In celebration of great photography and modernism, Docomomo US is creating limited edition sets of twelve postcards featuring each of the winning photographs. Pre-order a set (or two) today!

By the 1970s, modern architecture in Hawaii had donned many different garbs. To explore the various ways modernism was interpreted in 1970s Hawaii, the chapter has created a Google Earth map of 1970s sites throughout the state. Additionally, Docomomo US/Hawaii's annual walking tour (virtual this year!) will explore the theme “The 70s Turn 50” by highlighting buildings constructed in Honolulu between 1970-1972. These five sites, voted on by chapter members, reflect the many trends architects and designers were experimenting with at the time. 

We are expanding our popular real estate round up to include commercial sites! Although we have included commercial sites from time to time in the past, given the changing nature of real estate these days, we decided to put an extra focus on commercial sites that are in need of good stewards who will recognize their architectural value. Help us find new owners who will be the right match for these mid 20th century buildings and landscapes. 

Docomomo US is thrilled to welcome our newest regional chapter, Docomomo US/Colorado. The chapter encompasses the entire state of Colorado, with members all along the Front Range and Western Slope. 

Since taking ownership in 2012, United Therapautics has claimed it would reuse the remaining portions of Paul Rudolph's Burroughs Wellcome building. It came as a surprise to many earlier this month when news came that a demolition order had been pulled. Preservationists have rallied in support of the building.

The Hirshhorn Museum, the first modernist building on the National Mall, is getting an overhaul of its sunken sculpture garden as well as improvements to the building envelope. This will be the second time the garden has been redesigned. Docomomo US and Docomomo US/DC continue to participate as part of the Section 106 process.

Docomomo US is excited to be launching its first online auction this November. The auction entitled be:cause modern will feature one-of-a-kind items, drawings, book, experiences and modern home stays. The be:cause modern auction will benefit the ongoing work of Docomomo US and support its mission during the challenging times we find ourselves in.

Gio Ponti´s contact with North America dates from 1928 when he was invited to participate in an interior and furniture design exhibition organized by Macy´s department store, but it was only at the beginning of the 1950s that Ponti would return his attention to the American continent. During that period, his many travels included Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, and the United States, and were marked by the enunciation of some of his key design principles that would be taken further in the decades to come.

Googie design was a hot topic of conversation in the summer of 2019, when the question of preserving Tom’s Diner was a frequent headline. The Diner was determined eligible for the National Register of Historic Places more than ten years ago and featured in local publications, but the term Googie was not widely known or understood even though the building was highly recognizable and well loved by many.  Fortunately, through community support and creative partnerships the most intact Armet and Davis design in Colorado survived and is set to thrive again soon.  

The design of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is a masterpiece of the Modern Movement in architecture. It is the foundational, break-out design by I.M. Pei that kicked off his extraordinary career. 

The adoption of Modern architecture is a ubiquitous feature of most American cities following the Second World War. However, the preferences and architectural palettes within the Modern movement varied considerably based on the tastes of locals and the architects they commissioned. The City of Fort Collins is using the work of northern Colorado architect William Robb to better understand its local trends within the Modern Movement.

In 1939, Elizabeth Paepcke came to ski in Aspen. She would return in 1945 with her husband, Walter, a wealthy Chicagoan, starting a long relationship that would introduce Bauhaus modernism to the once quiet ski town.

On July 23, 1954, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) was awarded the contract to design and construct the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The site itself was chosen from over 580 submissions by a Site Selection Committee that included Reserve Brigadier General Charles A. Lindberg, while over 300 architectural firms applied for the commission – one of the largest government construction projects of the Cold War era. Constructed during Eisenhower’s presidency, the Air Force Academy was intended to complement the established military academies West Point and Annapolis.

Willert Park Courts, the first housing complex for African Americans in Buffalo and an early example of International Style design, will receive the Docomomo US 2020 Modernism in America Advocacy Award of Excellence. The organization's top advocacy prize honors the work of Preservation Buffalo Niagara (PBN) and the Michigan Street Preservation Corporation (MSPC) who for over 15 years maintained their stance that the complex is “one of the single most historic places in the City of Buffalo.”

