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Award-winning architectural and urban historian Amber Wiley has been announced by the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design as the inaugural Matt and Erika Nord Director of the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (CPCRS). The current Rutgers University assistant... View full entry
Historic England is taking action as preservation advocates in the country prepare for what could be a seminal decision that might alter the face of building conservation in the UK for years to come. More than 50% of the country's historic department stores have reportedly closed since... View full entry
Tel Aviv-based Bar Orian Architects has unveiled a new residential project that blends past and present by integrating two contemporary buildings with a historic, early 20th-century villa. The development, titled Villa Rothschild, sits along Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard. The original... View full entry
Colourful houseboats anchored along the Nile have been fixtures of Cairo since the 1800s. Last month the government ordered their removal, saying the boats were unsafe and lacked permits—no surprise, since it stopped renewing the permits two years ago. It has recently begun towing them away.
Officials are coy about their plans for the riverbank. If the past is any guide, the boats will be replaced by restaurants and cafés, their lush gardens buried under concrete.
— The Economist
As the New York Times pointed out recently, the houseboats carry quite a bit of cultural significance as the site where Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz wrote his seminal 1966 novel Adrift on the Nile and several other classic tomes. Egypt is pursuing an aggressive redevelopment of its ancient... View full entry
Google is negotiating to buy the spaceship-like James R. Thompson Center in Chicago in a deal that could provide a much-needed boost to the city’s Loop business district.
The Mountain View, California-based tech giant is seeking to buy the Helmut Jahn-designed building at 100 W. Randolph St., where it plans to expand its Chicago offices into a large portion of the 17-story building’s soon-to-be-renovated office space, according to people familiar with the deal.
— CoStar
The future for Chicago's James R. Thompson Center, designed by the late Helmut Jahn, may be looking a bit brighter after the National Trust for Historic Preservation added the postmodern gem to its annual “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places” list in 2019. Last year, the Chicago... View full entry
A key building feature on one of Kevin Roche’s most ingenious New York City designs is under threat of being erased, according to the preservation group Docomomo US. The late Pritzker winner’s 60 Wall Street building is undergoing renovation by Kohn Pedersen Fox this summer, and the group says... View full entry
Hong Kong's iconic Jumbo Floating Restaurant has capsized in the South China Sea less than a week after it was towed away from the city, its parent company said Monday.
The restaurant was towed away last Tuesday. The company said it planned to move it to a lower-cost site where maintenance could be carried out. It said that prior to its departure, the vessel had been thoroughly inspected by marine engineers and hoardings were installed, and all relevant approvals were obtained.
— NPR
The Wes Anderson-like former fine-dining establishment served some rather well-regarded Cantonese cuisine to diners for more than forty years before being closed and decommissioned earlier this month following the Covid-caused economic downturn of 2020. The three-story vessel reportedly went down... View full entry
What do you do with a building that was built to glorify an oppressive Communist system but, ravaged by rain and snow and stripped bare by thieves, is now a wreck? Should it be torn down in the spirit of reckoning with history — just as the statues of Confederate generals have been toppled in the United States and monuments to Soviet hegemony have been demolished across Ukraine, particularly since Russia invaded in February? — The New York Times
After receiving two rounds of funding totaling $245,000 from the Getty Foundation in back-to-back years, the ever-popular photographer’s subject is struggling to raise the millions needed to restore it to the former 'glory' seen in what its designer Georgi Stoilov called “morally and... View full entry
Attitudes towards Soviet-era architectural heritage are divided in Ukraine. Some value the country’s modernist, post-modernist and brutalist buildings for their sharpness and conciseness of form, for their functionality and concrete simplicity. But for others they stand as an unwanted reminder of Ukraine’s Soviet past, and much of this built heritage has come under threat in recent years. — Al Jazeera
Ukraine’s pre-WWII cultural infrastructure has been a focus of the press and comprises the vast majority of listed buildings in Ukraine’s state database. Examples of Soviet-era architecture are, however, systemically less protected. Their plight is being well-documented by social media... View full entry
It seems incredible that a mid-century marvel like Geller I should fall victim to redevelopment while a government agency nearby intervenes to prevent someone from replacing an old front door with a similar-looking new one. In the world of historic preservation, however, a loose relationship between a building’s historical value and its likelihood of being protected is all too common. — The Atlantic
The recent loss of Marcel Breuer’s first post-war Geller I design on Long Island is used to highlight the tension between developer-friendly preservation laws in smaller communities like Lawrence, and the prevailing approaches to preservation controlled predominantly by city dwellers and their... View full entry
It’s like installing a two-story-high picket fence around Stonehenge — San Diego Reader
A dispute over an addition to the Salk Institute in La Jolla has ended. Last week, the Planning Commission denied an appeal claiming the proposed design ruins the historic integrity of the East Torrey Pines building. The proposed project, located at 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, increases the... View full entry
The eleven sites on the 2022 list represent a powerful illustration of expansive American history. The wide range of cultures, histories, and geographies highlighted through the 2022 list help illustrate how telling the full story can help each person see themselves reflected in our country’s multi-layered past. — The National Trust for Historic Preservation
The 2022 list of America's Most Endangered Historic Places, compiled by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, includes: Brown Chapel AME Church, Selma, AlabamaCamp Naco, Naco, ArizonaChicano/a/x Community Murals of ColoradoThe Deborah Chapel, Hartford, ConnecticutFrancisco Q. Sanchez... View full entry
Dedicated in 1972, plans are underway to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Paul Rudolph’s design for the First Church in Boston.
In 1967, a fire destroyed most of the original 1867 gothic revival church by William Ware and Henry Van Brunt. The congregation considered proposals from Marcel Breuer, Joseph Schiffer, Joseph Eldridge, and Paul Rudolph. They voted in favor of Rudolph’s design [...]
— Docomomo US
In celebration of the anniversary, several events are scheduled at the church building for this weekend, April 30th and May 1st, including an Architects Panel on Sunday from 2–4 pm. View this post on Instagram A post shared by @docomomous View full entry
Those involved with the house and the Prairie House Preservation Society expect it to be a big draw to the area for tourists, artists and the Norman community. Late last year, the Prairie House Trust bought the unusual two-bedroom, 2,100-square-foot home surrounded by open land and turned the management of it over to the nonprofit society. — The Journal Record
Greene’s sculptural creation will be turned into a museum under the scheme after being in the hands of private owners for many years. Greene’s longtime colleague at OU, and another pioneer of the highly experimental American School movement, Bruce Goff, is now also being used as a bit of a... View full entry
A trio of concerned letter writers replied to a March 31st opinion piece by The Guardian’s Owen Hatherley in which the critic declared that “hardline modern architecture is now something of a cult.” “A living city has to strike some sort of balance between avoiding the strangulation and... View full entry