Research, Education and Advocacy
The Center for Preservation and Adaptive Reuse (CPAR) engages in a wide variety of projects in research, planning, advocacy and education to support our mission statement to foster preservation and adaptive reuse of our built environment. One current project in which CPAR is engaged is developing a comprehensive historic resources survey and inventory of the UW Seattle campus. Working with partners such as the City of Seattle, we are identifying and recording historic buildings, landscapes and features of the campus and entering the information into the city and state databases.
Another current project addresses historic unreinforced masonry (URMs) buildings that are in danger of being lost in an earthquake. The City of Seattle has assembled a policy committee to study the issue and make recommendations about how to retrofit these buildings, and together with the Preservation Green Lab of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a team of faculty and students are working on solutions to identify the issues and opportunities for seismically retrofitting Seattle’s many unreinforced masonry buildings.
CPAR and the College of Built Environment has the goal of engaging more students of all disciplines in the many opportunities in preservation, sustainability and adaptive reuse. We are currently enlarging our curriculum offerings to include cross-disciplinary courses to support a new CBE Graduate Certificate Program in Historic Preservation that will be available university wide. This educational initiative will also bring together a wider range of faculty expertise and to broaden and diversify opportunities for students across the UW.
