Neo-Classicism as a style made its real debut in the 1760s after several stillbirths...By the late 1770s, neo-Classicism had evolved into the graceful iteration we see in the Salon, and with its references to the classical world acquired a new and somewhat unanticipated meaning in the bargain: — NYT

A training barracks used by Roman gladiators and the 2,000-year-old mausoleum of the Emperor Augustus could be restored with money from the Saudi royal family, in the latest effort by Italy to secure funding for its crumbling cultural heritage.

In a deal brokered by Ignazio Marino, the mayor of Rome, the Saudi royals are to provide millions of euros to pay for the restoration of some of the capital's neglected monuments. — telegraph.co.uk

A Catholic church, a theater and one of the nearly 50 schools closed by Chicago Public Schools last year are among the most endangered buildings in the city, a local preservation group said today.

Preservation Chicago today released its Chicago 7 list, an annual collection of seven local, historic properties in danger of being lost to demolition or decay. — chicagobusiness.com

The historic Grand Palais is due for a contemporary touch-up from French firm LAN, who recently won the competition to restructure and expand the monument...Looking beyond the museum's Beaux-Arts style, LAN highlights the museum's durability and flexibility in an effort to bring out the building's full potential. — bustler.net

The Modernism in America Awards have announced this year's winners. The national awards program highlights the documentation, preservation and re-use of modern buildings, structures and landscapes in the U.S. or U.S. territory [...] One Award of Excellence was given in the categories Design, Advocacy, and Inventory/Survey. Five Citations of Merit were also awarded.

Winners will receive their prizes during the Docomomo US National Symposium on March 13-15, 2014 in Houston, Texas. — bustler.net

Rio de Janeiro is set to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games and there are two starkly different visions of what that will mean for the "marvelous city," as it is known[...]

"Instead of creating a space of conviviality, a space of shared culture, of community, of conversation, you are going to have this very isolated element where after 5 o'clock in the afternoon, it's going to be dead. You are creating banks, parking lots, Trump towers," Gaffney said. "It's been rezoned for 50-story buildings." — npr.org

What a National Register [of Historic Places] listing really means is a 20% federal tax credit for structural investing, along with any state tax incentives, but that's often not enough to make preservation a more appealing option over razing and starting over. [...]

Listing on the National Register certainly gives something of an economic incentive for preservation, as well as a national profile for these sites [...]

However, what historic sites ultimately need is sustainable funding. — Atlas Obscura

vado retro is moved to wonder "with the rash of notable building demolition that has and continues to occur, is there a checklist of what makes a building valuable enough not to demolish?...is it because buildings are more about image and visuals than spatial experience that we are willing to rid ourselves of award winning pieces of architecture/art?...maybe buildings don't really matter that much"

Hundreds of colonial-era structures have been destroyed in recent years to make way for modern ones like the Centrepoint tower. Completed last year, the glassy 25-story skyscraper looms over a historic block that includes the dilapidated 100-year-old Supreme Court building and City Hall, which, with its white paint and intricately tiered roof, draws easy comparisons to a wedding cake.

The condition of many older buildings makes them targets for tear-down. — latimes.com

South Australia's Office for Design and Architecture hosted the Royal Adelaide Hospital Design Competition in a process to redesign the historic Royal Adelaide Hospital site, which will be vacated by 2016.

The jury awarded one First Prize and a joint Second Prize. Thousands of public voters picked a People's Choice Award, and a Students Competition winner was also awarded. — bustler.net

Its style is “brutalist,” which looks exactly like it sounds: big, blockish, hulking. Basically, a fortress of concrete... But what if these homely structures are actually tomorrow’s historic architecture? What if we just don’t appreciate them yet, and later generations will embrace them even though we think they’re monstrosities? — radioboston.wbur.org

There’s a reason it’s a struggle to save buildings like the Astrodome. They were built less than 50 years ago, the usual cutoff for inclusion on the government’s National Register of Historic Places... it’s relatively young buildings like these, from the 1960s, ’70s, and even ’80s, that preservationists are fighting to save. And in doing so, they are having to confront a tough question: What does tomorrow’s historic architecture look like? — bostonglobe.com

Ann Beha Architects from Boston, MA was selected by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) for a major rehabilitation project of the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece.

Walter Gropius and consulting architect Pericles A. Sakellarios designed the iconic embassy from 1959-1961. The building is also listed as a protected architectural landmark. — bustler.net

The only geodesic dome movie theater in the world, Becket’s design was inspired by Buckminster Fuller—and the nation’s midcentury obsession with landing on the moon. Built to resemble a giant spacecraft, the Dome boasted futuristic floating stairways—a first for any movie theater at the time. Simultaneously projected images using three 35mm cameras were so cutting-edge, the Dome’s own original projector—the Norelco Universal—would win a Technical Academy Award in 1963 [...]. — Los Angeles Confidential Magazine