Tucked into the quiet hills of Montecito, California, the Vedanta Temple emerges like a secret sanctuary for both visitors and spiritual seekers. Designed by Lutah Maria Riggs in 1956, it is a rare example of sacred architecture that blends philosophical depth, environmental sensitivity, and architectural restraint.

Sonya Sehgal is an emerging conservation professional and graduate student, pursuing a Master of Science in Historic Preservation at the University of Texas. She is the first recipient of the Theodore Prudon Education Fund Grant, and we recently spoke with her about receiving the grant and how she plans to utilize the funding to further her educational pursuits.

Expand your horizons and escape into our annual summer reads list, featuring new and on-theme architecture and design titles. And a reminder that when you purchase any of the books below through our Bookshop.org storefront, Docomomo US receives a portion of the proceeds. 

Docomomo US and Docomomo US/New York Tri-State Chapter are thrilled to announce the New York City individual and interior landmark designation of the former Whitney Museum of American Art at 945 Madison Avenue, designed by Marcel Breuer and Associates.

Docomomo US announces the return of its online auction Be:Cause Modern – the Auction for Modernism, supporting the preservation of modern architecture, landscapes, and design through principled advocacy, collaboration, and celebration. Bidding opens at 12pm EST on Friday, May 16, and runs through 9pm EST on Sunday, May 25.

Docomomo US is proud to introduce our guest editor for the Places of Worship Annual Theme: Partners for Sacred Places. We spoke with Bob Jaeger about the organization and it’s work. 

Susan Horowitz, director of preservation projects at Hamptons20Century Modern, reflects on the legacy of architect and advocate Barbara Goldberg Neski, who in 1952, became one of the first female graduates of the Bauhaus-oriented Harvard GSD program. As Neski Associates, she and her husband Julian designed 35 homes (many of which were located in the Hamptons). Throughout her decades long career, Neski was outspoken about the challenges for women in architecture.

Docomomo US is steadfast in its mission to protect our Modern heritage. We counter the recent executive order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” with a renewed commitment to telling the full and diverse stories of Modernism in America.

Howard Mumford Jones Research Professor Lizabeth Cohen adapts her Keynote Address from Preserving the Recent Past 4. "Revitalizing the Post-Covid City: What We Can Learn from the Past," was presented at the conference in Boston on March 20, 2025.

It’s March! Nominations are now open for the 2025 Modernism in America Awards, and it’s also Women's History Month, which inspired us to take a look back at the award-winning initiatives where women played a central role in commissioning, designing, restoring, documenting, educating, and advocating for our built environment. Their contributions emphasize the importance of partnerships between owners, architects and the community and the interconnectedness that originates from the lifecycle of a project.

In this month's column, Docomomo US President Katie Horak acknowledges the emotional toll of 2025's early months, marked by natural disasters, political unrest, and uncertainty. Yet hope abounds, as recovery from the Eaton and Palisades fires continues in Los Angeles, and Docomomo US looks forward to the Preserving the Recent Past (PRP) 4 conference in Boston, celebrating progress and reflecting on the ongoing preservation efforts over the last 30 years.

Take virtual tour through the recent past of Boston's Roxbury neighborhood. As part of the Preserving the Recent Past 4 conference happening in Boston this March, participants have a chance to tour the diverse Roxbury neighborhood. If you aren’t attending the conference but are local to Boston, tours are now open to the public for registration. Here is a sneak peek of some of the significant midcentury and recent past sites featured on the tour. 

The Docomomo US Board of Directors has added Nina Chmura of New Jersey as a new director, while Zoe Detweiler and Tyler Jones – both based in Los Angeles – join as student directors for 2025.

In honor of Black History Month we have compiled a list of some Black Modernist architects and designers you should know and some of the important projects they worked on. 

Docomomo US is thrilled to announce student scholarship applications are officially open for the first time through the Theodore Prudon Fund for Preservation Education Grant Program.

