The economic boom and the optimism of the postwar years gave birth to new mobility opportunities and tourism, like never before, became a cultural mass phenomenon that contributed to creating brand-new identities and shaping the culture and image of places and people. This session explores these innovative designs, how they have survived (or not), the fight to save them, and how renovations and restorations have led to their continued use. 

This session discusses postwar resources in Miami-Dade County as well as the legacy of the U.S. General Services Administration Postwar Federal Building in the National Register of Historic Places.

Speakers: Allan Shulman and Sarah Cody, Beth L. Savage and Kim Daileader

Moderator: Charlotte Von Moos

This session discusses tropical brutalism.

Speakers: Isabella Leite Trindade; Anne-Marie Russell; Jason Alread, AIA, LEED AP

Moderator: Jean-François Lejeune

The talks in this session touch upon the search and design of spaces where queer identities are allowed to perform and flourish. They focus on the ways in which these spaces work to shield and provide safe haven against class-based, cultural, societal, and urban pressures. The safe havens discussed work both in tandem and in tension with the existing context of the built environment they inhabit – this context being, at one end, present-day architecture culture or, on the other, the urban development of the city.

Speakers: Jacqueline Taylor, Chuy Barba-Bonilla 
Moderator: Sophie Juneau

This session will explore two facets of deign within the adaptation of iconic Modern structures.

Miami’s Taj Majal: The Pan American Regional Headquarters Building
Richard J. Heisenbottle, FAIA 

Preserving Modernism: Lever House and the Sustainability of a Landmark
Amy Garlock and Karen Stone 

This session will offer an exploration of the roots of local modernism in Florida and the Caribbean through the analysis of the works by significant architects, such as Alfred Browning Parker and Marion Sims Wyeth.  

The Gulf of Mexico: The Other Mediterranean? Elements of Tradition and Modernity (in the Work of Eugenio Batista and Luis Barragan)
Silvia Aloiso 

The Tropical Ranch: Examining the Ranch Style in Palm Beach
Marie Penny 

How South Florida’s Geology Gave Rise to its Regionalist Sense of Modernism
William H. Arthur IV, AIA, NCARB 

Friends and colleagues reflect on the legacy of Jean-Louis Cohen, historian, curator, and Sheldon H. Solow Chair of History of Architecture at New York University, who passed away unexpectedly in the summer of 2023.

Flying in from Delft, Netherlands, the location of Docomomo’s original founding, Docomomo International Chair Uta Pottgiesser will present the closing keynote.