Archinect - News

MVRDV adds a protective design to Aldo van Eyck's Tripolis complex in Amsterdam

2024-11-05T15:41:00-05:00

MVRDV has completed the restoration of Aldo Van Eyck’s Tripolis Park office complex in Amsterdam.

The project, which founder Winy Maas says was deeply personal to him as a fan of the eccentric late Structuralist master, re-establishes two buildings within the monumental original design to cater to Uber and other high-end tenants while greening the site and constructing a new 12-story 'landscraper' to protect against vehicular noise pollution.

Image: © Ossip van Duivenbode

The complex links to one of Van Eyck’s most beloved designs, the Amsterdam Orphanage from 1960. MVRDV felt it was their responsibility to protect both its future and the architectural character of the Tripolis buildings’ facades—an act which required careful research done in unison with surviving Van Eyck family members and his available archives.

Image: © Ossip van Duivenbode

The work they performed thereafter included adding an all-wood cladding material outside, while designing a more usable office environment i...

Overdevelopment, conflict, and climate change pose biggest threats to global cultural sites, World Monuments Fund warns

2024-09-13T17:25:00-04:00

Ahead of its January 2025 release of the World Monuments Watch list, the World Monuments Fund has announced the greatest factors threatening heritage sites globally are conflict, climate change, "overtourism," a lack of financial support and community engagement, and an extenuating state of overdevelopment.

The organization says they are doing so now in the interest of “sounding the alarm" and raising awareness while the final site included in its next watch list is still being deliberated. The WMF has not produced such documentation since 2022, when it found 25 sites as being under threat. The tenor of threats varies by region, with a majority (58%) of those surveyed in North America & Europe under threat due to "insufficient funding and resources." A total of 200 sites were nominated worldwide.

AIA releases seven-point advocacy agenda for 2024 U.S. elections

2024-09-13T12:45:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects has released a statement urging action on a number of key priorities related to architecture and the built environment for the 2024 presidential elections following Tuesday’s debate between candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

"Architects across the country are keen to see greater progress toward key goals related to the built environment and our businesses," 2024 AIA President Kimberly Dowdell says in a preface to the seven-point agenda. "Our top election priorities highlight critical issues including the need for increased investment in affordable housing, aggressive climate action measures, enhanced resiliency against natural disasters and sound tax policies."

"[The] AIA calls on the candidates as well as the incoming new Congress to listen to architects as experts on the forefront of designing a more sustainable future," her statement continues. "Through these priorities, AIA’s members will continue to move the built environment forwar...

White House ACHP debuts draft alternatives for National Historic Preservation Act compliance

2024-08-27T18:52:00-04:00

The White House’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) has proposed its first Draft Program Comment aimed at providing federal agencies with alternatives to complying with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.

If fully approved and adopted, the recommendations will take precedence over a number of key areas that impact the architecture industry, namely housing, transportation, and the acceleration of decarbonization efforts in the building sector.

Architect and ACHP Chair Sara C. Bronin, who spoke to Archinect on the topic of housing desegregation in 2021, said: "Today’s action aims to position our historic places at the center of affordable, accessible, climate-resilient, equitable, and interconnected communities and to ensure new investment reaches people who live in, use, and enjoy our historic places. I am looking forward to engaging Indian Tribes, Native Hawaiian organizations, and the public on the best ways to ensure historic preservation strateg...

Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy files UCC claims over sale of original Price Tower items

2024-08-09T16:01:00-04:00

A dispute over the sale of original items from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower high-rise in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, has produced a series of UCC statements against the building’s current owners by the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. The nonprofit issued an update to its legal pursuit this week and said that they are operating from an existing preservation easement agreement that prohibits the sale of certain items from the landmarked 1952 building.

According to the Trust, "The items in the sale included a one-of-a-kind rolling directory board, architectural copper relief panels, an armchair, and copper tables and stools, all designed by Wright for the Price Tower." The lot was reported to have been purchased by an unnamed Dallas area midcentury design dealer. The dealer was contacted in July with a demand from the Trust insisting that any items be returned immediately.

The Trust says the tower's owners "incorrectly [claim] that the easement is now invalid because the Tower...

