Course Syllabus
OLD BUILDINGS – NEW ENERGY: History and Current Sustainable Practices
Fall 2023 Prof.: Françoise Astorg Bollack Tuesdays 11:00 AM -1:00 PM
SYLLABUSs
“The role of historic preservation in sustainability strategies and reducing carbon emissions is rapidly changing. A growing body of research and the completion of green rehabilitation projects keeps the topic one of expanding interest and lively debate.” [1]
The goal of this seminar is to examine the multifaceted potential of existing historic buildings to serve old uses, or new uses, allowing us to take advantage of their embodied carbon, esthetic and cultural energies. The focus is on the importance of design in the understanding of existing buildings and their environmental wisdom. The focus is also on the exciting design opportunities that come with the re-use, adaptation and transformation of old buildings.
This seminar proposes to inform the students about the history of re-use and building transformation and their formal possibilities, at the same time as introducing them to the practical issues of increasing the environmental performance of historic (in particular Modern) buildings. The seven sessions will combine lectures, conversations and independent work by students.
The position is that the history of architecture is rich with building re-use and transformation, and many buildings that became icons of a new direction in architecture are in fact transformations of older buildings; we need to learn from this practice of re-using, transforming, renewing and adapting our built heritage to a new world view. This is a practice that is alive today; it continues to produce exciting new/old buildings and it has significant positive potential to address our climate emergency.
The position is also that the culture of Historic Preservation has a positive role to play in our climate emergency: historic preservation can offer new solutions by identifying, studying, documenting and valorizing traditional approaches to environmental adaptation – both technical and behavioral – which have been sidelined by the energy-consuming technologies that have impoverished our lives and have become part of the problem. So, we will try to inventory traditional building forms and behavioral modes for lessons and look at recent projects that experiment with the use of traditional procedures.
The seminar will include three invited lecturers to talk about the sustainable features of vernacular design, issues involved in the reglazing of historic modern curtain walls and, more generally, Architecture, Comfort, and the Sufficiency Imperative.
Grading is based on the quality of a student work and the quality of a student participation in all sessions.
[1] Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, “Executive Summary 2011, Sustainability and Historic Preservation”.
OLD BUILDINGS – NEW ENERGY: History and Current Sustainable Practices
Prof.: Françoise Astorg Bollack
Tuesdays 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
COURSE PLAN – FALL 2023
September 5 Introduction – Buildings’ Survival & Transformations History Part 1
Assign semester problem
September 12 Buildings’ Survival & Transformations History Part 2
Breathe Deeply: What Environmental Lessons can we Learn from History and their Applicability to Current Architectural Practices? Review questions about assignment.
September 19 Invited speaker: Cory Rouillard – The Wisdom of Sustainable Features in Vernacular Design
6PM-8PM: Invited speaker Daniel Barber – Architecture, Comfort, and the Sufficiency Imperative – in Avery 412
September 26 Old Buildings - New Forms: New Directions in Architectural Transformations; 20th century architectural Transformations. Assignment “desk crit”
2PM-4PM: Invited Speaker: Angel Ayon: Reglazing Modernism – in Preservation lab
October 3 No class – class re-scheduled to September 26, 2PM-4PM
October 10 Wrap up and final presentations
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Architectural History - Theory
Bollack, Françoise Astorg, Old Buildings – New Forms: New Directions in Architectural Transformations; The Monacelli Press, New York, 2013 (see also bibliography in this book)
Bollack, Françoise Astorg, Material Transfers – Metaphor, Craft and Place in Contemporary Architecture; The Monacelli Press, New York, 2020 (see also bibliography in this book)
Bollack, Françoise Astorg. Old Buildings – New Ideas – A Selective History of Additions, Adaptations, Reuse and Design Inventions, RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects), London, September 2023
Byard, Paul Spencer. The Architecture of Additions, Design and Regulation, W. W. Norton and Co., New York, London, 1998.