Docomomo US presents the twelve winning photos of the inaugural "I Spy Modernism” Architectural Photography Competition.

This historic context statement was prepared for the City of Los Angeles Department of City Planning, Office of Historic Resource as a part of the SurveyLA initiative, the largest and most comprehensive survey ever completed by an American city. Architectural historian Daniel Paul provides an overview of Late Modern architecture, its character-defining features, and selected subtypes.

On August 7, 2020, I went to the estate sale at the former home of midcentury American designers, Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman. It felt almost like visiting a house museum — one that was open to the public for only three days. It was akin visiting the Eames house, frozen in time as Ray left it when she passed away. It was rather magical to be in the Ackerman’s home and see their backyard studio where so much of their work had been imagined and created.

American Architecture in the 1970s was fraught with divergent reactions to Modernism and responses to sociopolitical and environmental crises. The decade was one of exploration, experimentation, and reckoning that would shape the directions of architecture through remainder of the twentieth century. As the 70s turn 50, we are faced with the new task of trying to comprehend and contextualize these buildings, sites, and landscapes in order to steward them into the future.

An energetic D.C. real estate mogul has swooped into Buffalo to bring the city’s tallest building, SOM’s Marine Midland Center, back to life. The result is an unfocused mish-mash of interventions on what once exemplified the sophistication of its original architects and their client.

As 2020 marks the first year that the 1970s turn 50 years old, we find ourselves seemingly in the same place as in 2010, 2000, 1990, and the beginning of each past decade: Having to make the case that buildings and sites that seem so young can be considered historic. Just as the public has gained an appreciation for Midcentury Modern and the preservation community has developed the intellectual and technical expertise to evaluate and preserve 1950s and 1960s resources, we are now at the starting point of a new decade needing to reestablish these baselines. Like the previous decades, there will be places from the 1970s that are important and worthy of preservation. Our eyes and personal tastes will gradually adjust to see the beauty in what many now consider to be outdated, ugly, and mundane.

In an effort to celebrate and better understand the 1970s, Docomomo US/Northern California has embarked on a project to map the buildings, sites, and landscapes of the era in Northern California. Some of the buildings mapped are iconic examples of Modernism in the region, while others are more controversial or diverge from Modernism.

In 1956 Evelyn and Jerome Ackerman purchased a home in Culver City and converted a portion of it into a design studio. This Friday through Sunday, August 7-9, an estate sale will be held of the home where they lived and created for more than 60 years. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have a piece of their life work and items they collected and cherished.

Whether you are a longstanding member of Docomomo US or have yet to join, we are grateful that you are here and that you care about preserving our modern legacy. Today we are asking you to take the next step and join or renew your membership by August 31 to help us hit our goal of 100 members in the next 30 days.

Hidden in plain sight lie hundreds of forgotten Cliff May homes in the heart of Las Vegas. Architect Cliff May’s designs first appeared in Las Vegas in 1954 with the construction of a pair of identical homes on Van Patten Place, a half-mile west of Las Vegas Boulevard. That same year, Cliff May’s take on  modernism would be brought to the masses with the purchase of 103 homesites by Burns Construction from land developer Ernest Becker. Located in the third unit of the relatively young Charleston Heights Tract, the subdivision drew its name from the elevation created by the large fault line which runs north/south through west-central Las Vegas. 

In 1962 the City of Henderson commissioned the Palm Springs architecture firm of Wexler and Harrison to design a new, state-of-the-art City Hall. Incorporated only nine years earlier, Henderson already found itself outgrowing its original City Hall – a barracks structure dating from the construction of Boulder Dam that was moved from Boulder City. George Tate, who had begun practicing architecture in Henderson in 1960, acted as the local architect on the new steel structure. 