UNESCO assessing impact of skyscrapers on Tower of London

2024-08-07T19:29:00-04:00

The Tower of London’s status as a world heritage site may be at risk due to the influx of new skyscrapers in central London. UNESCO has requested that the UK government submit a State of Conservation Report that addresses the historic site’s preservation and the threat of increased high-rise buildings in the area. As reported by the BBC, a UNESCO spokesperson said the request was due to concerns about “cumulative impacts” from nearby high-rise developments and insufficient protection of the Tower’s “outstanding universal value”.

Previously on Archinect: The City of London skyline is expected to add these eleven towers by 2030

Concerns were initially raised by the English historic preservation body, Historic England, regarding City Plan 2040, the City of London Corporation’s (CLC) draft policies for new office, residential buildings, and overall development. Historic England believes these policies are likely to “severely harm” the likes of the Tower of London. On the other hand, depu...

Chicago preservationists just saved two landmark early skyscrapers from the GSA wrecking ball

2024-08-05T20:13:00-04:00

The Chicago Tribune is reporting on the successful effort by Windy City preservationists to save the landmarked vacant Century and Consumers buildings, the “last vestiges of the Chicago School of Architecture” after two years of fighting. Their owners, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), have decided in favor of an adaptive reuse scheme that will save them from the wrecking ball, albeit with a list of 15 restrictions pertaining to any future redevelopment. These include limitations on residential development.

"We’re hoping the remaining $45 million of this demolition earmark could be invested in the terra cotta and the exterior cladding and roof structures, along with the windows," Preservation Chicago’s executive director Ward Miller told the outlet. "I think at a minimum, the GSA and federal government could help with restoring some of these features of the exterior that have languished for so long, almost 20 years, under their ownership."

The buildings were completed...

Preservation group completes purchase of Marcel Breuer's 1949 Cape Cod home

2024-08-02T17:43:00-04:00

The fight to save Marcel Breuer’s former home on Cape Cod, the 1949 Wellfleet Cottage, has reached its conclusion after The Cape Cod Modern House Trust completed its purchase following a successful $1.4 million fundraising campaign. Breuer’s son Tamas was the homeowner at the time of the sale.

The house had reportedly degraded into what The Art Newspaper describes as “not in the best condition.” The Modern House Trust's spokesperson told the outlet: “Work begins on the restoration immediately.”

Touring Notre Dame Cathedral with its army of restorers

2024-07-24T15:32:00-04:00

I personally grew fond of the general. Touring the different workshops, he always mentioned the “battle for France” that they absolutely had to win, but also spoke of his deep gratitude. That afternoon in June last year in Saumur, he told the compagnons: “Your pride in your work is beautiful to see. How lucky France is to have you helping to return this absolute masterpiece of a spire to the sky of Paris.”

A restoration of this order should take 10 to 15 years (that’s according to experts speaking immediately after the April 15, 2019, blaze). Instead, an army of over 2,000 workers and skilled tradespeople has diligently chipped away under the direction of General Jean-Louis Georgelin, who died unexpectedly last August. Their incredible pace has required a truly global effort.

The world gets its first glimpse at the restored national treasure when it officially reopens on the morning of December 8th with the now "happy" architect Philippe Villeneuve and President Emmanuel Macron in attendance.

Lloyd Wright's Wayfarers Chapel updates disassembly progress

2024-06-27T12:27:00-04:00

The disassembly of Lloyd Wright's treasured Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes, California — necessitated by months of "accelerated land movement" at its 3.5-acre site in the Los Angeles suburbs this winter — is underway as the group responsible for its stewardship looks for a suitable relocation spot in the hopes of saving the beloved design.

An update on its demolition has been documented via Instagram by Architectural Resources Group, the firm tasked with its careful disassembly. There is no location outlined yet — though options include a former Nike missile site about 3 miles away — according to our last update.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Wayfarers Chapel (@wayfarers_chapel)

Liverpool redevelopment scheme wins revived Carbuncle Cup as Britain's 'worst new building'

2024-06-24T18:10:00-04:00

The unfortunate "winner" of the UK’s Carbuncle Cup, which annually celebrates the country’s most detested new architecture, has been announced as the 2019 Liverpool Lime Street redevelopment scheme from Broadway Malyan. The contest, which is presented by the London-based magazine The Fence, was revived for 2024 after a six-year hiatus following BDP’s Redrock Stockport "victory" in 2018.

What can be said about this monstrosity? The magazine describes: "This mass-scale redevelopment demolished a century of businesses and buildings, replacing them with sheet-metal etchings of the cinemas and bars that once stood. Behind that façade, much like everything else in Liverpool, is a 412-bed student accommodation block and a 101-room Premier Inn hotel — two new additions that the city’s residents have never asked for or benefited from."

