Gregory K Dreicer

Public History and Museums

Dreicer’s exhibition projects, through their multidisciplinary focus on stories about infrastructure, architecture, art, landscape, cities, water, and land, emphasize the indivisible nature of natural, built, and social environments. He has developed projects for organizations including the National Building Museum, Museum of the City of New York, and the Smithsonian Institution Museum on Main Street program. At the Museum of Vancouver, Dreicer developed a new institutional vision based on social connection. At the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Dreicer developed the institutional thematic framework, was responsible for the creation of the master plan for a new facility, and developed a large-scale model of Chicago that made the CAF facility a destination. His projects have focused on issues including fences and land use; water supply systems; lighting and city life; preservation; livable communities; energy efficiency; and skyscraper engineering and architecture.

Scholarship

Dreicer’s scholarly research and publications investigate building as a process, rather than buildings as objects. His work, focused on the early development in the United States and Europe of building processes and long-span and high-rise design, demonstrates the crucial role of construction in the history of industrialization. This transnational investigation of design in action demonstrates how the fundamental ideas that shape understandings of technology—nationalism, evolutionism, and progress—are entwined in the process of invention itself. In articles such as "Nouvelles inventions: l’interchangeabilité et le génie national" in Culture Technique and "Influence and Intercultural Exchange: the Case of Engineering Schools and Civil Engineering Works in the Nineteenth Century" in History and Technology, Dreicer explores invention as a process of exchange between cultures while emphasizing the thinking behind the history of architecture and building. In articles such as "Building Myths: The ‘Evolution’ from Wood to Iron in the Construction of Bridges and Nations" in Perspecta, Dreicer explores the impact of evolutionary metaphors and nationalism on understandings of technology. In "Building Bridges and Boundaries: The Lattice and the Tube, 1820-1860" in Technology and Culture he analyzes the relationship between the construction of engineering infrastructure and national identity.

Education and Academic Career

Dreicer completed a PhD in Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University and a Masters in Historic Preservation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Dreicer's post-doctoral academic positions include a Senior Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, a Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Dreicer has taught at the Parsons School of Design and MIT School of Architecture and Planning. He previously worked in New York City as an architectural conservator specializing in the restoration and repair of high-rise building facades.

Selected Projects

Dreicer has developed and curated more than 25 humanities-based exhibition projects.
Chicago Architecture Foundation

Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service - Museum on Main Street (national travel)

American Society of Civil Engineers

Museum of the City of New York

Afikim Foundation (national travel)

New York Public Library Science, Industry and Business Library

National Building Museum

Selected publications

Selected Articles on Dreicer's Work