Practical Preservation Podcast featuring Robert Young, PhD of University of Utah

Robert Young, PhD of the University of Utah’s College of Architecture + Planning joined the Practical Preservation podcast to discuss the intersection of sustainability and preservation. During our discussion we discussed how stewardship of existing buildings is the ultimate green building (plus it is large scale recycling). Some of the other topics we discussed are:

  •  The environmental impact of building
  •  The Three Pillars of Sustainability 
  •  Trends in technology and preservation
  •  And the challenges he sees facing adaptive reuse and how to combat common myths

Robert Young, authored two books, Historic Preservation Technology and Stewardship of the Built Environment.

Contact information:

Robert A. Young, PhD, FAPT, PE, LEED AP

Professor of Architecture

Historic Preservation Program Director

University of Utah College of Architecture + Planning

375 South 1530 East; 235AAC

Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0370 T: (801) 581-3909 E: Robert.young@utah.edu

Bio:

Robert A. Young, PhD, professor and historic preservation program director at the University of Utah College of Architecture + Planning, specializes in stewardship of the built environment which synthesizes historic preservation, adaptive reuse, sustainability, and community revitalization. His career bridges both professional practice and academia where he has advocated for stewardship of the built environment. He is the author of the books Historic Preservation Technology and Stewardship of the Built Environment. He holds a doctorate in Metropolitan Planning, Policy, and Design and has several graduate degrees that explore resource conservation in the built environment.

Professor Young has won numerous awards for his leadership in advocating historic preservation education and practice including the Utah Heritage Foundation Lucybeth Rampton Award, the University of Utah Distinguished Teaching Award, and the University of Utah Distinguished Service Professorship. He is a licensed Professional Engineer, a member of the Association for Preservation Technology College of Fellows, and an honorary member of AIA-Utah. Originally from Maine, he has travelled to all fifty of the United States, several Canadian Provinces and parts of Europe.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for tuning in to the Practical Preservation podcast. Please take a moment to visit our website practicalpreservationservices.com for additional information and tips to help you restore your historical home. If you’ve not done so, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud, and also like us on Facebook.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Practical Preservation podcast, hosted by Danielle and Jonathan Keperling. Keperling Preservation Services is a family-owned business based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, dedicated to the preservation of our built architectural history for today’s use, as well as future generations. Our weekly podcast provides you with expert advice specific to the unique needs of renovating a historic home, educating by sharing our from the trenches preservation knowledge and our guest’s expertise, balancing modern needs while maintaining the historical significance, character, and beauty of your period home.

Speaker 2:

Robert A. Young PhD, professor and historic preservation program director at the University of Utah College of Architecture and Planning, specializes in stewardship of the built environment, which synthesizes historic preservation, adaptive re-use, sustainability and community revitalization. His career bridges both professional practice and academia, where he has advocated for stewardship of the built environment.

Speaker 2:

He is the author of the books, Historic Preservation Technology and Stewardship of the Built Environment. He holds a doctorate in Metropolitan Planning Policy and Design, and has several graduate degrees that explore resource conservation in the built environment. Professor Young has won numerous awards for his leadership in advocating historic preservation, education and practice, including the Utah Heritage Foundation Lucy Beth Rampton Award, the University of Utah Distinguished Teaching Award and the University of Utah Distinguished Service Professorship.

Speaker 2:

He is a licensed professional engineer and a member of the Association for Preservation Technology College of Fellows, and an honorary member of AIA Utah. Originally from Maine, he has traveled to all 50 of the United States, several Canadian provinces, and parts of Europe.

Speaker 3:

Okay, thank you for joining us today on the Practical Preservation Podcast.

Robert A. Young:

Glad to be here.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Okay. So I know that we’ve chatted a little bit and I found you looking up books. So I’m excited to have you on the call. Can you tell me how you got started in preservation?

Robert A. Young:

Well, I was born and initially raised in Portland Maine, so I’ve always had an appreciation for older buildings. And as I was growing up, this was in the ’60s, I watched as buildings were torn down for urban renewal, and I also watched as the suburbs started to spread out. And so I was always kind of puzzled by that. And so I wanted to find out about resource conservation, and at that time, getting into the ’70s, it was the energy conservation that was the prevalent idea.