At a time when the effects of climate change are everywhere, we believe that our resources would be better directed by promoting the preservation of our existing historic architecture and reducing building emissions and the environmental impacts of demolition and sourcing new materials.

Our recent field trip to Boston gave us so many reasons to be excited to PRP4. Here are five reasons to bundle up and join us in Boston this March!

Docomomo US President Katie Horak addresses the heartbreaking devastation and loss of homes as well as modern heritage sites resulting from the fires that broke out in Los Angeles on January 7. At Docomomo US we stand together with our Los Angeles family.

We’re dedicating the July special edition newsletter to articles addressing the Docomomo US 2025 theme: Places of Worship. We invite article proposals that seek to explore and understand the multitude of religious, spiritual and faith-based sites across the country – illuminating their distinct styles, development, and community impact – and represent a diversity of communities, historic resources, and the individuals associated with them.

As Docomomo US closes out its third decade of education and advocacy work in the United States, Executive Director Liz Waytkus shares her thoughts on the significant issues the preservation community must confront to continue making meaningful progress.

Each holiday season, we select an image for our member holiday card that inspires and draws attention to the work of an architect, artist, or designer important to the Modern movement. This year, we highlight the work of Jane Slater Marquis (1922-2021), an American artist who worked predominantly in stained glass, completing major commissions throughout the American West.

As we conclude this year’s exploration of suburban corporate campuses, our thematic focus for 2025 shifts to the multitude of religious, spiritual and faith-based sites across the country – illuminating their distinct styles, development, and community impact. A deeper examination of this common typology furthers our understanding of Modern architecture and design in the United States.

Docomomo US and its New York Tri-State Chapter continue to successfully work to designate and protect Marcel Breuer’s iconic inverted Brutalist ziggurat, the former Whitney Museum of American Art at 945 Madison, as a New York City Individual and Interior Landmark.

Docomomo US is thrilled to announce its selection as the nonprofit beneficiary of the 21st annual DWR Champagne Chair Contest. Now through January 7, craft a mini modern chair from champagne corks and enter for your chance to win up to $1,000 in prizes from DWR. For every entry, MillerKnoll Foundation will donate $50 (up to $20,000 total) to Docomomo US.

The National Park Service has formally listed the Louis Kahn-designed Arts United Center on the National Register of Historic Places with National Significance.

It's not quite official yet (still needs approval of the Mayor and City Council), but this has been a long time coming and we are thrilled to report that Boston City Hall was approved as a City of Boston landmark by the Landmarks Commission this past Tuesday.

Wondering what to read in the new year? We've compiled 60 must-read titles on architecture and design, as well as recommended reading to get you thinking about on-theme topics for 2025 and beyond. Our Annual Theme for next year focuses on Places of Worship (more on that soon), and we're looking forward to the PRP4 conference, March 19-22, in Boston. Further afield, check out recommended reads about Los Angeles, our host city for the 2026 International Docomomo Conference.

As I write this, I join Docomomo US Executive Director Liz Waytkus and President-Elect Meredith Bzdak in Santiago, Chile, for the 18th Annual International Docomomo Conference. Convening with our friends from across the globe reminds us of the international impact of Docomomo and our place in this incredible community of scholars, practitioners, and lovers of modernism. There is already a little buzz in the air about the 19th Annual IDC, which will take place in Los Angeles in March of 2026. As an Angeleno, I can’t wait for the opportunity to welcome the international Docomomo community and all of you to this city that I love so much.

Docomomo US chapters, friend groups, and partners organized tours across the country for Tour Day 2024. Many tours explored the annual theme of Corporate Campuses, visiting sites such as Bell Labs, GM Technical Center, the Formica Headquarters, while other tours featured iconic Modern sites of different typologies, from residential to educational and beyond.

Our gift guide for modernists packs a designy punch across price points with finds for all ages, iconic originals, and a few items inspired by our 2025 visit to Boston for PRP4 (March 19-22). 

