What are the values inherent in a property, site, or district that must be understood to craft conservation policy and interventions that will reveal, complement, sustain, and enhance the original work while appropriately addressing socio-cultural, aesthetic, and technical integrity? This course will introduce students to the functional, technical, regulatory, and environmental principles of working with existing buildings and districts to ensure their continued viability.

Globally, over 40% of construction activity is devoted to work on existing structures — making the sustainability mantra “the greenest building is the one already built” increasingly relevant as we seek to minimize the impact of construction on the environment. Repair and renewal are therefore fundamental components of contemporary practice increasingly requiring facility in techniques of conservation planning and execution, rehabilitation and adaptive reuse. Increasingly new frontiers in rehabilitation and adaptation — such as the conversion of mid-century office towers to housing in major cities are expanding and enriching the opportunities to minimize demolition and “work with what we have.”

Designed to ground the participant in the methodologies of conservation and renewal and to introduce the tools necessary to successfully approach working with existing buildings in established precincts, the course will include lectures by the instructor and guest experts, and in-class discussions from readings. While interventions must include sound technical solutions, any modification from conservation to renovation and additions must address the full complement of values necessary to enable an economically viable, socio-culturally relevant rehabilitation.

We will examine a range of conservation and intervention case studies at the building and urban scale for both traditional and modern structures and sites — including the recent renovations to Gund Hall. There will be two local field trips as presently planned. We will look critically at how the international Charters and Standards employed in working with historic fabric impact our approach to modifications to any existing building or site from a technical, design, and regulatory standpoint, and will particularly address the question as to how the apparatus of conservation is changing to best serve both underrepresented constituencies and the legacy of modernism and the recent past.

This is a lecture course with a class discussion component. Appropriate provision will be made to accommodate hybrid learning through synchronous and asynchronous content as required should students have to participate remotely. Specific strategies will be outlined in the Syllabus. Evaluation will be based upon participation in readings and themed discussion, submission of a short analytical mid-term paper, and a choice of final project of the student’s choosing: either 1., an assessment and intervention design exercise on an undeveloped modest property, or 2., an analytical case study of the rehabilitation and transformation of a significant property.

The course is open to all interested GSD students.