Moving forward on saving the past
SF Chronicle
08 August 2013
Ph: Jeremy Blakeslee

A modest new exhibition on historic preservation in downtown San Francisco discreetly touches on a much larger point: the need for the movement to contemplate its future as well as the past. The show, dubbed Adapt, Transform, Reuse is currently on display at the San Francisco SPUR Urban Center, showcases nineteen preservations projects in San Francisco. A juxtaposition of the old and the new, these projects are accompanied by descriptions and photographs by Jeremy Blakelee. Some projects represent architecture preservation's triumphs over the past 50 years, while others are more likely to provoke.

At its best, historic preservation is a tool for managing change by finding new uses to reanimate old buildings and assuring that new construction relates to its surroundings. Sometimes, however, preservation solutions are born of conflict and result in compromises that do not serve either the past or the present.

The SPUR exhibition features projects by CED alumni and faculty, including David Baker + Partners Architects, EHDD, Page & Turnbull Architects, and STUDIOS Architecture.

Adapt/Transform/Reuse will be on view through Aug. 30 at the SPUR Urban Center Gallery, 654 Mission St., San Francisco. The exhibition also features a lecture, "Juxtaposition and Transformation: Shaping the Image of the City," by Susan MacDonald of the Getty Conservation Institute, on Thursday, August 8, also at the SPUR Urban Center.