Welcome to the second installment of the 2024 Special Edition! We are excited to share the following articles and photo essay, which highlight Eero Saarinen’s outsize influence on corporate modern architecture; the impact of Formica on Cincinnati and other businesses; and how American corporate campuses influenced similar developments in Canada.

I spent an entire day wandering the atrium and manicured outdoor walkways feeling, thinking, and seeing what I imagined Eero Saarinen wanted (or didn’t want!) the inhabitants of this building to see and feel and think, my camera searching for compositions and forms that I hoped would reveal a version of the building that wasn’t the current and familiar depiction of the place. Saarinen’s design impresses as much as it provokes; the otherworldly reflections off the facade; the blissfully smooth curves of the sunken granite lobby and stairways; the linear walkways that seem to float along the perimeter of the atrium like walkways on a ship’s deck. You can’t help but feel transported – time moves differently within the space – and I wanted to try and capture this essence.

In 1949, General Motors officially announced its intention to construct a centralized product development campus, called the “General Motors Technical Center;” the site would finally co-locate all the disparate research, engineering, design and manufacturing activities that had outgrown its previous homes into one cohesive site. The press release read: “Architecturally, the buildings will be of unique design, both modern and functional in concept,” – now an enormous understatement given the legacy of the Eero Saarinen-designed campus and its influence on industrial architecture.

Whether it’s big box chain stores or anonymous manufacturing facilities, wide, flat-faced buildings are a common sight on the route into Rochester, Minnesota, from the north. About five miles from downtown, the IBM Manufacturing & Training Facility has a similar boxy massing to other buildings on the street but has a distinctive blue facade pattern. From the air, the vast scale of this building can start to be understood – in fact, when viewed from above, it resembles a computer chip. IBM Rochester is still the largest IBM facility under one roof, enclosing 3.6 million square-feet on 400 acres. In this city, IBM’s frequent moniker “Big Blue” applies to both the company and the building. Commissioned in 1956 and designed by Eero Saarinen & Associates, the opening of the building in 1958 marks a key moment in IBM’s design legacy and Minnesota’s computing industry.  

Founded in 1913, the Formica Company boasts a rich history intricately linked with the development of Cincinnati. As the company expanded, its manufacturing campus gradually moved northward from the Ohio River, mirroring the city’s own growth. The Formica® brand has made a significant impact on corporate campuses not only through its own unique architectural expansion but also by manufacturing laminate products that have furnished corporate buildings since the 1930s.

The Golden Mile can be found fifteen kilometers to the northeast of downtown Toronto, Canada and was one of the nation’s first industrial complexes that transition to commercial in the post-war area. The Golden Mile was once a place where iconic corporate campuses and companies like IBM. and others served as catalysts for economic development while supporting the growth and expansion eastwards alongside iconic planned residential subdivisions, which sprang up to house the new industrial workforce and support their modern lives. 

Docomomo US is currently seeking qualified applicants to contribute to the ongoing leadership of the organization as a one year student board member – starting on January 1, 2025, and ending on December 31, 2025 – the term is potentially renewable for one year at the discretion of the board.

A selection of recorded sessions from the 2024 National Symposium in Miami, Florida are now available to view on Vimeo.

The 80,000 square foot headquarters of Timex, the iconic American Watch company, designed by Fletcher Thompson, Inc., and opened in 2001, is under threat of demolition. The multiple award-winning building combines modern design, open floor plan democratization, and blends into the natural landscape.

The overwhelming share of responsibility in the preservation field concerns the innumerable everyday local treasures that make up the greater wealth of any community’s architectural fabric. However, in a field of advocacy where the public often remains unfamiliar with the urgency or value of conserving our Modern heritage, there is an extraordinary amount to gain from focus on exceptional monuments and their uniquely accessible interest to the public. With the potential to catalyze a broader awareness and understanding of the modernist legacy, as the outsized example of Penn Station, among others, did for our 19th- and early 20th-century inheritance, such ambassadorial sites are a tremendous asset to the modern built environment.