The effect is a curious one, as if a voluptuous society beauty has opened her mouth to smile at you, only to reveal a thin row of rotting teeth. [...]

Depressingly, the numpties and panjandrums who sit on Edinburgh city council have squandered the opportunity to heal the wounds of the past. [...]

What is it with this city, whose custodians, over centuries, seem to be ashamed of having so much natural beauty bestowed upon it and constantly seek ways to diminish it? — Kevin McKenna via theguardian.com

That’s why a team from the Institute for Digital Archaeology (IDA) is turning to the next best option—using technology to protect cultural heritage.

Founded in 2012 by Roger Michel, IDA is a joint effort between Harvard University and Oxford University to create an open-source database of high-resolution images and three-dimensional graphics of things like paper and papyrus documents, epigraphs and small artifacts.

Work on what IDA has named the Million Image Database began in early 2015. — newsweek.com

It’s a reminder that decommunisation is a project which might actually be physically impossible to execute in full, which hopefully begs the question — if Soviet Ukraine can't be wished away, what should be conserved, and what should be rejected? [...]

The nationalist purging of any traces of socialism from the landscape is a fool’s errand at best, gross historical revisionism at worst. — calvertjournal.com

I would like to argue that a more potent threat to the ongoing political viability of historic preservation is the perception that the preservation industry has become a conservative, indeed revanchist force; that it is elitist and sometimes even racist in its abetment of gentrification.

How did this happen?

Historic preservation in New York, according to the favored creation myth, was born in the postwar era as a progressive grassroots movement... — Places Journal

"One of the problems with house museums is you keep kind of circling back to the same people who come….Eventually they are going to die and there's going to be no one coming to your parties," [says Franklin] Vagnone [the executive director of New York City's Historic House Trust].

He wants nothing less than to revive interest in the house museum.

Museums don't need to think about "changing the color of their garment…what they need to do is completely change their outfit..." — Curbed

I confess that I feel the sort of ambivalence toward the James R. Thompson Center as I did toward Prentice Women's Hospital: I do understand why people want to raze it, I don't find it pretty, I understand the functional problems.

But all the same, I believe the Thompson Center should be saved.

[...] Chicago remains full of examples of money and vision coming together to create wonderful buildings. — chicagobusiness.com

residents are taking aim at the disruption caused by construction, the uprooting of cherished institutions, the buildings’ designs and the ever-higher prices attached to the housing that they fear will alter neighborhoods fundamentally. — NYT

Tokyo’s venerable Hotel Okura is getting a remake, starting next week.

Over the course of the past 53 years since its opening on May 20, 1962, the Okura, located in Toranomon, has earned an unsurpassed reputation both at home and abroad as a luxury hotel to represent Japan.

The hotel said in a statement that it will maintain the Japanese traditional aesthetics and the basics of the architecture style of Hotel Okura. — japantoday.com

These are confusing times in the business of protecting the country’s architectural heritage. [...]

Recently, two large modernist buildings were up for consideration for listing: the British Library in St Pancras, and an East End council estate, Robin Hood Gardens. Both have been controversial [...]

Yet the library has been granted the immortality of a Grade I listing, while the estate has been denied recognition and is set to be demolished. — theguardian.com

New York has seen twenty-first-century buildings in early-twentieth-century drag before, but 30 Park Place stands out, both for its size [...] and for its location—cheek-by-jowl with some of the most ambitious buildings to emerge from the current high-rise boom [...]

“We’re transposing a nineteen-thirties language to lower Manhattan, which has gotten overrun with glass and abstraction,” the architect said in a recent interview. “People want to look at buildings and make connections.” — newyorker.com

Lafayette Park, the neighborhood northeast of downtown dotted with high-rises and townhouses, and known for its modern architecture, has attained the status of national historic landmark. [...]

The neighborhood consists of a 78-acre housing development designed and realized by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, considered a master of modern architecture. It was founded by developer Herb Greenwald to help keep the middle class in the city. — The Detroit News

At what cost? The LAVA plan could be difficult to manage structurally, cost a significant amount of money and see Sirius occupants relocated anyway. But it could also be a more sustainable option than knocking down and rebuilding. — architectureanddesign.com.au

one of the city’s better-kept secrets is how often these places occupy structures that could easily be counted among the more significant examples of mid-20th century architecture in the country. That is, if anyone were bothering to look. — NYT

Berlin has just said “yes” to Communist-era blocks and “no” to more new skyscrapers. On Monday, the city announced that it was listing some key Communist-era structures in Alexanderplatz, East Berlin’s central square, as historical monuments. It is an irremovable nail in the coffin of a 22-year-old plan to demolish the square and replace it with a “little Manhattan”—a set of 10 new 150-meter high towers. — citylab.com