❋ GHOSTLAB celebrates elements of overlooked architecture: the traces left behind on a building by human-scale intervention that are often read as insignificant or deviant. These “ghosts” of a building’s different lives are embedded with human narratives, revealing their deviance from original architectural authorship as evidence of expanded heritage value, rather than blight. GHOSTLAB advocates for the close reading and consideration of such ghosts—which are often cast off as “deviant” in advocacy of a building’s demolition—instead as evidence of a building’s heritage value for preservation and reuse.

GhostLab was established as a research and public education partnership between the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning (SARUP) and the Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project, with frequent support from the UWM Office of Research. Additional funding sources and partnerships are noted on a per-project basis.