As our energy reserves are depleting, so are our history’s. In the last century, preservation has been eclipsed by a protective conservatism that, at its most perverse, no longer serves the authenticity of history but rather brokers claims to it.  The fabricated modern reconstruction of Dresden city centre now wields its UNESCO World Heritage status against any authentic modern construction in its vicinity.  Considered antithetical to its mandate, contemporary architecture is excluded from preservation’s domain. In kind, modern architectural discourse and practice have returned the snub.  Ironically, the resulting confusion has created an insatiable appetite and production of the pseudo-historical – the pathological displacement of the modern architect’s suppressed desire? or the manifest form of the preservationist’s blind assault on authenticity? The subject of the research work conducted at GSD in the past year was to interrogate this relationship and suggest that within the authentic process of modern architectural production, the act and understanding of preservation is acutely integral. 

Margaret Arbanas is currently conducting research thesis on preservation at Harvard University Graduate School of Design with prof. Rem Koolhaas. She joined OMA in 2004. For AMO – OMA’s research branch - she has been involved in the creation and production of the exhibition ‘The Image of Europe” that provides a history of European political representation, diagrams Europe’s current political structure, and speculates on its possible futures. She has also contributed to ‘Content’ publication and exhibition, Shanghai Expo Study, Beijing Preservation Study, development strategy for a prominent hedge fund. For OMA she worked on 111 First Street in Jersey City, Torre Bicentenario in Mexico City and is currently leading the design for CAA Screening Room in New York City.

ON RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: TOOLS AND TACTICS

BROWN BAG LECTURE SERIES

organized by Prof. Aziza Chaouni with the support of Dean George Baird