Recently, Steven Semes, the Academic Director of the Rome Studies Program
of the University of Notre Dame, emailed me his thoughts about our upcoming May 12 Workshop at the AIA Convention in New Orleans. Steven wrote:
Our panel (Steven is a member of a three person panel that will review and discuss the presentations made earlier in the workshop) will applaud the good faith efforts and tremendous energy that have been invested by "Make it Right" and other organizations in the rebuilding efforts, but we will also be looking at the degree to which the designs that have been presented or constructed so far respond to the local building culture and the way of life of the people. We will reiterate the need to adapt local typologies and building cultures to new needs and economies, rather than import forms addressed primarily to an audience of architects, academics, and critics. I do not believe that innovative design and sensitivity to place are mutually exclusive, and we can point to examples elsewhere (Bologna, Charleston, San Francisco) where new housing has been introduced into historic neighborhoods in ways that support and reinforce the pre-existing character. Efforts like those of the Preservation Resource Center, the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, and the new neighborhood proposed by Urban Design Associates for Lafitte/Treme, just to name a few, can serve as models for genuine reconstruction and recovery. One lesson of these examples, and a major theme in our discussion in New Orleans, will be the potential for productive interface between New Urbanism and historic preservation, recognizing also potential areas of divergence. Ideally, these two fields should be partners in the identification and conservation of successful urban environments and extending or making similar kinds of success in infill projects or new neighborhoods elsewhere. This partnership holds the key to promoting the kind of wholeness and continuity in our historic cities that is recognized in the Charter of the New Urbanism and is implicit in most preservation regulations, though not always implemented in practice. The difficulty on the preservation side has been the tendency of some authorities to promote contrasting forms and materials in historic settings as a means of complying with mandates for "differentiation" between new and old fabric. A narrow and extreme application of this requirement will simply destroy the historic character of any preservation area and prevent successful models of architecture and urbanism from being used fruitfully to inform new work. New Orleans, it seems to me, is the largest and most critical laboratory for working out these issues. Calling attention to them in a national forum like the AIA convention is perhaps the most important contribution our panel can make.
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H. Thomas McGrath FAIA
Superintendent
National Park Service
Frederick MD
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