The Green Future of Preservation
Today's University Students See the Connection Between Green and History.
By Tovah Pentelovitch | Online Only | Sept. 21, 2007
The Portland Armory, the first historic building to earn platinum certification under LEED
Credit: Cascadiagbc.org
Walk into any super-mart today, and you'll find a "green" option for every item on your list, from energy-efficient light bulbs to seeded stationary to Low-E windows. Green is on everyone's mind these days. As green building and historic preservation overlap, university students across the country are forging new majors that reflect the times, which could mean revolutionary changes for both fields.
"The first day of class, out of the 11 people who introduced themselves, I think five people identified sustainability as a reason why they chose to go into historic preservation," says Jennifer Flathman, who is pursuing her master's degree in historic preservation at the University of Oregon in Portland.
"Students, because of their age and generation, are very much in tune with these issues [the connection between green building and preservation]," says Ken Guzowski, former professor of historic preservation at the University of Oregon and the current senior planner for the city of Eugene.
According to the 2007 Princeton Review Guide to College Majors, less than four percent of American universities offer courses, undergraduate or graduate, in historic preservation. The U.S. News & World Report 2007 Ultimate College Guide lists just nine universities with historic-preservation programs and 28 universities with environmental design programs. Only one university, Rhode Island's Roger Williams, has a joint environmental-and-historic-preservation program.
Despite the lack of schools that offer courses in both the environment and preservation, there are students out there who are seeking out the two.
"There is absolutely discussion among my peers about the connection between green building and preservation," says Kathleen Mertz, also a graduate student of historic preservation at Oregon. "We have a really diverse class and a really diverse field of interest within preservation, but when it comes to sustainability we are all like, 'Why are people missing the connection?' It just seems so obvious to us."
Students of historic preservation today aren't necessarily looking to practice preservation in the same way as their predecessors.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington, D.C., a green rehab.
Credit: www.greenoptions.com
"All of the people in my program are cutting-edge, smart people," says Mertz' classmate, Andrea Blaser. "Most of us didn't get into the program for the old fashioned, this-is-how-we-repair-a-log-cabin' appeal. Most of us got into it for more modern reasons."
Flathman, who works as a cultural-resource specialist at the Seattle-based environmental consulting firm of Entrix, Inc., asserts that once students like her graduate, there is a lot of work for them. "One of the really key skills we learn in school is how to evaluate building materials, which is one of the key pieces of sustainable design and green building."
Blaser, who received a minor in preservation at Oregon before going on to get her master's degree, says, "Historic preservation would draw in a lot more undergrads if we had a more environmental- or sustainability-focused approach. A lot of undergrads are scared away from the program because they think it will be very technical—how to preserve buildings with a hammer and nail—but they are more interested in the theory."
Flathman says this generation may be able to change the field. "Green builders and preservationists are both talking amongst themselves a lot, but not necessarily talking to each other at the right time. If students can take classes in both preservation and planning, they can figure out how to make green goals fit into preservation goals and vice versa; they can be more prepared for working outside of school, where they can prevent things from happening, like the passing of laws that work against each other."
Perhaps part of the problem in combining the two fields at a university level is that few professors specialize in the overlap. Blaser mentioned that when she came up with her thesis subject and took it to her professors for help, "a lot of the faculty didn't know where to direct me because their focus was either in preservation or environment, not both."
This is perhaps a trend that is found at many schools that have either preservation or green programs—while the intersection is often discussed in classes, there are not always classes that target it.
At the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment, "there are students learning about green building and site design and at the same time they learn that preservation is intimately linked with sustainability practices," says Robert Grese, associate professor of landscape architecture.
As architect and preservationist Carl Elefante writes in The Greenest Building Is the One That is Already Built, "We cannot build our way to sustainability ... we must conserve our way to it. We may also need to accept that preservation will transform as well."
It's a concept that students like Flathman, Blaser, and Mertz are catching onto. "The future for historic preservation is in attaching it to the sustainable-development movement," Blaser says. "We are a very small program, and hardly anyone at this school even knows we are here. I think good things are happening, but we need to get into the mainstream."
For more photos, stories, and tips, subscribe to the print edition of Preservation magazine.
Subscribe to the Today's News RSS feed
Comments
Submitted by Boomer Preservationist at: February 17, 2009
These are the same reasons many of us became historic preservation professionals in the 1970s, when the field began to burgeon. For the past 30+ years we've saying that historic preservation conserves energy and just makes good sense. In fact, in the early 1980s, the National Trust was promoting conservation -- before the buzzwords "green" or "sustainability" became popular. One of the Trust's greatest posters from 1980 has been resurrected once again, the gas-can building, with the motto "Reusing America's Energy." We had multidisciplinary and inter-discplinary graduate school courses and collaborations in the 1970s. At the time, it was a necessity to involve many disciplines (history, construction, economics, geology, law, planning, natural resources, etc.) to forge the now-recognized field of historic preservation. I'm thrilled that this generation of college students has rediscovered the integral role historic preservation plays in "sustainability." It's encouraging that todya's youth are so willing to carry torch we older preservationists have been carrying for 30+ years, having gladly accepted that responsibility from our elders. Continue the good work, but remember that historic preservation being "green" is a well-established goal and isn't new, just revitalized.