Robert A. Young:

And after I got into graduate school, I really began to realize that part of sustainability and resource conservation is the re-use of buildings. And so I’d always been interested because of my background in older buildings. And so, when I got into my career, actually merged those two together. So looking at you’re trying to save energy from the energy crises in the ’70s and ’80s. But my real love has been preservation my entire life. I just really enjoy the old buildings and sensing what the history’s about, and hearing the stories of how things happened in certain times, and particularly my curiosity with how buildings were built, how they got expanded and changed through time. So that’s really what’s propelled my impetus for staying with preservation and as I call it now, stewardship of the built environment.

Speaker 3:

Oh, I like that, the stewardship, because I think that the majority of the people that we interact with view themselves as stewards. So I think that that is great. And I think you kind of answered the question of why preservation, but when I was listening to you talk about how you got started, that’s one thing that I find that we combat a lot is the idea that the older buildings are not green, they’re not energy efficient. There’s so many … All the people that were promoting their new replacement products for these buildings that have gotten that thought into people’s minds. So, I think that from early on, that you have worked towards that. I think that that’s really, really an interesting career path. But also, it’s probably somewhat challenging when you’re fighting against what is the common thought process.

Robert A. Young:

Right. And then you have the general public [inaudible 00:05:29] perception that new is better. And the the other part of it is preservation is either clinging to the past or freezing a building in time. And there are concerns about, “Well, what can I do with my building?” or, “I don’t know the technology to actually do the work correctly,” or “I don’t want to follow certain standards because I’m just not familiar with them”.

Robert A. Young:

As you look at that … when I have done my research, part of my research included my house, which I did a study on. We did basically what would be known as a gut rehab. We actually cleared out the inside right down to the framing. And so I was curious as to what kind of environmental impact that had. So as part of my study, I actually figured out how much new material was coming into the house, how much were we actually retaining from the original construction, and how much of the demolition waste went to the landfills. And it turns out that we essentially recycled about 86% of the house in place-

Speaker 3:

Oh, that’s great.

Robert A. Young:

Other than putting in new drywall, because the plaster was pretty well beat up, and putting in new plumbing and that kind of thing. It was quite an eye opening experience to see what that looks like. And so then I went further and did another study that looked at how does that compare to if I just built a house in the suburbs, or if I just tore my house down. And as it turns out, the relationship is that if you tore the house down, built something exactly like it, you would use about eight times as much material in that material flow, including new material coming in, and then all of the building going to the landfill. So that was a big eye-opener to me.

Robert A. Young:

And then buildings themselves, they have technology within them. Back when we didn’t have HVAC systems they relied on warm air rising so they have high ceilings, or if it’s too cold, they have low ceilings. That type of thing. And so understanding the dynamics really begins … Once you understand, it really begins to set you in motion to understand that there’s a system there, and then we can supplement it with new HVAC type work, new lighting, but necessarily you don’t have to tear that whole building down to get to that point.

Speaker 3:

Using the building the way it was intended to be used that you do have the … it’s at least comfortable for the people. But is that how … I know that you talked a little bit about the environmental impact and the energy crisis in the ’70s. Is that how you began to intersect then your idea of sustainability and preservation?

Robert A. Young:

Yes, that was very much that. I had done a lot of work on adaptive reuse projects as part of my professional career. And then when I went into research and academia and teaching, I really pulled that out even further. Because it’s a thing that people don’t realize. I mean, it’s old, it can’t be energy conserving at all. But what you don’t realize is that you’ve already put a lot of material into the building and just to throw it away and put all the brand new material in, becomes a really downward spiral. I mean, if you think about it, if you tore every building down and built a brand new building in its a place, we would environmentally be in a much worse situation than we would it be if we tried to reuse it.

Speaker 3:

I was a traditional building conference probably over 10 years ago, and that was the first time I had ever heard the term embodied energy.

