About
Héctor Berdecía-Hernández received his education in architecture, history, architectural preservation, and materials conservation. He serves as the founding Director/Coordinator-General of the Escuela Taller de Conservación del Patrimonio Histórico de Puerto Rico of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (ICP by its acronym in Spanish). He also directs the Division for the Research, Study, and Analysis of Cultural Heritage at the Escuela Taller. Berdecía-Hernández has worked in several architectural conservation and restoration projects at Quinn Evans, the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT), and the Historic American Building Survey at the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the Office of the Architect of the Capitol as a Córdova-Fernós Fellow in Washington D.C. He also served as Editorial Assistant for Change Over Time, the international journal on conservation and the built environment, a semiannual award-winning journal published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. He has served on several professional, academic and non-profit organization boards. He is currently Communications Officer, Secretary, and Lead Editor of the Emerging Conservation Professionals Network (ECPN) Board of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC).
As an emerging architectural conservator and educator, his research focuses on the conservation of historic buildings and sites, with an emphasis on materials and technologies of 19th & 20th Century built heritage, contemporary design in historical settings, and issues related to preservation policy and sustainable development. Education
Berdecía-Hernández received an M.Sc. Historic Preservation with a concentration on Architectural Conservation and restoration at the University of Pennsylvania, a B.EnvD. in Environmental Design-Architecture with a double major in History of the Americas, and a Post-Bachelor Certificate in Urban Studies from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus. He also studied Conservation Science courses within Georgetown University and the Universitá degli Studi de Firenze.
