Heritage Conservation 2018 – PastForward

November 20, 2018 Blog, California, Intangible Heritage, Sustainability, Technology Comments (0) 1614

Just back from San Francisco, currently sporting the worst air quality on the planet but also hosting PastForward, the National Preservation Conference.

For me it brought back fond memories of Beijing, 2004.  

It was the final meeting for National Trust President Stephanie Meeks.  I remember flying from Chicago to Washington DC and back the same day to vote her into her position back in 2010.

Her speech at the Plenary session hit five major points that well illustrate the status of heritage conservation in 2018 and its future direction.  You can see her full speech here, but I hope she will allow me to reflect on her five points below.

People First

Heritage conservation is about what people want and need, and not about museums and architectural obscurities.  It is about Main Streets and housing and schools and jobs and how communities are built and thrive.  It about more than tourism and curation – it is about how we feel about belonging to a place, investing ourselves in it.

Stephanie cited Abraham Maslow’s 1943 “Hierarchy of Needs” where PLACE and a sense of belonging were first identified as essential human needs.  Current neuroscience has dramatically underscored this early intuition with the solid research into the brain chemistry of architecture and environment in the work of Colin Ellard (which I blogged about here in 2016.)

Ahhhh…dopamine….

The latest developments go even further that Ellard’s quantification of how – chemically – interesting buildings make us feel good and parking lots make us anxious.  I just read Sarah Williams Goldhagen’s Welcome To Your World, a study of the new concept of embodied cognition – that how we think about and understand our world is crafted by our built environment, largely in an unconscious way.  She makes the case that good design is a basic human need, a key to brain health and a source of emotions.  “Recognizing and identifying patterns produces in us a sensation of pleasure.”

We see ourselves in our surroundings.

It turns out architecture is neither a luxury nor an externality.  It is the way we construct our thoughts and feelings.   The heritage conservation field is only beginning to take advantage of these new frontiers in neuroscience which prove something we suspected for a long time.  Look for a big expansion in the coming years.

Innovation

The changes to heritage conservation in the last two decades are epic.  In terms of diagnostics, we can now learn so much more about archaeology and buildings with minimally invasive techniques impossible in the 20th century.  Ground-penetrating radar.  LIDAR.  We can snake cameras into the tiniest crawlspaces and cavity walls, and we can point cloud anything with a regular camera if need be.

Presidio 2007 – an actual point cloud station but they did show us how to do it with camera.

New tools are also available for rehabilitation.  I learned Thursday that a company actually makes siding that matches 1940s asbestos siding!  We can 3-D print components, or we can find the companies that still make the same sash cord they did 90 years ago.

Yeah baby!! 

The greatest innovations, of course, have been in interpretation of historic places.

Painting with light.  “Restored By Light” at Mission San Jose, 2016

Innovation works at two levels here.  First, we have to reach the next audience through the media they choose to use.  Second, we can restore history without resorting to massive physical intervention, as seen above.

Interpretation at the recently reopened Cooper-Molera historic site, Monterey, CA.

Innovative interpretation is key not only to the massive tourism industry, but also the more basic and democratic project of sharing why we save and repurpose elements of the past.  People love the stories in the simplest of buildings.  They enrich our experiences, which people crave today more than things.

Stephanie referenced the virtual reality interpretations of historic sites, and I would simply add that augmented reality is already a staple of museums and public history today, in 2018.  The next generation of tourists will expect AR at every heritage site.  Full stop.

I blogged about this moment almost two years ago here.  

Scale

Scale.  We complained at Harvard Business School this summer that every case study was about scaling.  But yes, scaling is growth and that is the pattern of political economy and indeed civilization.  So too in preservation we need to scale beyond the regulated landmark by incorporating heritage – in some form – into every aspect of building and planning.  We are doing it here in San Antonio, from our neighborhood workshops that invite ALL communities regardless of designation to the city’s recent efforts to improve infill zoning.

Stephanie specifically referenced the rehabilitation of Cooper-Molera Adobe, the National Trust site in Monterey which I was involved with and saw in all of its free-entry glory last Saturday.  It is like the Gaylord Building now – a restaurant, bakery and event space pay for the lively restored and crisply interpreted historic house.  Nice job!

