NCPTT’s Architecture & Engineering program encourages research and partnerships with organizations and institutions working to advance preservation technology for buildings and other structures.
Projects
Professional Development Program for Engineers in Historic Preservation
NCPTT continues working to improve preservation training opportunities for engineers. This year’s training will focus on training the trainers, who then will be able to teach the fundamentals of preservation engineering. This will allow A&E to reach a larger audience in a wider variety of training settings.
AIA Cooperative Agreement
As part of our cooperative agreement with the AIA/HRC, NCPTT and partners are holding a student design competition. This competition invites architecture students to imagine the transformation of the 1942 Library and Museum of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, a National Landmark Site, to better accommodate the expanding collections and growing numbers of visitors. Students are challenged to discover how the preservation of extraordinary buildings can provoke a rethinking of current conventions about design.
The aim is to envision a new type of library and museum that would be unimaginable without the existing structures. Additional partners include the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture and DOCOMOMO (Documentation and Conservation of buildings, sites and neighborhoods of the Modern Movement).
Louisiana State University Cooperative Agreement
A&E is continuing to work on a FY 2007 cooperative agreement with the Louisiana State University School of Architecture to develop and test a methodology to use digital geospatial recordation technology to efficiently survey historic buildings and landscapes pre- and post- disaster. Developing such technology will enable planners and others to better assess risk to historic resources, plan effective mitigation strategies and improve disaster response.
While the details of this cooperative agreement are still being fine tuned, A&E will work with Barrett Kennedy of LSU on a related documentation project – documentation of the brick pavers of Front Street. The city of Natchitoches will close Front Street to traffic and let us use one of the city’s platform lifts to get us about 40 feet above the street surface. We will place targets on the brick surface and photograph all of the bricks on Front Street. This is part of the project requirements for the rehabilitation of Front Street. We are exploring the possibility of making a short film of the process.
Lee H. Nelson Hall Landscape Plan
The landscape plans went out for bid on Feb. 26. A pre-bid meeting took take place on March 14, 2007. Bids are due by March 27. Steve Noel of Jeffrey Carbo Landscape Architects & Site Planners in Alexandria, LA, designed the plan.
Natchitoches Architectural Survey/Graduate Assistantships
A&E is overseeing the work of interns J.C. Rivers and Rebecca Zarling, graduate students in the Master of Arts in Heritage Resources program at NSU. Rivers and Zarling are using global positioning technology to collect data related to the development of the City of Natchitoches for the Cane River GIS, a Geographic Information system developed by the Cane River National Heritage Area. A partnership between NSU and the NCPTT created assistantships for Rivers and Zarling to perform the survey work. A&E interns completed their first draft of the Natchitoches Architectural Survey Guide. The guide documents the process of creating the Survey and will be used by future students as they continue the survey.
Sustainable Design
Andrew Moore, a high school student at the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts (LSMSA), continues gathering web resources about sustainable design and smart growth issues related to historic preservation. These resources including websites, PDF documents and PowerPoint presentations are being collected and will be added to the A&E website. Along with Andy Ferrell, Moore has investigated emerging green products, techniques and services, including emerging insulation products and applications. LSMSA students are required to undertake community service hours every semester and NCPTT has benefited greatly by hosting a number of these students.
Consultations
Limewash
Several members of NCPTT staff met with Laura Gates and Eric Ford of Cane River Creole National Park (CARI) to discuss the results of the limewash study and limewash application at the park. After the meeting Sarah Jackson visited the park and applied limewash to test areas of bousillage and discussed possible surfaces to limewash for future field tests.
Friends of Cane River
A&E participated in a meeting of the Friends of Cane River, which is a cooperating partner that supports the Cane River National Heritage Area and the Cane River National Historical Park. This meeting was called to create mission and purpose statements for this fledgling organization.
Brick Consultations
A&E recently visited a number of turn of the century buildings in the City of Grand Cane and the former Ford dealership in Natchitoches to evaluate historic brick walls. We advised the parties about the steps to take to rehabilitate these resources. Unfortunately, the Ford dealership was razed. As a result of frequent requests to evaluate historic masonry wall, A&E is developing a web resource that covers the basics of historic masonry wall and includes links to more in-depth information.
Piece sur Piece Cabin
A&E met with Ray Baker in January to answer questions involved in preserving the historic slave cabin, a rare example of piece sur piece construction, located on the land he is developing south of Natchitoches on Cane River Lake. He is receiving a grant from Cane River Creole National Heritage Area to preserve this important local structure and is interested in preserving this structure appropriately.
Esso Gas Station
A&E met with Joe Lebrun in February in response to his request for information on preserving historic materials at the Esso gas station he purchased on Third Street in Natchitoches. Andrew Ferrell visited the structure with Mr. Lebrun to identify and inspect the deteriorating ceiling and roof materials.
Conferences
Preserve America Summit
In October, Andrew Ferrell attended the Preserve America Summit in New Orleans. Ferrell participated on the “Dealing with the Unexpected” panel. Discussion touched a wide number of topics, but the panel recognized the critical importance of increased documentation of historic resources and recommended developing innovative methodologies to do so efficiently.
International Preservation Trades Workshops
A&E took part in the International Preservation Trades Workshops in New Orleans. Sarah Jackson was asked to demonstrate traditional lime washing and participate in the roundtable discussion on furthering preservation trades training. Jackson was mentioned in the Louisiana SHPO and Preservation Resource Center article on IPTW in the November 2006 issue of Preservation in Print for her demonstration on limewash at the Rockwood House. The Rockwood House, at 506 Flood Street, was one of the IPTW 2006 Demonstration Repair Projects.
Colorado Preservation, Inc.
A&E held the pre-conference workshop Diagnostics and Intervention Strategies at CPI’s annual conference Saving Places 2007: Planning, Growth and Preservation. The workshop was a scaled-down introduction to our past Summer Institute events. Sarah Jackson, Samuel Y. Harris, and Michael C. Henry introduced the participants to the mechanisms that affect brick walls by comparing and contrasting brick deterioration. Using regional case studies, the session looked at the movement of moisture through buildings and ways to estimate and determine moisture within brick.
Other Conferences Attended:
- Eighth Annual Historic Preservation Symposium
- Traditional Building Exhibition and Conference
- Green Preservation Summit
- National Trust for Historic Preservation
Publications
Feature Article for the Louisiana Civil Engineer
A&E is writing the feature article for the May issue of The Louisiana Civil Engineer. This article will discuss the Center’s role in better preparing engineers to work with heritage buildings, engineering issues of historic buildings post-Katrina, and innovative survey work that is currently underway.
APT Journal
The article Durability of Traditional and Modified Limewashes authored by Sarah Jackson, Tye Botting, and Mary Striegel was accepted for publication in the APT Journal.