Brownell, Blaine, “The Art of Salvage” Architect Magazine, March 26,2021
Elefante, Carl, The greenest Building is . . . . One that is Already Built, Forum Journal, National Trust for Historic Preservation, 2015
https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/the-greenest-buildin-1
Elefante, Carl, “Renovation, Restoration, and Adaptive Re-use” The Understated Value of Existing Buildings”, Architect, January 15, 2020: https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/renovation-restoration-and-adaptive-reuse-the-understated-value-of-existing-buildings_o
Fitch, James Marston, Historic Preservation: Curatorial Management of the Built World, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1990
Fitch, James Marston, American Building: The Forces that Shape it, Moston, MA., Houghton Mifflin Co., 1948
Galiano, Luis Fernandez, Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy; The MIT Press, 2000
Heringer, Anna, “Sustainability is a Synonym for Beauty”, Louisiana Channel.dk, (30 minutes)
Unwin, Simon, Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, Routledge, London, 2010
Scott, Fred, On Altering Architecture, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London & New York, 2008
architecture, environment, history: questions and consequences
https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/doi/full/10.1080/13264826.2018.1482725
Mark Thompson Brandt (2017) Buildings and stories: mindset, climate change and mid-century modern, Journal of Architectural Conservation, 23:1-2, 36-46, DOI: 10.1080/13556207.2017.1327195
Buildings and stories: mindset, climate change and mid-century modern
Environmental Standards – Technical background – Retrofit Case Studies
ASTM C 1155.2013, “Standard Practice for Determining Thermal Resistance of Building Envelope Components from the in-situ Data” American Society for Testing and Material, 2013.
https://www.astm.org/Standards/C1155.htm
ASTM C1046 – 95(2013), “Standard Practice for In-Situ Measurement of Heat Flux and Temperature on Building Envelope Components”. American Society for Testing and Materials, 2013
https://www.astm.org/Standards/C1046.htm
Bowyer, Jim, “Carbon Implications of Construction Materials Selection”, Dovetail Partners, inc., Minneapolis, MN,: https://www.woodworks.org/wp-content/uploads/Bowyer-Carbon.pdf
Campagna, Barbara. “How Changes to LEED will Benefit Existing and Historic Buildings”, Forum Journal, National Trust for Historic Preservation, November 2008.
https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/how-changes-to-leed-will-benefit-ex
Caroon, Jean, Sustainable Preservation: Greening Existing Buildings, John Wiley and Sons, 2010
Grimmer, Anne E, Jo Ellen Hensley, Liz Petrella & Andrey T. Tepper, The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation & Illustrated Guidelines on Sustainability for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings, Washington, D,C., National Trust for Historic Preservation (accessed March 9, 2021)
https://www.nps.gov/tps/standards.htm
https://forum.savingplaces.org/viewdocument/how-changes-to-leed-will-benefit-ex
https://www.nps.gov/tps/sustainability/case-studies.htm#pier-15
https://www.nps.gov/tps/sustainability/case-studies.htm#royal-mills
https://www.nps.gov/tps/sustainability/case-studies.htm#nat-boh
https://www.nps.gov/tps/standards/rehabilitation/guidelines/sustainability.htm
Hensley, Jo Ellen, Aguilar, Antonio, “NPS Preservation Briefs 3: Improving Energy Efficiency in Historic Buildings”
https://www.nps.gov/tps/how-to-preserve/briefs/3-improve-energy-efficiency.htm
Historic Buildings Energy Retrofit Atlas (focused on Europe)
https://www.hiberatlas.com/en/welcome-1.html
Jackson, Mike, “Embodied Energy and Historic Preservation, a Needed Re-Assessment”, APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology, Vol. 36, Nº4, Sustainability and Preservation, 2005, pp.47-52
https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/stable/40003163?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents
LEED Rating System: https://www.usgbc.org/leed
Meany, Terry, Working Windows: A Guide to the Repair and Restoration of Wood Windows, Lyons Press, 1998
Moe, Kiel, “A Material History of Insulation in Modernity” in Insulating Modernism: Isolated and Non Isolated Thermodynamics in Architecture, Birkhäuser, Basel 2014.
Murphy, Michelle, Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty – Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers, Duke University Press, 2006
New York Landmarks Conservancy, Repairing Old and Historic Windows – A Manual for Architects and Homeowners, John Wiley and Sons, Inc, 1992
NYC Energy & Water Performance Map – EUI (Energy Use Intensity)
https://energy.cusp.nyu.edu/#/
Pottgiesser, Uta, Ayon, Angel, Re-Glazing Modernism: Interventions Strategies For 20th Century Icons, Birkhauser, 2019
Rose, William, “Should the Walls of Historic Buildings be Insulated?” APT Bulletin, Journal of Preservation Technology, 2005, 36:4.