Due east of the Las Vegas strip lies one of the most well-known treasure troves of midcentury homes in Las Vegas: Paradise Palms. In 1960, fresh off their build of nearby Sunrise Hospital, local developers Irwin Molasky and Merv Adelson (who later in the decade would form Lorimar Television Productions) formed Paradise Development Corporation and Paradise Homes, with the intention of opening up Las Vegas’ Paradise Valley east of Maryland Parkway along Desert Inn Road for development and creating a wide-range of upscale housing on a 720-acre plot of vacant desert.

Legendary midcentury architect Paul Revere Williams had a long-standing involvement with Las Vegas that began in the early 1940s and lasted through the 1960s. Williams, widely regarded as the first African American member of the AIA in 1923, had built a successful Southern California practice designing over 2,000 residences ranging from humble bungalows to sprawling estates for Hollywood’s elite. 

Architects A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons made a successful name for themselves in the midcentury era as the preferred architects for prolific developer Joseph Eichler. While not exclusively employed by Eichler, it was their work with another well-known West Coast builder that would first bring them to the Las Vegas market.

What will you find if you wander off the Las Vegas "Strip"? Longtime residents and preservation advocates Dave Cornoyer and Heidi Swank will introduce you to "the other Las Vegas," full of midcentury charm that visitors don't commonly see.

Last year, Docomomo US and our chapters focused our attention on the work of diverse designers through our annual advocacy theme "The Diversity of Modernism." Since then, we have continued to document and represent architects and designers of color and women who made significant contributions to the Modern Movement. The July 2020 Special Edition newsletter is dedicated to highlighting some of these designers. Thank you to our chapters and partners for their continued efforts with this, and a special thank you to Jerome A. Robinson for his contributions. 

This summer we are all about the at-home amenities. Luckily, there are plenty of modern homes that offer just that. Light-filled interior spaces, large windows that bring the outdoor surroundings in, and outdoor living space are just some of the features to be found in this summer real estate round up.

The Meyer House in Huntsleigh, Missouri, was designed by Charles Eames and Robert T. Walsh. John and Alice Meyer commissioned them after seeing another of their designs, St. Mary’s Church, in Helena, Alabama. The playfulness of Charles and Ray Eames’ later designs for items such as chairs, textiles, tables, and children’s toys, that they are most well known for, are clearly evident.

The Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia is well-stocked with modernist homes of impressive architectural pedigrees. Nestled on Glengarry Road, there is the Dorothy Shipley White Residence, designed by Mitchell/Giurgola Architects and completed in 1963. Preservationists kept an eye on the house for many years as it deteriorated, and worked together to gain local landmark status for the home.

Docomomo US would like to send some positive spirit and honor the graduating class of 2020 by offering all recent graduates one free year of membership.

The Iconic Houses Network has just launched Icons at Risk, a new international initiative to preserve the world’s most endangered architecturally important modern houses.

Willert Park Courts is significant culturally, historically, socially and architecturally as the first housing complex for African Americans in Buffalo and as an early International Style design, but its demolition has been in the works for many years under the ownership of the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority.

In keeping with our latest Regional Spotlight, Making Houston Modern, here are some modern Houston homes on the market that we would love to see find a sympathetic buyer. 

When Howard Barnstone landed in Texas in 1948, fresh out of Yale, it seemed as if he and Gertrude Levy were fated to meet in Houston’s contemporary art scene. With a job offer to teach at the new University of Houston architecture school, Howard moved to town and settled in. That was the opening scene in the marriage play starring Gertrude Levy and Howard Barnstone.

A number of important Houston Jewish families were drawn to Braeswood in its first decades, including the Gordons, Rauches, Brochsteins, Battelsteins, and Kaufmans, and they often employed Jewish architects such as Joseph Finger, Irving Klein, and Lenard Gabert, as well as Barnstone, to design their houses.

Barnstone’s office produced multiple schemes for the proposed Menil art center, which would house art storage primarily, along with offices, a conference room, and a small public gallery. The program grew to include a library for 3,700 volumes of “spiritual and philosophical” books, a workshop, and a small theater.