I’m on a walking tour with two dozen international architects and urban designers, as we imagine a theoretical future for Havana. The walk is part of a charrette—an exercise that gives professionals and community members a voice on urban development when there is no formal mechanism to do so, as has been the case in crumbling Havana. [...]

As the Cuban government slowly loosens restrictions on private enterprise, one wonders if the gentrification of Havana is inevitable. — Hakai Magazine

Though the [Vanna Venturi] house has been nominated for the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, Stecura said it is being sold without any protections against alterations inside or out. [...]

Cross your fingers and hope for the best. [...]

there is no broader strategy in place — in the museum world or among the nation's leading historic preservation groups — to protect the most important works of 20th-century residential architecture from the vagaries of the market — Christopher Hawthorne – latimes.com

“Downton Abbey is just down the road from us," Mockler-Barret said. “And we’re so jealous of Lord and Lady Carnarvon. Although they won’t tell us how much they’ve made from 'Downton Abbey,' I think they’ve done quite well out of it.”

But that’s the fairytale. The residents of Milton Manor will be happy if they can just patch up their inheritance and avoid the humiliation and disgrace of losing the ancestral seat after 250 years of family ownership. — marketplace.org

With The Frick Collection’s garden saved, the museum is moving forward with a new preservationist-friendly plan for expansion...The Frick Collection, looking to realize a revised expansion for the institution, has put forward a request for qualifications to a chosen group of architectural firms.

The Frick plans to announce its selected finalist later this year, and plans to reveal designs in 2017. — Observer

A “strikingly elegant” office building in the north east of England is set to be demolished after losing its protected status just a year on from being listed. It will be the latest in a series of important modernist buildings in the area to be flattened in recent years. — independent.co.uk

The Shukhov Tower, a 1920s broadcast transmission tower in Moscow that is a landmark of modernist structural engineering, has been placed on the 2016 World Monuments Fund Watch list of endangered global cultural heritage sites.

Activists in Moscow organized two days of events over the weekend to observe the tower’s 94th birthday [...]

At a Kremlin meeting last December, Mr. Putin praised activists for rallying to save cultural heritage sites and dressed down officials for not doing enough. — nytimes.com

The Venice Lagoon is the most endangered heritage site in Europe, declared the pan-European heritage organisation Europa Nostra at an event today [...].

Rising sea levels, swelling number of tourists, large cruise ships in the lagoon, the erosion of the sea bed, dredging deeper channels and the lack of an agreed management plan for Venice has created a perfect storm of threats to the city’s preservation.   — theartnewspaper.com

A recently completed restoration project [of Spain's Matrera Castle] has provoked an incredulous reaction from some locals and a Spanish conservation group...

However, Carlos Quevedo, the architect who oversaw the restoration of the castle...pointed out that the project had been painstaking, professional, and legal...'I do think that some basic, accurate information can help avoid some of the prejudices that spring from a simple image.' — The Guardian

“What I realized is that they have very little power,” Mr. Viet, 28, said of his fellow urban planners. “The fates of the buildings were being decided by someone else.”

[...] when Ho Chi Minh City’s property market perked up after a slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis, dozens of prewar buildings — spanning the colonial to modernist eras — were razed to make room for new ones. As the city’s modest skyline grows, residents are watching with a mixture of awe and trepidation. — nytimes.com

Most modern Chinatowns are serving less as a singular manifestation of Chinese-American life than as a central gathering place for people to experience Chinese culture...And indeed, Chinatowns themselves were often built on the ground of former ethnic enclaves that had organically dissolved...But as Chicago’s Chinatown demonstrates, this is not a predictable story. More than a hundred years after its founding, the neighborhood has a dynamism that can’t be neatly scripted. — Next City

The [Planning] department completed a draft report last month on how to expand the existing landmark designation to include aspects of the interior that date back to Wright’s 1948 design. [...]

“If anything, the inside is more important than the exterior,” said Turner, a professor emeritus of art at Stanford University. “It’s one of Wright’s most exquisite designs, and it’s almost exactly the way it was originally.” — sfchronicle.com

...it's tempting to turn cartwheels over the Chicago City Council's vote to grant permanent landmark status to Marina City, the city within a city best known for its iconic corncob-shaped towers.

Marina City was a landmark building that lacked official landmark status and was therefore vulnerable — if not to demolition, then to insensitive additions that chipped away at the sculpted beauty of its curving concrete. — Chicago Tribune

During an excavation for a new office development at 21 Lime Street, a team from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) found the millimeter-thin fresco nearly 20 feet below street level. Dating to the late 1st century AD, and the first decades of London, it’s one of the earliest surviving frescos from Roman Britain. [...]

The rare, ornate wall painting is likely to have decorated a reception room for party guests at the home of a wealthy Roman citizen. — hyperallergic.com

"Small houses can tell big stories," read the apt white words on the pamphlet's blue cover.

The shotgun house's Ocean Park neighborhood had once been full of such modest dwellings. It was a working-class place — home to carpenters and painters and people who washed other people's laundry.

But that kind of history most often is erased over time, as little houses make way for bigger ones. Ordinary people often don't chronicle their lives — and when they leave, their stories do too. — LA Times

As an architectural historian, Ms. Clark, 30, has studied buildings throughout New York City in pursuit of her doctorate. [...]

Working for JDS, Ms. Clark felt she could have more than a theoretical effect on architectural history. “I think real estate in many ways is the story of New York, how the city grows and changes,” she said. [...]

As soon as JDS considers acquiring a property, Ms. Clark heads to the archives ... to start developing a case for or against the project. — nytimes.com