Norma Barbacci

“The biggest challenge in the beginning was getting the confidence to venture on my own. That was the hardest part for me because I had never been on my own before.”

WomenWhoBuild, Meet Norma Barbacci!

Norma is a Preservation Architect with more than 30 years of experience. She is the head of Norma Barbacci Preservation Consultants LLC, a consulting firm which specializes in the preservation of international cultural heritage, which she founded in 2017. Prior to starting her own firm, Norma was the Program Director of World Monuments Fund, where she managed more than 100 projects around the world. She is no stranger to academia, in addition to her professional work, Norma also teaches an advanced design studio at Yale School of Architecture.

A true force in the field of Preservation, Norma (virtually) sat down with ArchNative to discuss her journey in Historic Preservation, how a studio class in her last year of Architecture School inspired her career path, and what her typical day looks like.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey in Historic Preservation?

I grew up in Peru. I attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh for my undergraduate architecture degree and then I specialized in Historic Preservation and got a Master’s Degree from Columbia University. Since then I worked at a couple of different architectural preservation firms. In 2001, I had a bit of a career change and left architecture to work for the World Monuments Fund for about 16 years, until almost 4 years ago, when I started my own consultancy practice. The work I did at the World Monuments Fund was more related to the preservation of cultural heritage. I was not working as an architect, I was providing technical advice for historic sites around the world.

What was your first introduction to the field?

My first introduction to the field happened in my last year of Architecture School. We had a studio project, which at the time was not called preservation; it was just an architecture studio, however, the studio was dealing with a historic site. I would say that was my first introduction to preservation. I did not think that it was something I was interested in at that point, but years later, I realized that the studio actually had made more of an impact on me than I thought at that time. The studio was interesting because we not only had to deal with a historic site, we had to design a program, and we also had to get involved with the local community, which for me was new. It was this participatory planning that we were introduced to that at that point I was not interested in, because I just wanted to be a designer (like everyone else in school). However, years later it was what I dealt with mostly in my work. It was about communities, and how to benefit them and how preservation can offer social benefits and so on. All of what I’ve done in these 30 years, kind of in a nutshell, started with what was done in this studio in my last year in Architecture School.

You had completed your undergrad in Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University, why did you decide to pivot and study Historic Preservation from Columbia University?

After I did that studio, I worked for two years in Pittsburgh, but as I was evaluating going to graduate school, that’s when I started thinking that preservation was something I was really interested in and then I learned about the Columbia program - I thought that would be a good fit.

You have managed over 100 historic preservation projects, how do you approach each one?

At World Monuments Fund I was managing a lot of projects in a different type of role, we were the ones funding the projects, so I had to evaluate proposals and make sure that what they were proposing was appropriate for the building. That’s where my technical background came in handy, because I could evaluate the proposals from the technical point of view. In some projects I was involved with putting together the team, because in some countries or in that particular situation the expertise that was needed was not available locally. So we would identify team members who would come from  different country or region, or another area which was closer to the site. We would assemble these teams and come up with the scope of work and so on. In some cases we got very involved in the actual packaging of the project, in others, we just received a complete proposal and developed project and if we saw that it was all appropriate, we would approve it and monitor how the project was advancing and if they were meeting what they had set out to do. 

All of those projects varied quite a bit, some required investment of time and money, and others were a bit more superficial where we just had to make sure that money was well spent and that we were not damaging the historic sites. The approach to each one was very different. Some were solving conservation problems or structural stabilization, others were just documentation if that was needed, in others we actually funded the development of planning strategies, conservation or management plans, or whatever may have been needed. We were very flexible in terms of what projects we funded, the only things we didn’t do were new construction and archaeological excavation, because we didn’t want to expose a site anymore. We did archaeological conservation but not excavation. Advocacy was another big item that we supported.

What does your typical day look like?

Prior to this pandemic, I had been teaching an architecture and preservation studio at Yale. At that time I was going there Mondays and Thursdays, so I was spending two days in New Haven. The rest of the week I was actually coordinating proposals. I was working on a proposal for a project in Cuba that was funded by the European Union. We were putting together a proposal for them and I was putting together the team for that particular site. Also I had planned to go out to Mexico to collaborate with my previous boss, the former president of the World Monuments Fund. She is developing a new program for financing historic preservation sites internationally and she is in the process of testing out a couple of different projects. She wanted to identify a site in Latin America, so she asked me to help her out. I was in the middle of preparing for that when this pandemic occurred, so I had to postpone my trip to Mexico. Part of my work would be to come back and report on my recommendations. So there is a lot of report writing, planning, field missions, a little bit of teaching and that was sort of my normal work week. Usually on a project I am the lone preservationist in a team of architects and urban planners, lawyers, finance people, and so on.

You had created your own company, Norma Barbacci Preservation Consultants, what led you to take the leap forward and go out on your own?

It was during a period at World Monuments Fund when the previous president had left and was replaced by someone who had a different view of what preservation should be like, and sometimes we didn’t quite agree. Also, I had been there for a long time and I thought it would be a good time for me to start something new. So I did that. It was terrifying at first, but now I’m very happy I had done it, otherwise I would not have had opportunities like teaching at Yale or working on projects for the Interamerican Development Bank, etc..

What has been your biggest challenge? What has been your greatest victory?

The biggest challenge in the beginning was getting the confidence to venture on my own. That was the hardest part for me because I had never been on my own before. I always worked for someone else, so that was something that was keeping me awake at night. Then once I started getting a couple projects here and there, I started building a bit more confidence and then I didn’t worry about it that much. But that was a challenge. No longer working for someone and having a steady paycheck was challenging.

The greatest victory was that I was able to do it on my own. Also this teaching opportunity that fell on my lap. I don’t want to call it a victory because it wasn’t something that I worked for really hard, I just got completely lucky that this happened, but I am so pleased that it did, so I take it as a victory. That was another thing- I never thought I would enjoy teaching the same way I never thought I would work on my own. So now that this semester is almost over, even though half of the semester had to be done online, it was such a rewarding opportunity that I would love to pursue it further. It opened my eyes to something that I love.

What is one piece of advice you have for women entering the field of Real Estate Preservation?

I would say why not? Speaking as a woman- it is a profession where there are not that many women in, so any opportunity of getting women into careers which were previously thought of as male dominated is a very good thing. It is going to be challenging but I think it is a good opportunity. It is a worthwhile challenge for women to go into this career and make our voices heard.