Agenda at a Glance

A new frontier is before us, where the fields of preservation, architecture, urban design, and planning are intersecting directly with the growing pressures and challenges of a changing climate, and its impacts on society. This emerging reality requires a shift in how professionals practice. Whereas sustainable design efforts over the past few decades have made headway in ‘mitigating’ overall carbon footprint counts, nonetheless, certain degrees of climate-induced changes, such as sea level rise, have occurred, and will increase in the unforeseeable future. As a result, this ever more evident dynamic requires coupling new ‘adaptation’ strategies with ongoing sustainable design practices; in this manner, addressing shifting paradigms, in meaningful ways.
Resilient design explicitly attends to how a system’s components, be they architectural, structural, urban or other, have “the ability to remain or perform within defined and recognizable limits, despite the impact of disturbances” (Hollings, 1973). Existing and upcoming professionals, including preservationists, need to be well versed in the evolving tools and expertise needed to tackle climate-induced pressures on built, natural, social, and economic systems, for a broad-based community benefit.
Through a variety of lenses, this session will specifically explore the intersection between historic preservation and resilient design, and how at present to address building and curatorial challenges- from the macro to the micro scales. At the heart of this session, will be explorations into the adaption of existing preservation methods, the creation of educational strategies, as well as the fomenting of collaborations, cultivation of non-traditional preservation partners, the learning from heritage sites-near and far, the role of economic factors, and materials and methods of construction.

This session aims to share 4 innovative and alternative experiences in heritage conservation in the Americas, offering the possibility of knowing cases of management of unused heritage properties, proposals for conservation from the ethnographic and participatory point of view, the re-functionalization as alternative for the conservation of heritage architecture and cases of improvement of energy behavior in response to climate change.

The impact of historic preservation reaches far beyond the aesthetic and architectural effects of rehabilitation and restoration. This session considers the ramifications of historic preservation with regard to gentrification, economics, universal accessibility standards, and even mental and physical well-being. Come hear some thoughtful and provocative opinions on issues you may never have thought of, and weigh in on them yourselves in the Q and A period following the presentations.

Located on the shore of Biscayne Bay just south of downtown, the Miami Marine Stadium is recognized as an architectural icon for its striking modernist design that includes a cantilevered roof of lightweight, cast-in-place reinforced concrete. Designed by Cuban-born architect Hilario Candela of Pancoast, Ferendino, Grafton, Skeels & Burnham Consulting Architects (PFGSB), with structural engineers Dignum Associates Consulting Engineers (DACE), and constructed in 1963, the stadium was the world’s first powerboat racing venue and also a popular site for concerts. In 1992, the stadium was closed after Hurricane Andrew struck the region. It has remained unoccupied since then, becoming a haven for graffiti artists. In 2004 the City of Miami secured funding through municipal bonds to save the facility, and in 2014 the building was awarded a Getty Foundation Keeping it Modern grant to begin exploring the technical methodologies for conservation. Members of the project team for the current rehabilitation project, begun in 2015, will discuss the design, history, technology, and the planned rehabilitation and conservation of this unique modern structure. The session will begin with an introduction to the stadium and efforts to save it, following by an interview with original designer Hilario Candela by conservator and session moderator Rosa Lowinger. Richard J. Heisenbottle will present the program and design for the rehabilitation of the stadium, followed by presentations by Deborah Slaton and Paul Gaudette on preservation considerations and technical issues involved in the investigation and repair/conservation of the stadium’s concrete. The session will conclude with a moderated panel discussion and questions and answers with audience members.

This session looks at some of the challenges of working in parts of the world where access is difficult and the conservators need to creatively find investigation and repair tools appropriate for the regions that they are working in. Moreover they need to address both the tangible and intangible values of their associated work to insure an appropriate conservation that supports and respects the local community. In addition to these challenges presenters share their in depth historic research and scientific analysis of materials with appropriate conservation techniques-materials addressed include clay brick, Himalayan cedar, Pennsylvania and Jamaican stones. Fundamental to the success of their work is an understanding of the authenticity of the materials used.

