Historic Preservation Planning alumnus Andy Roblee (M.A. H.P.P. ’17) recalls visiting Sage Chapel, a popular destination on Cornell’s campus, for the first time as a student, along with other preservation student peers, to examine the integrity of the building.
While many know the chapel as the resting place for the founders of the university, taking a preservation perspective entails a deeper appreciation for the materials, form, and spatial context of the structure. Those factors were given great weight in the construction of Sage Chapel which, as a performance space, needed to successfully augment sounds.
As a musician, Roblee wanted to break from the overly-engineered recording studios that he feels eliminate all reflective surfaces and ambient sound. As a preservationist, he is always looking for creative outlets and new ways to engage with historic spaces.
He began his “Historic Structures of Sound” project back in August, when he first experimented with sound sessions at a former bank building in his hometown of Auburn, New York. Despite the building being built for commercial purposes, he was astonished by the resonance the sound of the keys from the property owner’s piano had on the space.
“I would say there are two goals of this project: one creative and one more academic,” said Roblee. “First, to produce a record of original music arranged and recorded to capture the intangible historic fabric of the space, imbuing the music with real meaning. Second, to demonstrate how acoustics are a character-defining feature of a historic building, providing another tool for the preservationist/planner/developer to determine and market a new use for an old building. By showing how spaces can be saved to create meaningful experiences, these two goals are merged in the pursuit of sustainability and place-making.”
He hopes that the first phase of his project will open up opportunities for recording at other sites. Some sites where he expressed interest in recording include the Binghamton Inebriate Asylum, currently a vacant National Historic Landmark and the first hospital in the country to attempt to treat alcoholism as an illness.
Roblee is documenting this project through his personal blog, andrewroblee.com.