The challenge of bringing the heritage conservation message to scale is implicit in the initiatives described above – including all older neighborhoods regardless of their architectural integrity or consistency; reaching out to include diverse voices from history; understanding heritage as a part and parcel of EVERY planning and zoning decision.

The challenge for groups like the National Trust or San Antonio Conservation Society is how do you transmit scale into your organization?  Can you grow membership in an era of declining membership?  Can you create micro-members who join for a singular moment and cause?  Can you re-tool surveys to fully incorporate diverse and intangible histories?

Living Heritage

This was not one of the categories in Stephanie’s speech, but it was a frequent topic of educational sessions, since San Francisco is leading the way in dealing with Living Heritage through its thematic context studies, Legacy Business Program, and cultural place initiatives.

Japantown, San Francisco

These initiatives explode the traditional bounds of architecturally-based heritage conservation by focusing on intangible heritage and community values that are embodied in PLACE but not ARCHITECTURE.  Some of these sessions were TrustLive follow-ups to the TrustLive presentation at our September Living Heritage Symposium in San Antonio, featuring my friend Theresa Pasqual.  I blogged about our 2017 symposium here.

Climate Change.

Three and a half years ago I attended the Pocantico Conference on Climate change and heritage.  With so many coastal cities threatened by rising sea levels, climate change remains a central concern in the field of heritage conservation.

Preservation is always triage – which are the most important places to save, and which must be let go due to limited resources or political capital?  Climate change accelerates these hard choices.  I am reminded of Valmeyer, Illinois, the little town that moved – in its entirety – up to the bluffs following the devastating Mississippi River flood of 1993, or the National Historic Landmarks on the east coast that have been moved inland as storms worsen.

Like Lucy the Margate elephant.

Joy.

This was a nice touch on Stephanie’s part.  Spread Joy.  The joy of heritage, a work that supports the brain and enlivens the body through its haptic interaction with a nurturing environment, an environment rich in stories and social interaction.

We know about this in San Antonio, where 12,000 volunteers entertain 85,000 attendees each year in support of preservation.  A Night In Old San Antonio® will be here April 23-26, 2019!

 

 

 

 

Continue Reading

A New LEED for Preservation?

December 6, 2011 Interpretation, Sustainability Comments (0) 1626

Shedd Park fieldhouse, William Drummond

Four years ago the National Trust for Historic Preservation jumped firmly into the sustainability fray with then-President Dick Moe’s speech at the National Building Museum. (Here is my blog from that time.)

The Trust will continue its leadership in this arena next month under Stephanie Meeks when it reveals the Life Cycle Analysis of historic buildings undertaken by the Preservation Green Lab in Seattle. This provides a perfect complement to the Life Cycle Analysis of new buildings recently undertaken by the American Institute of Architects, and one of my own initiatives of late is to try to bring the AIA and National Trust together on these complementary initiatives.

Life cycle analysis takes us into REAL sustainability because it asks the straightforward question: how long does an investment in a building last? My classic replacement window conundrum is a good example. If a restored wood window costs 3 times as much as a cheap plastic replacement window but last 5 times as long, it is cheaper over the life cycle of the building.
Continue Reading

Continue Reading

Lessons from Buffalo

October 30, 2011 Sustainability Comments (1) 1376

Prudential/Guaranty Building, Buffalo

Last week the National Preservation Conference in Buffalo surpassed attendance records with over 2,600 attendees, and the host city really won the hearts and minds of the preservation population. The Mayor showed up at several events and the local paper had an article EVERY DAY about the preservation conference. People were so amazingly nice and welcoming (you can see Canada from there, so maybe the nice rubs off). Not too mention the fact that Buffalo is an architectural treat, from really great works by H.H. Richardson to Louis Sullivan’s most exuberant skyscraper and the fantastic Darwin Martin House by Frank Lloyd Wright. Continue Reading

Continue Reading

Conserving Buildings and Preservation Laws

September 19, 2011 Chicago Buildings, Economics, Historic Districts Comments (2) 1328