The outcome might play into the hands of advocates pushing leaders to save the century-old Marks & Spencer department store on Oxford Street in London, a ca...

Taliesin's $1.1 million restored Hillside Theater debuts in Wisconsin

2024-06-13T13:41:00-04:00

Taliesin Preservation’s restoration of the Hillside Theater at Frank Lloyd Wright’s former estate in Spring Green, Wisconsin, has been completed following a five-year and $1.1 million transformation effort for The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

Originally designed in 1903 to serve the Hillside Home School that was included in the 800-acre estate in the heavily forested Driftless Area, the space is now once again capable of hosting theatrical productions and will precede its public reopening with a series of film screenings and musical performances throughout the summer.

Photo by Tim Long, courtesy of Taliesin Preservation

Aspects of the restoration work included adding a new HVAC system, repairing subgrade water damage, ADA-compliant accessibility enhancements, adding two new green rooms to the basement, and issuing major repairs to the building's roof and interior/exterior finishes.

Photo by Kyle Dockery, courtesy of Taliesin Preservation

The hand-sewn curtain, gifted to Wright by p...

The Guardian unpacks the demise of Lloyd Wright's Wayfarers Chapel in California

2024-06-02T08:00:00-04:00

This month, Wayfarers Chapel is being dismantled, an emergency attempt to save the structure’s irreplaceable redwood, steel and stone components in the wake of a devastating landslide. By taking it apart now, before it’s too twisted and broken to ever reconfigure, the chapel’s leaders hope to give it a second life someday on stable ground. They don’t have the cash yet for a rebuild, but they’re doing what they can at this critical moment: spending nearly half a million dollars on triage.

The group responsible for the Wayfarers Chapel announced its closure and plans to dismantle earlier this year following months of "accelerated land movement" beneath its 3.5-acre site in the Los Angeles suburb of Rancho Palos Verdes. The Guardian says the city is "working with chapel leaders to find a land-stable spot nearby to store the chapel’s pieces — one option is a former Nike missile site about 3 miles away."

The 73-year-old Lloyd Wright glass design had become an Instagram favorite and popular wedding destination in recent years.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Wayfarers Chapel (@wayfarers_chapel)

UK Housing Secretary issues final go-ahead for Museum of London and Bastion House demolition

2024-05-21T16:05:00-04:00

The UK's Housing and Communities Secretary Michael Gove has approved the planned demolition of the Museum of London building and Bastion House near the Barbican. The go-ahead makes way for the revised Sheppard Robson and Diller Scofidio + Renfro-led scheme that would deliver a new office block to the site following the culmination of demolition work in 2033.

The decision marks the end of a tumultuous back-and-forth between preservationists and the planning authority. Many have criticized the demolition's carbon footprint, despite the design team's promise to reuse 90% of the materials on-site in the construction of the new building, prompting Gove to issue an Article 31 order last month before casting his final approval on May 17th.

Previously on Archinect: Diller Scofidio + Renfro/Sheppard Robson's London Centre for Music replacement inches closer after planners grant local approval

Barbican Quarter Action (or BQA), the main group leading its opposition, has said to Londonist that t...

Lloyd Wright's landmarked Wayfarers Chapel to be disassembled due to landslides

2024-05-14T18:42:00-04:00

Lloyd Wright's historic closed Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, will be disassembled in the face of irreparable landslide damage, the group responsible for its stewardship announced via a press release Tuesday.

Architectural Resources Group will handle the disassembly work with great care, as the LA Times and other outlets have reported its structure is rapidly deteriorating from the movement underneath its foundation, which is now occurring at rates 2–3 times more severe than was recorded back in February.

The firm's principal, Katie Horak, told the outlet: "With each passing day, more of this material is lost or irreparably damaged. Our team is working against the clock to document and move these building components to safety so that they can be put back together again."

Previously on Archinect: Lloyd Wright's landmark Wayfarers Chapel closes indefinitely due to landslide threat

"The chapel will not be able to withstand much more damage before it becomes imposs...

Rafael Pelli and Gruen Associates push to restore father César’s masterwork San Bernardino City Hall after 52 years

2024-05-13T17:21:00-04:00

César Pelli was a rising architect when he got the job of designing a new City Hall for San Bernardino. [...] a push is on to renovate City Hall and restore it to use. The lead architect: Rafael Pelli, son of César Pelli. [...] “The idea is to preserve what’s great about it and make it better,” Pelli said of the building. “The bones of it are very good. We just need to bring it forward.”