Robert A. Young:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Embodied energy, yes.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. And that was eye opening to me that. The concept had been there, but I guess I just didn’t have a term to attach to it.

Robert A. Young:

Yeah. And it’s a bigger look at things. Because we think about when you buy a house, yeah, the materials are there. And so that energy has already been spent to create those materials. But if we take those away and put new materials in, we’re using new energy to create the same, basically, kind of environment, living environment.

Speaker 3:

Yes. Yes. Okay. And the book actually I found when I was searching on Amazon was the Historic Preservation Technology book. And I thought that it was really interesting that you went through, building system by building system, figuring out why the materials were failing and then how to repair them. Why did you feel the need to write that book?

Robert A. Young:

When I went into teaching, one of the courses I teach a building technology class. And essentially there was no one book out there. There were a few that were very, very technical, but I was looking more at the understandable level, sort of here’s what you’ve got and not the very intricate things, but this is just general practice that you should understand. And so part of that was a reflection of my own exploration, trying to sort out what it is about lighting, what it is about paint, what it is about glass, those types of things, that give you a sort of a historic quality. And then how do you work with those when they start to fail? And so as I put that together in this class, eventually it evolved into the book because I needed … once I got all the chapters written and everything kind of put in a sequence, I got a publisher so I could use it as a textbook. And that’s where that came up.

Robert A. Young:

The last chapter in that book is a book on sustainability and preservation. And that actually spawned my second book, which is Stewardship of the Built Environment. And so that book really goes much further into the social, environmental, and economic sustainability of a building, actually looking at old buildings in a way that you can see it from those perspectives. Those three aspects are commonly known as the pillars of sustainability. So to apply them to preservation and really explore what that means, I think was pretty important to do. And so that’s how the second book came out.

Speaker 3:

Oh, very, very interesting. And I know I told you when I reached out to you that, that the Historic Preservation Technology book is on my list now. I’ve added another book. So thank you. So, okay, is there anything that you wish you would have known when you started your career that you know now?

Robert A. Young:

First was the professional aspects of the practice of preservation and adaptive reuse that can constitute a worthwhile career. Some people think of it as … you watch these shows on cable and it’s things like flipping a house, making just the minimum amount of upgrades so that you can sell it. And so they don’t … they see that possibly as a career, but in the long term, looking at the larger built environment, that there were a lot of buildings, both on an individual scale, but at the city scale, that really require a longer term look at how we put the buildings back together, if at all. If we take them down, can we still reuse some of them? Can we use parts of them? And so that was what the big surprise was, that there was actually a career there professionally, not just someone going out and flipping the house.

Robert A. Young:

And so that was the start. And then the second thing I wish I had known was the effort to overcome the myths that are associated with preservation. Excuse me. The idea … everybody’s heard somebody who’s had an issue with something in preservation in terms of going forward, Landmarks Commission. My friend went and they had to do this and they wouldn’t let them paint their house a certain color or whatever that is. And many of those are myths. Many of those are simply passed down hand to hand. And it’s almost like an urban legend in some cases, that everyone just starts throwing those out there. When in reality, if you’re familiar with what the real processes are, that it’s a collaborative process rather than a have me versus you type of thing. It’s more collaborating and understanding what the standard guidelines are, rather than just saying, “I’m just go to do this because I don’t have anything better to do,” and then getting criticized or halted because you’re not compatible with what the building’s trying to do.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. I agree. I sat in … I had gone to … a local historic group was having a talk and the topics seemed interesting to me so I thought I’d go. And half of the conversation was people raising their hand saying, “Well, why can’t we do this?” And they were saying, “No, you can.” It was explaining to people that as long as you’re following the Secretary of Interior’s guidelines, those kind of things, that you can. And I can say, going into multiple municipalities, I hardly ever have a hard time with those planning departments because we’re going and preserving and restoring. If you want to do something drastic, that’s when people do have problems.

