Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend Peeping Cooper
18 snips
May 7, 2026 
Cooper Shields, an Ohio architectural historian who surveys buildings and writes National Register nominations. He talks about what preservation work actually looks like. He shares funny homeowner reactions to being photographed. He defends underappreciated styles like brutalism and explains how plaques and historic listings work.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
How An Architectural Historian Spends Workdays
- Cooper Shields surveys buildings for federally funded projects to avoid harming cultural heritage.
- He works for a cultural resource management firm mostly staffed by archaeologists and documents whether projects affect historic architecture so mitigations can be proposed.
Preservation Work Often Looks Like Peeping
- Fieldwork can look odd to the public: architectural surveyors in orange vests photographing recent buildings draw suspicion from homeowners.
- Cooper notes many surveyed structures are recent apartments, dorms, or 1990s buildings that surprise onlookers used to 'historic' images.
Why Brutalism Appeals To Preservationists
- Cooper prefers historically underappreciated styles like brutalism and postmodernism rather than conventional Victorian favorites.
- He and peers celebrate late modernist 1970s–80s concrete forms that most observers dismiss as ugly.