ABOUT US

Although there are many indirect contributors to Civic Conservation - see: Readings - the authors are Jenny Bevan and Christopher Liberatos. We have a design practice in Charleston, South Carolina - the city where, in 1931, the idea for a sanctuary for traditional architecture was first developed and implemented, establishing the world's first "historic district."

We began CivicConservation.org because we were meeting more and more people in Charleston and elsewhere who were dissatisfied with the direction that architecture and the preservation movement have taken. People in historic districts trying to do the right thing are being told that to do so would "falsify history," or that to build in anything other than glass-and-steel is somehow not "of our time."  We found that many people are unacquainted with the history of the preservation movement and that, in fact, an inversion of its original purpose has occurred.

By now we are all accustomed to the idea that local agricultural and culinary traditions provide sustainable alternatives to the unhealthy and unsustainable industrial food systems. When it comes to architecture and planning, the unhealthy, unsustainable industrial building systems still reign, while the traditional architecture movement, miscast by architects as conservative and nostalgic, is overlooked. This needs to change. 

None of the ideas on this site are based on nostalgia or on any particular political ideology.  We are working from hard data, study, and common logic.  For the professional design world, perhaps this is an avant-guard and counter-cultural movement, but for many we are simply putting words to things they already know through experience.