Robert A. Young:

Right. Well, when I was on the Landmarks Commission, we had both realms. People would come in and they really understood what their range of freedom was and they really interpreted it well. And then others who weren’t familiar with any of the guidelines, which they’re not law, it’s just, “Here’s what we suggest that you do.” When you weren’t familiar with, that’s where they really started going off in strange directions. And many of the cases that we saw when I was on Landmarks was the misapplication of the local zoning where building height was a certain height limit and they were trying to exceed that. So many of the alterations that we suggested weren’t necessarily pure preservation. It was actually, you can’t exceed these limits set by the city zoning ordinances. So a lot of it was just education in that direction. Not so much that you’re doing this absolutely wrong thing. It’s, we’re here to help you and help to guide you through this.

Speaker 3:

Right. Yes. Yeah. And it does make … you can definitely tell which communities don’t have good planning with just looking at what’s happening in them. What is the biggest challenge you see in preservation?

Robert A. Young:

Can I have five of them that I-

Speaker 3:

Oh, sure.

Robert A. Young:

[crosstalk 00:15:45]. I mean, they’re sort of in prioritized order. And I mentioned the first couple, but I’ll mention them again. Overcoming the public perception that preservation freezes a building in time. They don’t recognize that it can be used as a reuse as a viable, modern, contemporary building with modern features, that still retain the historic overall character of the building itself and the name of it. The second is overcoming the myths, as I mentioned earlier. Third is getting civic leaders to understand how the dynamic nature of incentives like tax credits have long term, social, environmental, and financial benefits to the community at large and the built environment altogether. That’s an issue that a lot of people, again, they think new is better. Old can’t be anything. We’re just going to get rid of that and fix things up. Where there’s a really middle ground there that really is rich for the taking.

Robert A. Young:

The fourth one is getting people to understand the holistic approach of assessing the social, environmental, and economic costs and benefits rather than just simply financial benefit. So looking at … making sure that they look at the whole picture rather than simply, I can make X amount of dollars if I do just this. That’s a big deal. And then finally, just my own personal one that I see, is getting people to understand that building reuse is the ultimate form of recycling. So as I mentioned, my house, we recycled 86% of it in place. So that was a surprise to me when we started. I didn’t know how much we’d actually keep, but it was significantly higher than I expected.

Speaker 3:

Yes. And because of Earth Day in April, I’ve been … my emails that I send out to our, our mailing lists have been … the themes have been sustainability this month. And I actually just made a meme yesterday that was the reuse of a building is the ultimate recycling. So that’s kind of … I completely agree. What trends do you see in preservation?

Robert A. Young:

In the past decade or so, I’ve seen much greater sophistication emerging from how we look at the built environment. And so two things that are occurring is that there’s more opportunity, perhaps since the recession back in 2008, but there’s more opportunity to look at reusing a building. And along with that comes well, how do you understand what the building actually is?

Robert A. Young:

So there are two ways of doing analysis, not just specifically on the building, but in preservation altogether. One is the use of geographic information systems to analyze neighborhoods and potential patterns of development and growth. And the other one is the specific use of what is called LiDAR, it’s the radar system, the lighting system, where you can give measurements in what’s called the data cloud. So it sends out a signal and it takes a time for that light to reflect back, to give it a distance and then you create a visual or virtual recreation of the interior and exterior of buildings fairly quickly as compared to measuring every single piece of [crosstalk 00:18:55] space. So that’s a big trend. I think that’s … both in education and in practice, where there’s going to be a lot of growing demand as we further look into how to reuse the built environment.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. I have seen some projects where they’re using the …

Robert A. Young:

LiDAR?

Speaker 3:

The LiDAR. But I’m curious, I’ve never used it. Does it take … is it like taking a picture almost, or does it just do the measurements?

Robert A. Young:

It’s like a timing, how long has it been for the … it sends out a signal and how long does it take for it to come back to the receiver? And it tells what the distance is so you can measure. So even if it’s like a door frame sticking out from a wall, it’s only like half an inch, but it can actually measure that distance. [crosstalk 00:19:41]-

Speaker 3:

Oh, really cool.

