Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, April 29, 2013 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
Alan Binstock
"History of GSFC: An Architect’s Perspective"
ABSTRACT -- This slide show is a visual essay outlining the results of a comprehensive study of the history of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The slides offer a historical overview of GSFC and identify associated historic themes and time periods significant to the history of GSFC. The study was undertaken to support the agency in its program to identify, evaluate, and protect cultural resources.
A total of 254 buildings, structures, objects, and landscapes were surveyed in the study. Data analysis applying the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) Criteria for Evaluation identified a collection of buildings, structures, and landscapes that represent a recognizable entity necessary for a GSFC historic district. The period of significance for the historic district is 1960 – 1969 and represents the first decade of development at GSFC.
The GSFC historic district is significant for its association with events that have made an important contribution to the broad patterns of history under the Man in Space / Science and Exploration theme. A total of 67 resources are included in the historic district. All are contributing resources. Elements of the district are related through function and design as well as sharing a common pattern of historical development.
SPEAKER -- Alan Binstock is an architect in the Facilities Management Division's Planning Branch. He is currently the GSFC Historic Preservation Office contact, ensuring the Center's ability to manifest long range planning goals, while supporting the need to preserve its rich history. Mr. Binstock was the Center Master Planner, a facilities planner and project manager for the last twenty one years at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He also was detailed to the Strategic Alliance and Sustainability Group at NASA Headquarters.
Binstock was born and raised in the Bronx. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hunter College in 1969, and a Master of Architecture degree the University of Maryland, School of Architecture in 1985. Before going back to school, he taught Fine Arts in a South Bronx Junior High, and later was a yoga teacher, jeweler, carpenter, and cabinetmaker. Alan became a Registered Architect and worked for many years as in several area firms.
He is also an active sculptor, working with glass, resin, stone and steel. His work ranges from small pieces to large public commissions. For the past twelve years he has shown his work in local and national galleries. He investigates forms that express the nature of the seeker's inner passage while capturing the wonder of the explorer's outward search to find meaning in the universe. Rich is the life that bridges the worlds of strategic planning, history, and scientific empiricism with aesthetic pursuits and yogic observation.