Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-1-2018
Capstone Advisor
Carl Schramm
Capstone Major
Architecture
Capstone College
Architecture
Audio/Visual Component
no
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
yes
Honors Categories
Creative
Subject Categories
Architecture | Historic Preservation and Conservation
Abstract
Architects are redefining how preservation can act in contemporary culture. Traditionally, preservation has been used to isolate and protect; freezing a building in its decayed state or in its original inception. Typically, preservation is only applied to culturally significant buildings. Obsolete typologies often do not fall under this category; therefore, they are destroyed to make way for the next best innovation. As such, innovation has been viewed as separate from history. Contemporary societal issues, such as climate change, drive us to reconsider this separation and embrace architectural methodologies that value cultural heritage. This thesis aims to use contemporary ideas of preservation in the transition of post-industrial buildings by accounting for the potential loss of cultural heritage. Architectural methodologies of preservation and redevelopment must change in order to consider not just the ‘hard’ conditions of a building as an object of preservation, but also accounting for the ‘soft’ conditions of its cultural heritage; to understand how culture is embodied in the built environment. Doing so allows any intervention to act along various scales and have a more fluid relationship with the cultural landscape of a given site. The processes involved must work through all modes of preservation practices and focus on contextualizing the intervention. This project will preserve the cultural heritage of Red Hook, Brooklyn by giving the neighborhood a symbol of its industrial heritage. This symbol will be transformed to address the contemporary needs of the neighborhood and thus, create ways for it to become resilient. As a manual of Contemporary Preservation, this project addresses how contemporary societal needs are changing and how design through preservation can provide a necessary safe haven that addresses both societal issues and the maintenance of cultural heritage.
Recommended Citation
Johnson, Elizabeth, "Contemporary Preservation" (2018). Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All. 1150.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/1150
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