Modern Urban Plazas, Monuments, and Public Spaces

This plenary session explores the diversity of the modern movement’s relationship with landscape and urbanism. From completed urban examples of modern architecture within traditional environments and unfinished ensembles built with traditional materials, to the next frontier for preservation in outer space, this session will highlight the conservation challenges associated modern era buildings that contribute to complex cultural landscapes.

The session will begin with a presentation by Andrea Griletto about the School of Art in Havana, built following the 1959 revolution, using traditional brick and terra cotta. Conservation efforts, including documentation, a pilot study, and a Keeping it Modern-funded conservation management plan, will be presented to illustrate how the abandoned complex is being addressed.

The next two papers focus on urban examples of modernism in Brazil and Peru. The first, by Professor Carlos Comas, will analyze a series of interventions made to Oscar Niemeyer’s works in Brazil, including the Ouro Preto Grand Hotel, Ibirapuera Park Pavilions, and Museum of Modern Art. Next David Fixler and Rosabella Alvarez-Calderon will present some of the conservation challenges for modern era buildings located within the historic city center of Lima, Peru, a World Heritage Site (WHS). Many of the buildings within the WHS are commercial buildings that have been marginalized and lack guidelines for stewardship. The Atlas Building, completed in 1953, provides a case study for a sensitive rehabilitation strategy that is proposed.

The final paper will take attendees to the next frontier for preservation: outer space. Karen Kincaid Brady, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, will discuss Tranquility Base, the lunar landing site for Apollo 11. This paper explores the challenges and opportunities of treating sites on the moon as a cultural landscape.

Participation in the preservation process is integral to a successfully inclusive practice. The processes by which we pursue public policy changes, urban planning, and design through the eyes of different communities is important to understanding how we approach preserving different parts of our built environment. It is important to reflect on the effects of our practice both positive and negative with regards to social inclusion in order to work towards a resilient and sustainable practice. This session will dive deeper into this conversation through the exploration of social outcomes of adaptive reuse, the inclusivity and exclusivity of public policy and participation, a site-specific case study from Chicago focusing on a complex physical and cultural historic neighborhood, and community-oriented preservation approaches from the Baltics. The combined generalized and geographically focused research will challenge and offer opportunities for growth in our current practice. The session will conclude with a moderated panel discussion and questions and answers with audience members.

Responding urgently to the now-inescapable realities of climate change, international, national, state, and local climate action is evolving rapidly. The building sector is central to both the causes of climate change and solutions for quickly eliminating greenhouse gas emissions. Existing and historic buildings are, finally, getting their due. Like the energy crisis of the 1970's, today's policymakers are awakening to conservation-first principles.
The Zero Net Carbon Collaborative (ZNCC) was launched at APT Ottawa 2017, bringing together experts on climate action and historic and existing building conservation, renewal, and transformation. This session presents the perspectives of both long-recognized and emerging leaders in sustainable preservation and will address both the broad theories and nitty-gritty practices that are making the preservation and renovation of existing and historic buildings an essential climate action strategy.

A new frontier is before us, where the fields of preservation, architecture, urban design, and planning are intersecting directly with the growing pressures and challenges of a changing climate, and its impacts on society. This emerging reality requires a shift in how professionals practice. Whereas sustainable design efforts over the past few decades have made headway in ‘mitigating’ overall carbon footprint counts, nonetheless, certain degrees of climate-induced changes, such as sea level rise, have occurred, and will increase in the unforeseeable future. As a result, this ever more evident dynamic requires coupling new ‘adaptation’ strategies with ongoing sustainable design practices; in this manner, addressing shifting paradigms, in meaningful ways.
Resilient design explicitly attends to how a system’s components, be they architectural, structural, urban or other, have “the ability to remain or perform within defined and recognizable limits, despite the impact of disturbances” (Hollings, 1973). Existing and upcoming professionals, including preservationists, need to be well versed in the evolving tools and expertise needed to tackle climate-induced pressures on built, natural, social, and economic systems, for a broad-based community benefit.
Through a variety of lenses, this session will specifically explore the intersection between historic preservation and resilient design, and how at present to address building and curatorial challenges- from the macro to the micro scales. At the heart of this session, will be explorations into the adaption of existing preservation methods, the creation of educational strategies, as well as the fomenting of collaborations, cultivation of non-traditional preservation partners, the learning from heritage sites-near and far, the role of economic factors, and materials and methods of construction.