Chief of among the estimated $60 million renovation tasks is the work of replacing the building’s over 6,000 original windows, which Rafael Pelli says will now be double pane for improved insulation against the heat. The City of San Bernardino, California, shut down operations in the building in 2017 due to seismic concerns. The design features an early version of the same glass curtain facade solution later used in the Pacific Design Center. As the San Bernardino Sun reported, a decision to finance the expected four-year restoration could come as soon as late May.

Owners of Marilyn Monroe's last residence sue Los Angeles for right to demolish it

2024-05-08T18:27:00-04:00

Alleging an "abuse of power" by Los Angeles city officials, the owners of Marilyn Monroe's former Brentwood home are suing the city to block an effort to have the structure declared a historic-culture landmark, which would prevent its demolition. The Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit [...] alleges "illegal and unconstitutional conduct" by the city "with respect to the house where Marilyn Monroe occasionally lived for a mere six months before she tragically committed suicide 61 years ago."

The LA Times (which has been reporting on the story since January of this year when the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission recommended landmark status for the former Monroe residence) writes that the lawsuit was filed by billionaire heiress Brinah Milstein and her TV producer husband Roy Bank, who also own the home next door and purchased the contested mansion in 2023 with the intent to demolish it and merge both properties.

The preservation fight involving the Marilyn Monroe house follows the public uproar over the demolition of Craig Ellwood's 1950 Zimmerman House in Los Angeles by its new owners, actor Chris Pratt and his wife Katherine Schwarzenegger, last month.

List of America’s Most Endangered Historic Places for 2024 shows expanded 'collective idea of American history'

2024-05-01T18:31:00-04:00

The newly released list of the country’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2024 has been announced to include LA’s Little Tokyo district and the Walden Pond Reservation area in Massachusetts. The pair was joined by nine other sites in eight states, Morocco, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The full list of America's Most Endangered Historic Places, compiled by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, includes:

Cindy Walker House, Mexia, Texas
Eatonville, Florida
Estate Whim Museum, Frederiksted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
Hudson-Athens Lighthouse, Athens, New York
Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, California
Minute Man National Historical Park, Walden, and nearby landmarks, Massachusetts
New Salem Baptist Church, Tams, West Virginia
Roosevelt High School, Gary, Indiana
Sitka Tlingit Clan Houses, Sitka, Alaska
Tangier American Legation, Tangier, Morocco
Wilderness Battlefield Area, Orange County, Virginia

Christopher Hawthorne previews the restoration of Philip Johnson's Brick House ahead of May reopening

2024-04-29T11:49:00-04:00

The reopening returns a certain architectural equilibrium to Johnson’s estate. The original paired structures, said Kirsten Reoch, who was named executive director of the Glass House campus last summer, “are two parts of a whole. Neither was conceived without the other. So the idea that we’ve been showing and interpreting half the story, it kind of blows your mind.”

The Glass House is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year with a special Paper Log House installation from Shigeru Ban and other public programs through the end of December. Yale’s senior critic Christopher Hawthorne visits the New Canaan, Connecticut, campus for a preview and says, “Bringing visitors back to the Brick House, with its resolute insistence on privacy, is an opportunity to explore the relationship of its architecture to Johnson’s homosexuality,” as well as an opportunity to reexamine its designer’s fraught politics.

The restored Brick House (whose work was overseen by the National Trust’s Mark Stoner) reopens to the public this Thursday, May 2nd.

Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger demolish Craig Ellwood's 1950 Zimmerman House, raising ire online

2024-04-22T18:12:00-04:00

Chris Pratt has drawn ire from architecture aficionados after news broke that the actor and his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, had razed a historic, mid-century modern home to make way for a sprawling 15,000-sq-ft mansion. Architect Ken Ungar, whose portfolio largely features high-end modern farmhouse-style residences, will design a home for the couple, Architectural Digest reported. The property [...] will also feature a three-car garage and a secondary unit near the pool.

