[On Thursday, November 5], the Commission on Chicago Landmarks unanimously voted to recommend Chicago Landmark status to the Marina City complex. [...]

A resolution will be drafted and will head to the Chicago City Council in December for a final vote. — chicago.curbed.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

Marina City residents support landmark designation because it would help upgrade the complex's concrete exterior through the city's "Adopt a Landmark" zoning provision [...]

The measure lets developers build more floor space in return for funding improvements to official city landmarks.

Landmark status would allow the Commission on Chicago Landmarks to regulate changes to the exterior of Marina City — chicagotribune.com

A New Zealand man has set out to document and photograph former Pizza Hut locations across the planet, specifically looking for the pizza chain’s dine-in locations with the familiar red roof. [...]

“The strangest thing may be the funeral homes or mortuaries. It's probably the last thing you'd expect to see a Pizza Hut become but there are several dotted around” — chron.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

The organization seeking to turn the David and Gladys Wright House in Phoenix into an educational and cultural center filed for historic landmark protection last week, seeking official status for a 6.1-acre site before following through with plans to open it to the public. [...]

The designation would provide preservationists with a nice ending to the long saga of this spiral residence, which at one point in 2012 was slated for demolition. — curbed.com

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