Almost a year ago in Austin, new National Trust President Stephanie Meeks outlined her plan for the Trust going forward, which I reviewed here. In that speech, she said preservationists need to become more visible beyond those who just say “No!” Continue Reading

Continue Reading

The Changing Future of Preservation

May 17, 2011 Sustainability, Technology Comments (4) 1831

Within the last week I have been involved in strategic planning exercises as a Trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Board of the Landmarks Illinois, and besides being reminded of the facilitation and SWOT analysis I first experienced 26 years ago in a Joliet hotel (yes, that sounds odd, but trust me, it isn’t) I was also struck by some of the challenges facing both non-profit membership organizations and the heritage conservation/historic preservation field as a whole.

One of those challenges is in the realm of membership. Membership has dropped at both organizations, and it has aged. It seems the 19th and 20th century pattern of the membership organization is being either eclipsed or remodeled. There was a lot of talk in both board retreats about reaching out to younger generations and wondering whether younger generations will join as members or simply be affiliated and affinitized (not a word) via social media and social networks, depriving the old membership organizations of a fundamental pillar of their existence. Continue Reading

Continue Reading

The Next American City: A Response

November 29, 2010 Economics, History, Sustainability, Vision and Style Comments (5) 1622

By Vince Michael and Anthea Hartig

We regrettably missed Charles Buki’s Next American City speech at the National Preservation Conference in Austin, but studied it and it is a provocative scorcher, as the self-described “community developer” no doubt intended (see for yourself at www.czb.org and http://www.czb.org/blog/2010/10/comments-at-the-national-trust-for-historic-preservation/). Buki congenially opens with his denouncing of the label preservationist, but goes on to share his valuable critique of our built environment – and of preservation’s seeming lack of care about community and over-privileging of architecture and its rehabilitation. We here writing don’t have the luxury of eschewing the preservationist label, although we are both active in the discursive movement afoot to change that label (see Forum Journal, Spring 2010, focused on “What’s Next for Historic Preservation,” in particular Donovan Rypkema’s headlining article, Michael’s and Muniz/Hartig’s pieces therein and the follow-up Forum On-Line discussion with Rypkema and Vince Michael.

Buki’s overall critique of our social built environment finds it Koyaanisqatsi-esque—an out of balance set of places in which interdependencies and interconnections have been lost. He also argued convincingly that distinctions between city and suburb are artificial and not helpful, especially in the wake of our efforts to rebuild such places through preservation, new urbanism, or even “old” urbanism, about which we couldn’t agree more, but for reasons different than his. Here goes. Continue Reading

Continue Reading

National Preservation Conference Austin

November 9, 2010 Blog, Sustainability, Texas Comments (4) 1553

6th Street, Austin

Two weeks ago the National Preservation Conference began in Austin, Texas and I participated in many ways: as a presenter in an Education Session, as a participant on tours, in sessions, as a member of the National Council for Preservation Education (and outgoing Chair Emeritus) and of course as a Trustee. It is a very exciting time to be involved in the National Trust, because we have a new leader, Stephanie Meeks, whom we chose as our President this summer. You don’t have to go any farther than her speech at the Opening Plenary session to realize that there are exciting times ahead in the world of cultural heritage preservation. Continue Reading

Continue Reading

New Leadership

June 15, 2010 Sustainability Comments Off on New Leadership 1515

Yesterday we announced the hiring of Stephanie Meeks as the eighth President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Meeks spent many years at the Nature Conservancy, eventually becoming CEO of that not-for-profit, developing formidable chops in advocacy, management, public relations and fundraising. We are genuinely excited to have a leader of this caliber and pedigree.

I think Meeks’ experience in land conservation will serve her extremely well in the arena of heritage conservation. Over the last 18 years Dick Moe has brought the National Trust into the 21st century, leading the group into the fight against sprawl, pushing beyond the four walls of stuffy house museums and antiquarian peccadillos into the streets where people lived and played. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is about saving the places that matter to people; about saving community; about planning for the future, not the past. Continue Reading

Continue Reading