As The Guardian reported, plans for a demolition went mostly under the radar until the Los Angeles Conservancy issued a warning last January. Actor Chris Pratt and his wife Katherine Schwarzenegger purchased the home later with the apparent intention of replacing it with an oft-reviled “modern farmhouse” design and have yet to respond to any other news outlets or critics, who are framing this as a loss tantamount to the destruction of Marcel Breuer's binuclear Geller I house on Long Island in January of 2022.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Robb Report Real Estate (@robbreportrealestate)

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa architecture students use AI and 3D modeling to preserve Lahaina heritage structures lost in August wildfires

2024-03-29T12:51:00-04:00

A new course being taught to undergraduate students this semester at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Architecture is helping preservationists on Maui document lost heritage structures using the same AI-augmented 3D modeling technology that was previously incorporated into the rebuilding of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.

Co-taught by Dean William Chapman, Associate Professor Hyoung-June Park, and visiting Assistant Professor Kyung Hoon Hyun of South Korea’s Hanyang University, ARCH 490: Rebuilding Lahaina in Mixed Reality offers students the chance to aid in the recovery efforts by creating digital versions of lost buildings such as the Baldwin House, Wo Hing Society Hall, and Old Lahaina Courthouse.

"We want students to expand their creativity to think of more than simply rebuilding what was destroyed, but also what they can do with this new 3D model that they created," Hyun explained to Hawaii Public Radio recently. "They can add values or communal experiences within ...

Sasaki will design new comprehensive master plan for Taliesin West

2024-03-26T16:54:00-04:00

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has announced its selection of Sasaki Associates to create a new comprehensive master plan for Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Plans for a new campus will guide the development of any new projects on the 620-acre campus (a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site) in line with the Foundation’s Taliesin West Preservation Plan from 2015. Their aim is to re-establish the site as a cultural destination for "future generations."

The site, which Wright settled with his third wife Olgivanna in the 1930s, had included a school that almost shuttered due to financial difficulties before reversing its decision and relocating to two sites in Paradise Valley at the start of the pandemic.

Photo credit: Andrew Pielage

The firm says: "The comprehensive plan for Taliesin West represents a significant step in ensuring the long-term preservation and vitality of this architectural masterpiece. By engaging with the site’s history and ecology, Sasaki’s plan will guid...

Miami Beach preservationists sound the alarm over concerning new building safety law

2024-03-26T15:04:00-04:00

The New York Times has picked a side in the fight between Miami Beach historic preservation advocates and developers supporting the recently signed Resiliency and Safe Structures Act, a law those in the former category claim will augment a devastating erasure of the local architecture character over time.

The rift that has for years played out amidst a backdrop that includes the tragedy at Surfside and a spate of new starchitect-designed developments on the nine-mile island has recent salients in the demolished Deauville Beach Hotel and the yet-decided fate of Miami Marine Stadium.

Advocates say the new law is a guise that uses climate change and building safety as its premise to usher in what is, in reality, a slate of insidious and destructive requirements. The Commercial Observer said they also work to "hamstring the powers of municipalities to dictate what can replace demolished structures."

Restoration of Saarinen-designed First Christian Church tower completed in Columbus, Indiana

2024-02-23T08:03:00-05:00

The Landmark Columbus Foundation has shared photos of Louis Joyner Architect's completed tower restoration of the landmark First Christian Church in Columbus, Indiana, designed by Eero Saarinen and his father, Eliel, in 1942.

The project took eight months to complete, wrapping up this past December.

The church’s 166-foot-high freestanding clock tower served as the main focus of the restoration work, which took place in four main parts, with repairs also needed to account for significant masonry cracking, rust, and water damage to its interior.

Photo: Hadley Fruits for Landmark Columbus Foundation

Contractors stabilized the 50 uppermost feet of the tower by first removing its east and west walls and then taking the brick veneer off its north and south edifices, removing parapets, and then installing a new concrete block support onto the 166-foot-tall structure.

Photo: Hadley Fruits for Landmark Columbus Foundation

The brick veneer was later re-installed in addition to locally quarr...

Banksy murals to be digitally preserved as part of new UK art database

2024-02-09T14:28:00-05:00

Art by the famous artist Banksy is to be included in a new initiative to document the UK’s murals. As reported by The Art Newspaper, the project will see more than 5,000 murals from across the UK digitally recorded for access in a free public database.

The project is being overseen by the educational charity Art UK with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The three-year initiative will see public works recorded by a network of volunteer researchers and photographers, alongside documenting the stories behind the pieces.