Short, C. Alan, The Recovery of Natural Environments in Architecture: Air, Comfort and Climate, Routledge, 2017
Standard Bearers, “Case Study, Astoria Oregon” 2018, https://www.imt.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Astoria_Case_Study_Standard_Bearers_1.pdf
Young, Robert A., Elefante, Carl, (foreword), Stewardship of the Built Environment – Sustainability Preservation and Re-Use, Island Press, 2012
Control (environmental) - Air Conditioning
Banham, Reyner, ’The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment; The University of Chicago Press, 1969; the Architectural Press, London, 1984
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say
Open up that window, let the foul air get away!
Open up that window, let the foul air out!
That’s what I hear him shout
Barber, Daniel A., Modern Architecture and Climate: Design before Air Conditioning, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2020
Barber, Daniel, Lee Stickells, Daniel J. Ryan, et al., Architecture, Environment, History, Questions and Consequences, Published on line 30 Oct., 2018
https://doi-org.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/10.1080/13264826.2018.1482725
Basile, Salvatore, COOL, How Air Conditioning Changed Everything, Fordham University Press, New York, 2014
Chang, Jiat-Hwee, A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience, Abingdon, Oxon, Routledge, 2016 (#32 footnote in Barber’s Architecture, Environment, History - - - : “or some historians like Jiat-Hwee Chang, environmental design is a form of Foucaultian power-knowledge, and the attention often given to the climactic performance of façades masks efforts to govern populations, particularly in colonial and post-colonial contexts”.
Cooper, Gail, Air-Conditioning America – Engineers and the Controlled Environment, 1900-1960, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Wilson, Eric Dean, After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort, Simon & Schuster, 2022
DIGITAL SOURCES
https://ecosistemaurbano.org/english/public-space-for-the-extreme-ventilation/
https://amandasturgeon.com.au/using-biophilic-design-to-heal-body-mind-and-soul/
OLD BUILDINGS – NEW ENERGY Fall 2023
History and Current Practices
Problem #1
Prof: Françoise Astorg Bollack
PURPOSE
This assignment is intended to help you develop a method to evaluate additions to and transformations of old [or simply existing] buildings. Our basic assumption will be that it is possible to add and transform cherished old buildings without destroying their artistic or historic value and that we want to learn how to do so by studying built work.
METHOD
A series of building groups has been assembled to provide an interesting field of questions about the nature of the problem, the architects’ approach, the execution of this approach and the value of the result. Each building in a particular group poses its own questions and each group in turn offers a related set of questions. You should not assume that there is “the right answer” to be discovered, but that there are commonalities and differences between these projects, from which a lot can be learned.
Each student is asked to choose a building for study. Once a building group is formed each student will be responsible for her/his own building and project team members should plan to discuss and debate the commonalities and differences of their buildings.
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE MAKING OF THE WORK
What is the impetus for the addition?
What is being added to?
What is the value of the existing building? And/or of the existing context?
What is the architect’s understanding of his/her mission – what is her/his understanding of the original building’s value?
What is the architect’s approach (the scheme)?
How is the scheme executed (massing, placement, architectural language, materials, colors, texture, composition, references, etc, etc)?
OUR UNDERSTANDING
What is the value of the existing building? And/or of the existing context? What is the context?
What is your context for evaluation?
What is the value of the combined work? Does it add to the value of the existing building? Detract from it?
What is the effect of the intervention on the existing work (whichever way you decide to define the existing work)? As importantly, how would you assess its positive or negative environmental impacts?
FINAL PRODUCT
A photographic essay presented as a PowerPoint addressing the questions above and any other you may see as relevant (unlimited number of pictures and/or sketches) accompanied by a maximum 2 pages (double spaced) written statement stating the basic facts (date and use of original building, square footage if known, name of original building architects and same data for the addition) plus a summary of your description and analysis of the addition. The goal is for you to provide a careful, insightful analysis of the combined work based on your direct experience with the work. Your analysis should also take into account the other building(s) in your particular group and reflect on contrasts or similarities between the group’s buildings.
Your final analysis should also include a thumbnail ideogram of the project capturing the basic idea of the scheme.
PRESENTATION REQUIREMENTS
Provide a digital copy of your photo essay and paper to the TA
Each building group team will (1) present their individual building and then (2) present their observations about the group itself (minority reports are allowed).
DUE DATE: October 10, 2023
Course Summary:
| Date | Details | Due |
|---|---|---|