Preserving the past to build a better future

For this week’s episode of Living Untitled, I sat down with Daniel Paul , an architectural historian with experience in the historic preservation field. Throughout Daniel’s career, he’s successfully listed local, state and federal landmark applications that include the Capitol Records building in Hollywood, as well as the iconic Griffith Park.?

Daniel started down this career path in his youth when he became fascinated with folk art environments during his years of undergrad. It was a little known place called Bottle Village in Simi Valley that caught Daniel’s attention. He spent his time volunteering at the space, eventually doing everything he could to protect its very existence, finally handling the landmark application that would ensure Bottle Village’s future back in the 1990s.???

As someone deeply inspired by our built environment, architecture of all kinds, I think a lot about what these spaces represent in our modern society. It seems like every day I’m reading a new story expressing concern around preserving cultures that are at risk of becoming lost with changing generational guards. Architecture that represents a rich cultural past getting razed to make way for new infrastructure, the stories of one seemingly inconsequential community lost forever. These are often direct examples of that cliquet expression–you don’t know what’s missing until it’s gone.

But even in less dramatic, more subtle ways, we have a tendency to forget to protect something until we see the visible cracks of it slipping away. So it becomes even more of an imperative to take proactive measures to protect what we hope will stand the test of time despite the changing whims of the moment. Even as we look out into our world today, it’s important to ask the question–how do we make better decisions about what to preserve in a world that’s obsessed with moving forward?

That’s one of the things I appreciated most about my discussion with Daniel, his pragmatic approach to answering that question. His approach is intended to work in the best interests of all of us in the world we live in today, but also firmly focused on avoiding shortsightedness in the way we approach a world of tomorrow. He also opened my eyes to how important this approach to preservation is to so many other parts of our world–not just physical architecture we see and interact with everyday, but the things we interact with on our screens and in so many other facets of our lives.

?Like so many things in our fast changing world, these legacy concepts of governance, regulation, preservation and many others, need to be redefined and reimagined right alongside our pursuit of innovation. One more example of how scientists, administrators, engineers, philosophers and historians all must find ways to work more closely together to create a better future for all of us.?

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