“The location of murals, the circumstances behind their creation, and the materials used to create them can result in this type of artwork being ephemeral in nature,” Art UK says about the project. “Buildings and housing estates are demolished to make way for new developments meaning that many murals have been lost. We will record the murals as they look now, to provide a record if they are removed, defaced, or suffer environmental damage.”

Related on Arc...

New digital guide documents African American cultural landscapes

2024-02-07T15:19:00-05:00

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) just launched a brand new initiative called the What’s Out There Guide to African American Cultural Landscapes. So far, the digital guide documents over 140 sites associated with African American culture lifeways as well as nearly 30 biographies and is part of the foundation's four-year-old Race and Space program.

The TCLF says the production of the guide required some rethinking of its four existing categorizations of cultural landscapes. Nine themes (Enslavement, Impacts of African Cultures on the American Landscape, The Underground Railroad, Reconstruction, The Civil Rights Movement, Education, Public Accommodations, Commemoration and Healing, and Elevating Designers and Shapers) were created to reconstrue them into their proper contexts.

This will be of value to future research endeavors, the TCLF says, while equally helpful in promoting the stewardship of the sites, both of which are related to its organizational mission to "connect peop...

Paul Revere Williams-designed Blind Children's Center is getting remodeled for a new century of service in Los Angeles

2024-02-06T15:02:00-05:00

A renovation of the historic Paul Revere Williams-designed Blind Children’s Center (BCC) is underway in Los Angeles. The 80-year-old structure that preceded Williams’s seminal St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis and other hospital designs in Southern California by twenty years is now being remodeled and modernized to match the expanded needs of the BCC community for a new century.

Williams had been living in his now landmarked first residence in Jefferson Park at the time of his commissioning for the project. His design gave the nonprofit its first permanent home during a period of rampant discrimination, thus serving as a built testament to inclusivity.

The facility in July 2022. Image courtesy of the Blind Children's Center (BCC)

Now, with support from the Ahmanson, W. M. Keck and Rose Hills Foundations, the BCC’s b...

African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund: Another $4 million will go toward preserving Black churches

2024-02-02T12:20:00-05:00

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation has announced another round of funding totaling $4 million that will be put towards preserving Black churches in 22 states across the country.

The program’s second round of funding for the two-year-old Preserving Black Churches initiative will help maintain the legacies of 31 churches.

Black churches in the United States are at the center of the country's lifelong fight for democratic reforms and are a key character in the story of African American's survival and resilience in America. As the historian and advisor to the Action Fund, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., explained, “Black churches have been at the forefront of meaningful democratic reform since this nation’s founding. They’re a living testament to the resilience of our ancestors in the face of unimaginably daunting challenges.”

“The heart of our spiritual world is the Black church. These places of worship, these sacred cultural ...

Docomomo US stands against 'anti-diversity' policies, reinforces values for upcoming Florida symposium

2024-01-16T12:23:00-05:00

Docomomo US has issued a statement clarifying its stance on issues that have been raised in advance of its 2024 National Symposium in Coral Gables, Florida.

The group’s decision to host its annual event in the Miami area had come under scrutiny over the state’s pursuit of “anti-diversity” measures in the past year. The symposium will now continue with a renewed focus on sharing stories that can relate to the experiences of those communities targeted by lawmakers, organizers say. Their statement joins a prior call from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) outlining the detrimental impacts such "anti-woke" policies could have in the architectural education realm in places such as Arkansas, Iowa, South Dakota, and Virginia.

Other new laws and policies in Florida that have been labeled as equally antagonistic to the work of architectural historians and heritage preservation efforts were also decried by Docomomo. Beyond the local slate of major battles that inclu...

Notre Dame’s plans for contemporary stained-glass windows spark cries of ‘vandalism’ in Paris

2023-12-26T14:53:00-05:00

Plans for the contemporary replacement of some of the stained glass windows inside Notre Dame Cathedral’s damaged interior have sparked a considerable outcry from the public a year before the Parisian landmark is set to begin reopening in the wake of the destructive 2019 fire.

Calls for a new competition to design windows for six of Notre Dame’s seven south aisle side chapels has led to a petition signed by 120,000 people urging the French government to reconsider on grounds that they would distort the originality of architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s 19th-century expansion, according to a report from The Guardian.

The new window designs would replace what emerged from the catastrophe undamaged and are therefore considered important relics of the blaze by heritage experts and other conservation specialists. Nevertheless, the Archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, requested the French state’s approval of new windows, a solicitation President Emmanuel Macron then threw his office’s suppo...