Robert A. Young:

… really looks like a gray cloud of dots. And there’s some things they have to clean up because [inaudible 00:19:47] shadows and that kind of thing that people just can’t see. And so it really has accelerated how quickly you can get into a building. And you see that used in quite a number of applications. One of the more recent ones that I’m starting to see is even in real estate, where they go in and they give you a virtual tour of someone’s house. They can set these stations up and do a quick study and walk through the building. It’ll basically stitch together all the rooms. And they can give you a 3D model that you can look at and actually walk through visually in the building.

Robert A. Young:

Other places where I’ve seen it used, there are various PBS television programs that they brought into various situations like the Acropolis in Greece, various cities in Europe, where they’ve actually been able to measure things much more rapidly and get a greater sense of how the buildings were put together and what the … over time they may have changed. They begin to see some of that, the distance changes but the quality of the dimensions change. So it’s become much more of a sort of a building programming tool where they can understand what’s there and how they can quickly digest what the implications are for if they want to change something, if they want to add something, if they want to keep something, that type of thing.

Speaker 3:

Oh, that seems … yeah, it definitely seems like it would accelerate that process where you’re not going out and doing the physical … measuring every single element of the building.

Robert A. Young:

Right. And so I see a greater use of that. And again the GIS systems in both architecture, engineering, and construction communities, that they weren’t there a few years ago. And these are things they are … they’re a delight to the preservationists. We can go out and do that measurement more quickly. And I see that moving closer together so that the skill sets the preservationists have been using are much more appreciated by the architecture, engineering, and construction community. So I’m glad to see that. That’s been one of the things that I’ve been happiest to see in the last few years is that as a result of recognizing, there is an opportunity to hear both as a preservationist, but then also in this community that allows us to overlap those skills.

Speaker 3:

Yes.

Robert A. Young:

The next trend that I see is more online education. So again, with the use of the computer, being able to get a certificate in preservation, in some places maybe even a degree, but we’re not quite there yet. The idea of being able to go to a university that has an interdisciplinary study, rather than just a singular study of preservation, a singular study of architecture or planning or engineering, there are a growing number of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary types of units that are looking to really understand how buildings perform and what they can do.

Speaker 3:

And I think that that’s important. I think that everybody probably does better when disciplines are talking to each other, because you get different insights and different ways of looking at things. And I think it does help everybody do better at their specific discipline. So let’s see, how can our listeners contact you?

Robert A. Young:

My email address currently is young@arch.utah.edu. So they can contact me there. And that’s probably the easiest. I prefer to get emails because it’s something that I can actually visually look at.

Speaker 3:

Oh sure.

Robert A. Young:

Text messages and that kind of thing just aren’t quite there and it’s so all over the place. I’m not in my office much anymore. But it’s the case where that usually works best because I can get those on the road.

Speaker 3:

Okay. Yeah. That’s very fine. And I’ll make sure that that is on our website with the synopsis and the actual audio file. Did you have any … I know you talked about your books and I’ll make sure they’re up. Did you have anything else that you wanted to highlight for the listeners?

Robert A. Young:

I’ll gladly give a lecture as long as my travel costs are covered. So if anyone wants to hear me speak in person, I can make that arrangement pretty easily, just as long as I get my travel covered.

Speaker 3:

Okay. Very good. Well, thank you very much. Is there anything else that you wanted to share that I didn’t ask or cover?

Robert A. Young:

I think you covered most of it that I can … that comes off the top of my head. I appreciate the opportunity to speak up on stewardship and be able to, again, hopefully have people further understand that it’s not just an old building and it’s actually an opportunity for something creative.

Speaker 3:

I agree. I appreciate your willingness to come on and join me today. I will get all of the synopsis of what we talked about and everything up on the website for everybody to be able to refer to. And I appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

Robert A. Young:

You’re welcome.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to the Practical Preservation Podcast. The resources discussed during this episode are on our website at practicalpreservationservices.com/podcast. If you received value from this episode and know someone else that will get value from it as well, please share it with them. Join us next week for another episode of the Practical Preservation Podcast. For more information on restoring your historic home, visit practicalpreservationservices.com.

Leave a Comment