RESEARCH ARTICLE

Challenging the assumption about a direct relationship between historic preservation and architecture in the United States

  • Jeremy C. Wells
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  • School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, University of Maryland, MD 20742, United States

Received date: 21 Jun 2018

Accepted date: 03 Oct 2018

Published date: 02 Jan 2019

Copyright

2018 2018 Higher Education Press Limited Company. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Abstract

A close relationship is assumed to exist between historic preservation and architectural practice. This study explores the nature of this relationship by using evidence from scholarly literature, the job market, and architectural education. The examined literature contains many examples showing that the architecture field views historic preservation as an external interest. Evidence from the job market indicates that architecture employers are uninterested in historic preservation skills, and historic preservation employers are not looking for architecture skills. Architecture schools and accrediting organizations either disregard historic preservation or minimize its importance. Moreover, historic preservation is more closely related to environmental and behavioral studies than it is to the architectural field. The relationship between architecture and historic preservation is tenuous, strained, and based more on stereotypes than on actual evidence.

Cite this article

Jeremy C. Wells . Challenging the assumption about a direct relationship between historic preservation and architecture in the United States[J]. Frontiers of Architectural Research, 2018 , 7(4) : 455 -464 . DOI: 10.1016/j.foar.2018.10.001

Outlines

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