Face Value: The Speculative Preservation of Architectural Accumulations
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Stearn-simm2957-arch-march-2026-thesis.pdf
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74.74 MB
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Author(s)
Stearn, Simmone
Advisor(s)
Modesitt, Adam
Date Issued
February 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Urban redevelopment strategies involving the restoration of historic buildings in the United States have been shaped by the practice of historic designation which qualitatively assesses and assigns value to
buildings and architectural elements. This system favors and constructs societal value for original and subjectively characteristic forms of architecture, as determined by a current state of fluctuating values. The binary between “historic” and “non-historic” is particularly limited in the case of postindustrial cities, where the economic landscape resulting from deindustrialization created peculiar architectural conditions of cheap preservation layers that redevelopment strategies now aim to remove; many deteriorating historic buildings were, in an act of preservation, encased and sealed away, allowing buildings to maintain baseline serviceability, house new uses, or remain relevant in advertising and merchandising. These encasements provide new, unique identities for buildings and accumulate alternative histories that are also worthy of preservation. However, at face value, in tandem with the flux of architectural fashion, these encasements are deemed expendable due to their oftentimes more makeshift nature and their juxtaposition to a contained older object. As a result, encasements are removed or replaced in remediation and restoration projects. This thesis recognizes that these layers, as witnesses to years of transformation, embody important decades in a city’s life and contain worth beyond face value; removing material accumulations to solely rehabilitate a contained building prevents the multiplicity of meanings a building can attain, as well as generates waste that returns to the environment. This thesis asks, how can architecture rethink preservation and sustainability through constructing utility for the undervalued material layers and undervalued histories that buildings accumulate? This thesis rethinks the face value of material accumulations through transforming contained buildings and encasements together to create new, permeable thresholds. What results is a proposition for a new urban condition of public frontage space made from transformed encasement layers on historic commercial buildings in Buffalo, New York that combats the binary between the valuable “historic” and the expendable “non-historic” through their integration into public-facing spaces of communal worth.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
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