This session will provide examples on how to expand the perception and interpretation of buildings and structures beyond architectural and physical significance, engaging with stakeholders outside the official regulatory frameworks and professional expert opinions. In many underserved or underrepresented communities, evaluating significance in the traditional way, though the lens of visual clues, is an imperfect pathway towards understanding the significance of their built environment. Their stories and significance are not necessarily anchored in physicality, a challenge in the existing framework of historic preservation practices. This session underscores the need for a broader “toolbox” in heritage preservation to match a more inclusive definition of what is worthy of preservation. Through case studies over three continents and a diverse cross-section of social, cultural and geographical backgrounds, this session demonstrates the importance of actively engaging other perspectives and actors to go beyond physical integrity as the primary determinant of significance.

This session will examine the types of material deterioration and decay mechanisms associated with vernacular architecture and places in the Americas. Papers will address the contamination of historic buildings due to crude oil spills in the United States, the impact of a seismic event on rural heritage in Chile and the challenge of protecting Brazilian vernacular earthen architecture against fire. We will include discussions of the types of conservation strategies utilized to address such material deterioration. In each case study, we will explore the need to define specific protocols for preparedness before the events and to develop professional capacities for post-event need assessments. A wide range of conservation techniques aimed at preserving the materiality of the built heritage will be presented.
As the use of new information and communication technologies is transforming the Historic preservation practices, the session will also examine the increasing role of Digital Photogrammetry in the documentation process for Heritage Preservation.
Beyond the tangible values of the fabric, the session will also discuss various techniques available to improve community participation and enhance the social values of the built heritage.

Learning objectives:
1. Understand the nature of events causing material deterioration and decay mechanisms associated with vernacular architecture and places in the Americas
2. Learn about protocols for preparedness and various techniques available for the conservation of the built heritage.
3. Explore various techniques available to improve community participation and enhance the social values of the built heritage.
4. Examine the increasing role of Digital Photogrammetry in the documentation process for Heritage Preservation

The modern movement was ubiquitous and vast in its scope and variety. This session brings together a group of presentations on a range of topics taken from throughout the Americas that exemplify the breadth and diversity of the kinds of issues that affect the large number of durable, serviceable buildings of varying degrees of significance that merit proper preservation treatment even if they do not necessarily rise to the level of the icons.

The first talk by Ben Baaske is about the digital documentation of the mid-century Teague Building on the campus of Texas A&M University, an effort that brings needed attention to an overlooked structure while providing a technical baseline for future conservation and rehabilitation efforts. The second presentation, given by Pablo Guiraldes and M. Gabriella Dines, discusses efforts to plan for the documentation, preservation and rehabilitation of an important early modern structure in Buenos Aires, the 1939 Casa de Estudios des Artistas by Antonio Bonet, particularly the signature early curtain wall envelope and the ground floor retail space.

The last two papers focus respectively on repair solutions for two types of building envelope issues that together bracket two poles of common 20th century building technology. The first, presented by Vishal Joshi and Pamela Jerome, is an in-depth discussion of the process undertaken to repair the brick masonry facade of Ely Jacques Kahn's Bricken Casino building in New York City - a distinguished building that is also a great example of the typical masonry construction of the 1920s. This work involved extensive research and work with manufacturers to ensure accurate and technically sound material replacement, and creative scheduling to be able to effectively re-skin much of the building while occupied. The final paper, given by Vanessa Sing and Corey Glaser, is a more broad ranging discussion of how to apply preservation technology to the myriad problems arising from the use EIFS a a cladding system - one of the most common and problematic exterior wall systems in use from the 1970 right up to the present day.

