Towards a Configurable Hybridity in Historic Preservation and Design

This paper fulfills the dual purpose of developing a systematic methodology for designing new constructions and adding to or revivifying existing buildings in historic neighborhoods and demonstrating an effective pedagogy in regard to historic preservation at the undergraduate level. A previously developed methodology for verifying and analyzing hybridity in architectural design is expanded as a foundation for designing an addition to a historic building in a famous urban context, i.e., a registered historic structure in the museum district of New York City. Shape grammar as a computational design methodology is used to analyze the historic fabric of the urban area and to create a configurable hybrid design that is both compatible with that context and reflective of the needs and design of the contemporary urban setting. The validity of shape grammar as a methodology for designing configurable hybrid constructions in historic neighborhoods and its effectiveness in relation to a teaching focus on historic preservation are considered through an analysis of projects from an upper-undergraduate-level architectural design studio. The students used the shape grammar methodology to analyze and understand historic contexts and features in order to generate new designs for the given context.