Design
Preservation is about design
Artspace Buffalo Lofts
Credit: Artspace/Lukia Costello
The qualities of design represented in historic structures, landscapes, and interiors are important to preserve. Historic design teaches us about standards of beauty, innovation, and workmanship through time. It also inspires new artistry. Preserving historic design means capturing and striving to understand its full range - folk traditions, historic engineering and industrial design, more recent stylistic expressions, and high style classics. The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Northeast Office works with communities to preserve and understand historic design in a number of ways.
Modernism + the Recent Past
The future of Bell Labs, an Eero Saarinen-designed corporate structure in Holmdel, NY, is uncertain.
Credit: Ezra Stoller
The National Trust for Historic Preservation recognizes the importance and significance of cultural resources of the post-war and modern era, and aims to enhance the public’s appreciation for and understanding of mid-20th Century architecture. The National Trust hopes to unite emerging popular interest in preserving the recent past with proper preservation practices through the promotion of continued use and sensitive rehabilitation of these structures.
Learn about the Modernism + the Recent Past Initiative
Defining and preserving visual character
Philip Johnson's Glass House, New Canaan, CT
What Style Is It? A Guide to American Architecture is available through www.PreservationBooks.org. This is an easy-to-use guide to identifying American Architecture, with more than 200 descriptive photographs and illustrations.
"Walk Through: Learn How to Identify the Visual Character of a Historic Building" This interactive feature of the National Park Service's website offers the basics of how to identify the character-defining features of historic buildings.
National Park Service Preservation Brief #17, "Architectural Character: Identifying the Visual Aspects of Historic Buildings as an Aid to Preserving Their Character," by Lee H. Nelson.
Communities seeking to ensure appropriate design of new stores, sensitive to historic character, could benefit from the tipsheet Compatible Design for Chain Drugstores.
Don't forget to check out the Teardowns Resource Guide, on the need for appropriate scale and design in older and historic neighborhoods.