The session will include a period of discussion following the papers. Taken together, these presentations are vignettes into four distinct areas of practice that are important to the continuing development of our discipline as we address the vast heritage of the 20th and early 21st century.

The discipline of built heritage conservation has traditionally focused on the development and implementation of appropriate intervention approaches to safeguard cultural properties for future generations. This has been mostly attained by encouraging the revival of traditional construction techniques, the careful implementation of new technologies and the development of best practices to guide professional practices. However, the emphasis on the technological and material aspects of conservation have often failed to evaluate the social impact of well-intended preservation actions, and to underscore the underlying social forces that trigger the need to implement built heritage interventions. This paper section will explore how contemporary dialogues on social issues related to diversity and inclusivity, population change and gentrification are reshaping heritage conservation practices in Miami and throughout the Caribbean. Subjects to be explored include engagement of underrepresented communities to determine preservation goals to guide future interventions on a significant but undervalued historic property on a hurricane-battered Caribbean island; unconventional ways to foment the development of traditional trade skills among non-professional tradesmen; examining the role of historic preservation as a potential disaster-recovery tool that can help to redefine the relationship between dis-empowered communities and a built environment that represents its colonial past and the drawbacks of mass tourism; and recognizing the contribution of underrepresented minorities in the history and development of Modern design solutions to the region’s climate.

Through a variety of lenses, this session will specifically explore the intersection between historic preservation and resilient design, and how at present to address building and curatorial challenges- from the macro to the micro scales. At the heart of this session, will be explorations into the adaption of existing preservation methods, the creation of educational strategies, as well as the fomenting of collaborations, cultivation of non-traditional preservation partners, the learning from heritage sites-near and far, the role of economic factors, and materials and methods of construction.

Sustainable development in the Americas— deciding and meeting different regional needs by using the resources it already has, so as not to compromise the resources of future generations—has important effects on future environmental, economic, and social well-being. Practitioners recognize the necessity to balance and preserve historic places and ancient living sites, while recognizing relationships between conservation and sustainability.
Heritage conservation’s role in meeting the aims of environmental sustainability is critical. However, there remain irreconcilable differences between environmental goals and heritage conservation. This track session will focus on building resiliency in pre-colonial, maritime and post-colonial heritage sites that are all affected by climate change. The track session will feature case studies that demonstrate how new rehabilitation programs including retrofits to improve energy efficiency using sensitive improvements without significant alternations and loss of fabric. Participants will demonstrate how maintaining the integrity of sites while increasing their resiliency is just one of many challenges in dealing with historic structures.

Too often, buildings are demolished in the name of progress and efficiency. Unfortunately, significant artworks housed within and on those buildings are lost in the process. Three of the four presentations in this session focus on saving, conserving, and preserving murals and mosaics dating from post-World War II. The first presentation by Kelly Ciociola and Christina Varvi will use case studies to demonstrate successful solutions for the dismantling, removal, and relocation of mid-century modern murals from buildings slated for demolition. John Fidler will present his work on the preservation and conservation of the stone and gold-glass mosaic facades of the Saban Building at the Academy of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, which cost half the proposed budget for demolition and recladding. The third presentation by Viviana Dominguez and Hilda Abreu Ultermohlen will focus on the salvage, reinstallation, and conservation of the 1974 fresco, “Haitian Massacre, 1937” by Dominican artists Jose Ramirez Conde and Roberto Flores.

The fourth presentation by Justin Lynch is a study on predicting the performance and vulnerability of two types of brick typical to New Orleans.

Four case studies explore the benefits and issues with preservation and gentrification, looking for evidence of cultural heritage in the built environment, and the policies that best lead to success. Join us for an in-depth look at how professionals in preservation best engage cultural heritage in various communities around the US.