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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.”
— San Bernardino Sun
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... View full entry
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."
— NBC Los Angeles
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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 New York Times
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... View full entry
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.
— The Guardian
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
