses tell the stories of architects’ and developers’ responses to postwar suburbanization and of the neighborhoods they transformed.

LINDSAY PAPKE

Interrogating the Olfactory Landscape: Means and Methods for Analyzing Changing Smellscapes as a Character-Defining Feature of Place

Advisor: Erica Avrami
Readers: Jorge Otero-Pailos; Marissa Marvelli

The work of preservation should not be reduced to an object’s physical existence within a landscape. Rather, the scope of the cultural heritage field provides practitioners with the opportunity to understand the evolving relationships between people and place. Ultimately, the reason why a place or object is deemed significant or not relies on the ways in which people have interacted with it and thereby ascribe that entity with value. Defining the concept of cultural heritage in this way requires preservationists to develop methods of inquiry that interrogate why and how these social-spatial relationships occur and evolve, which requires research that moves beyond the scope of visual knowledge. This thesis offers means of research that will inform methodologies rooted in the interrogation of social-spatial relationships from an academically underserved dimension of place—the sense of smell. By identifying and testing approaches to interrogate the olfactory landscape within a case study of East Harlem, this thesis grounds itself in the assumption that smell matters while recognizing that current preservation policy favors the visual. This visual bias undermines the potential outcomes preservation policy possesses highlighting the need for different methods of inquiry that decenter the visual as a primary means of engagement with cultural heritage. Through this decentering, the olfactive and visual characteristics of place augment one another, with the capacity to lend insight into why environments may have developed in a certain fashion over time. This current research demonstrates that approaching a site from olfactory methods of inquiry highlights forms of place-based significance defined by eras of change in which smellscapes transformed in response to multiple publics. In a field fixated on determining sites of significance, methods of olfactory interrogation inform this practice and help preservation professionals understand the complexity of social-spatial interactions. Olfactory research may be well-positioned to act as a bridge between multiple cultural heritage practices and spatial environments to effectively trouble the binary of “tangible” and “intangible” heritage by centering social histories rather than the object as heritage.

VALERIE SMITH

The Small House Movement of the 1920s: Preserving Small “Better” Houses

Advisor: Andrew Dolkart
Readers: Paul Bentel, Janet Foster

The Small House Movement of the 1920s: Preserving Small “Better” Houses examines origins and contributors and identifies and analyzes the houses built as a result. The movement began in 1919 when the American Institute of Architects (AIA) founded the Architects’ Small House Service Bureau. The non-profit offered a plan service, which allowed prospective homeowners to buy small house blueprints through the mail. The standards they set for small houses were highly influential and led to many other architect plan services springing up in the 1920s. A national program called Better Homes in America used small house design to promote social reform and the beautification of suburbs. They not only partnered with the Architects’ Small House Service Bureau but formed their own robust research and educational programs including an annual model house demonstration in cities all over the country.

In order to examine the built assets from the Small House Movement, model houses from the Better Homes in America program were researched. Extant assets were analyzed to determine the possible significance of small 1920s houses and bring attention to an underrepresented typology in the field of historic preservation. Through the research, 1920s house trends and key historical information was identified that will be useful to historians and preservationists researching that decade. A case study of Santa Barbara was conducted to identify extant model houses from the Better Homes in America to provide historians and preservationists with resources and processes for researching Small House Movement assets from the 1920s.

MEGHAN VONDEN STEINEN

Effects of Fire-Related Heat Damage on Interior Architectural Paint Finishes

Advisor: Mary A. Jablonski

Research has been conducted on architectural elements damaged by fire (such as wood framing and masonry), and on fire damage to works of art, but few published works focus on interior finishes. It is not precisely known how heat from fire affects architectural finishes, more specifically historic paint. This thesis examines interior architectural paint finish samples that were taken from historic structures in the New York City area with a documented past of fires. Examination of the samples was performed using cross-sectional analysis to better understand how heat and fire-related heat have affected these samples. Further research was undertaken by analyzing additional samples of historic interior paint and subjecting them to varying temperatures, to observe how controlled high temperatures alter these finishes. The laboratory-tested samples were mounted and examined in cross-section to understand what happens to both oil-based and distemper paints as they are subjected to heat, and to compare them to the finishes sampled at fire-damaged properties.

ZIMING WANG

Living Above the Street: Flood Retrofitting and Adaptive Streetscape of New York City’s Historic Districts

Advisor: Erica Avrami
Readers: Jorge Otero-Pailos, Thaddeus Pawlowski

Flooding and sea level rise are threatening the integrity of New York City’s historic waterfront built environment. Responding to flood risk, New York City’s Post-Sandy flood policy framework (Building and Zoning Codes) requires the gradual elevation of all habitable spaces of structures within the 1% floodplain to above the DFE (Design Flood Elevation), which has in turn caused various uncontrolled streetscape changes in the city’s waterfront neighborhoods. While historic preservation considerations have been to a considerable extent left out of the city’s flood adaptation policy framework, the streetscape of waterfront historic districts are at high stake under both flood risk and potential adaptation intervention. Aiming at the policy—design nexus of the flood adaptation of historic streetscapes in New York City, this thesis reviewed key flood retrofitting design guidelines, regulations, and built cases in recent years across the United States, and explored a “streetscape-sensitive flood retrofitting toolbox” on single building and street/neighborhood scale that addresses streetscape mitigation and historic preservation considerations for the flood adaptation of historic properties. Based on an analysis of historic streetscape’s significance and tradeoffs between the multiple, conflicting values involved in its flood adaptation, under the concept of “Adaptive Streetscape,” the author established a set of semi-quantitative metrics that evaluates the quality of historic streetscape and its change under flood adaptation, characterized New York City’s flood-threatened historic neighborhoods, and applied the retrofitting toolbox on New York City’s historic built environment through two street-scaled design studies in South Street Seaport and East Harlem historic districts.

