Archive note: I conducted this interview for the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training’s Preservation Technology Podcast. It was originally published by NCPTT/National Park Service on August 16, 2010. I’m preserving a record of the conversation here as part of my podcast and interview archive. The original NCPTT/NPS source remains the authoritative publication.
From the transcript
The transcript shows the discussion repeatedly moving from buildings to systems and communication. I ask why preservation has often been reactive, what it might learn from the environmental movement, how ordinary people were beginning to organize online, and why the story and context of a building matter as much as the object itself. The larger question is how a field changes from defending individual resources to shaping a broader public understanding of reuse and sustainability.
In this conversation
- Green restoration, historic preservation, and the emerging sustainability movement
- Why reusing and maintaining existing buildings can be an environmental strategy as well as a preservation strategy
- Energy performance, embodied resources, building stewardship, and the environmental value of older buildings
- The argument behind Green Restorations and the need to connect preservation practice with sustainability
- Why historic preservation has often organized reactively when a building is already threatened
- What preservation advocates could learn from the environmental movement’s public communication and coalition building
- Blogs, social media, and online communities as tools for changing how people talk about preservation
- The importance of story, place, context, and public meaning alongside the technical performance of buildings
Aaron Lubeck discusses the argument behind Green Restorations: that historic preservation and sustainability should be understood as connected rather than competing concerns. The conversation ranges from building stewardship and homeowner practice to public communication, social media, and the preservation movement’s tendency to organize only when something is already threatened.
Series: Preservation Technology Podcast
Episode: 024
Guest: Aaron Lubeck
Interviewer: Jeff Guin
Original publisher: National Center for Preservation Technology and Training / National Park Service
Theme: Sustainability & Adaptive Reuse
Listen, read the transcript, and view the original episode at the National Park Service.
Preservation note: A preservation copy of the original MP3 is retained in the Voices of the Past archive.