Summarizing findings that emerged throughout the research process, the author advocated for a paradigm shift of the preservation enterprise towards adaptation through incremental policy reform, put forward the planning—design—review process and recommended practices in the flood adaptation of historic streetscapes, and put forth policy reform and policy-making agendas with key Federal/local institutional actors identified.

JIANING WEI

Advisor: Francoise Bollack
Readers: Erica Avrami, Amy Lelyveld

In the first half of the 20th century, missionaries were active in building universities and hospitals for preaching in China in addition to churches. Having the largest group heritage of mission universities in China, Cheeloo University existed from 1902 to 1952. Its historic campus is where east and west met and formed hybridity throughout every aspect of it. The hybridity of Cheeloo’s physical campus is the witness and now the most powerful and representative heritage of the bilateral cultures on this site. Therefore, it should be primarily preserved. This research first analyses the hybridity of Cheeloo’s campus: the siting of the campus is an American tradition influenced by the unsteady Chinese environment; the campus planning is in totally American style without Chinese characteristics; but there is an almost chronological style change in Cheeloo’s building design from totally Chinese, different levels of hybridity to totally Western style, which were contributed by a variety of Western architects from 1905 to 1935.

Based on the analysis on the hybridity in Cheeloo’s campus, the insufficiency of the preservation work starting from the designation in 2013 is listed: the siting of Cheeloo on both sides of the city wall is not claimed on the site; the current relations between the two campuses are not strong enough; no actions have been taken to claim the importance of the demolished structures; the implementation of the preservation has weakened the hybridity in building design. Then recommendations for the future preservation work in Cheeloo are given in response to the insufficiency, such as reconstructing part of the city wall, road signs connecting the two campuses and the restoration of the architectural hybridity as the old photos.

LUXI YANG

A Critical Analysis of the Yin Yu Tang Project and the Preservation of Huizhou-style Vernacular Dwellings in China

Advisor: Theodore Prudon
Readers: Nancy Berliner, Amy Lelyveld

Yin Yu Tang is the only example of re-erecting a major proportion of a traditional Chinese building outside China. The popularity of mounting such an exhibition abroad and its uniqueness make the Project a well-discussed topic in China. Also, the relocation of Yin Yu Tang in the U.S. provides a new way for the Chinese public to look at vernacular dwellings. However, as interesting as it is, there is no official introduction of the Project in China, and the public could only learn about it from other sources. The perspectives of these articles have alternated with changes in preservation awareness and the social contexts within China, which has in turn led to misinterpretations and rumors about the Project and the preservation field, eventually affecting the Chinese public’s understandings of preservation and its actions.

This research examines a critical analysis of the context and influence of the Yin Yu Tang project from social, political and cultural perspectives. Meanwhile, the paper means to re-organize the development of historic vernacular dwellings’ preservation in China and to locate the position and role of the Yin Yu Tang project in the entire process. The societal changes in China impact the public understanding of a preservation project. From there, it is possible to cast a light on how preservation practices are beyond the national boundary and reveal the importance for preservationists to take back the dominant voice of promoting their projects and the public’s education.

Chris Kumaradjaja (team captain), Jonathan Clemente, Preme Chaiyatham, Estefania Bohorquez, Winnie Michi, and Ziming Wang won First Place at the 2021 Design-Build Competition organized by the Association for Preservation Technology International. GSAPP Historic Preservation Faculty Tim Michiels served as the faculty advisor for the project.

The goal of this multi-phase competition is for students to explore the conservation and structure of masonry arches. For the initial phase, the team produced a conservation plan, which included historical research and a structural analysis of the Brooklyn Bridge tower, as well as the fabrication of a pointed masonry arch using the same traditional cement mortar that was used in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The final phase of the competition stipulates the construction of an arch without mortar that exhibits a high degree of strength and is lightweight, using any material. GSAPP’s team choose bread as their material, an inexpensive and fully-biodegradable resource.

In their words: ‘The bread arch design had an equally rigorous geometric process. We knew that by offsetting the shape of a catenary by the thickness of the bread would maximize the stability of the arch. But the bread pieces were trapezoidal. The good thing about symmetrical trapezoids is that they’re same angle of incidence with the secant line of an imagined circle on either side. But how do you approximate a catenary curve with arcs? The region right around the vertex of a parabola has tighter curvature than the further regions. And the arcs had to be differentiable (that is, no cusping). The arcs were joined together such that the exit condition of each segment was tangential to the next. Using the bandsaw, we created perfectly trapezoidal bread pieces.”