2023 National Symposium New Haven: Complexities of the Modern American City

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New Haven, CT
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2023 National Symposium New Haven: Complexities of the Modern American City

Join us in New Haven, Connecticut from June 21-24, 2023 and experience one of the country’s most densely woven collections of mid-century art, design, and architecture. As we take in this cultural epicenter, we will consider the triumphs and complexities surrounding the design and building of the Modern city and the impacts on our collective communities.

The Call for Abstracts is now open, deadline for submission is January 12, 2023. 

Sponsoring the National Symposium presents a prime opportunity to support national preservation efforts of modern structures while at the same time promoting your own brand to hundreds of like-minded preservationists. Consider supporting the National Symposium with a sponsorship today. 

View sponsorship opportunities.

Please visit the National Symposium main page for information about schedule, speakers, tours, registration, hotel information, and more, as it is announced, or sign up for the Docomomo US newsletter to receive the latest updates.

The 2023 National Symposium is a joint partnership of Docomomo US and its New York/Tri-State chapter along with the New Haven Preservation Trust, Preservation Connecticut, Yale University and the CT State Historic Preservation Office.

2023 National Symposium New Haven

Featured Sites

Hotel Marcel

Originally designed for the Armstrong Rubber Company in 1968 and later inhabited by Pirelli Tire Co., the Hotel Marcel is a fantastic embodiment of the design ideals held by architect Marcel Breuer. The building is composed of a two-story research and development structure at grade, with four stories of administrative offices “hanging” above. Between these two building parts is a 2-story gap, giving the administrative tower portion the illusion of suspension. Enveloping the entire building are pre-cast concrete panels of varying scale and design, depending on the function they enclose. The panels provide protection from the sun, a Breuer preoccupation, and give the façade a tremendous physicality and depth. The end result is a continually changing impression of the building, depending on the day, season, and weather. After over 20 years of vacancy and continuous advocacy efforts, the building reopened as the Hotel Marcel in the spring of 2022.

Featured Sites

Knights of Columbus Building

Situated adjacent to the Oak Street Connector, the architects designed a structure that has a scale compatible with the highway—a major change in scale for architects at that time. The corner stairtowers are reinforced concrete and provide the major structural support for the building. The steel beams spanning between the towers carry the floor loads but not the structure of the building, thus the steel did not have to be fireproofed and exists in the building in its truest form. The Knights of Columbus tower forms an entryway to the city and gives definition to the skyline. (New Haven Modern website)

Featured Sites

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

The construction of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, designed by SOM principal Gordon Bunshaft and completed in 1963, marked a radical shift in architectural aesthetic of the Yale University campus, which was as a whole was styled according to a common collegiate Gothic formula. Known for his glass-and-steel curtain wall designs, Bunshaft knew that large windows would be a risky inclusion and necessitate careful design planning to protect a remarkably fragile collection. The decision to grid the façade in large 1-1/4”-thick Vermont marble panes was borne out of the need for muted light that would not put the building’s contents at risk. The library is a visually bold and entirely unique building that is well used, well known, and well cared for -- all hallmarks of successful architecture.

Featured Sites

Samuel F.B. Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, Yale University

Samuel F.B. Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges at Yale University are, physically, two independent residential colleges. Conceptually, however, they are derived from the same formula and share the same aesthetic components, thus architecturally merging the two colleges into one. Morse and Stiles are composed of clusters of rooms organized around asymmetrical courtyards, resulting in a back-to-back abstracted-pentagon site plan. The polygonal, interlocking two-and-four-story forms are pierced by two towers- one eleven stories (for Stiles, at the western end of the complex), the other fourteen stories (belonging to Morse, at the eastern end). A reinforced rubble aggregate concrete wall system was used for the entire complex, with large pieces of granite set in tan mortar -- what Saarinen referred to as "masonry without masons." Due to the continuity of the clusters, the colleges take on a monumental quality and appear fortress-like yet engaging at the same time. While the walls serve a structural purpose, they primarily serve an aesthetic role, with an additional function of visually connecting the colleges to the surrounding neo-Gothic campus architecture and referencing the complexity and organic growth of Medieval Italian hill towns. At the same time, however, the structures come across as a completely Modern interpretation of these archetypes and stand independently from all other Yale and New Haven structures.

Featured Sites

Davis S. Ingalls Hockey Rink

Designed by Eero Saarinen and completed in 1958, the David S. Ingalls Hockey Rink at Yale University is an extraordinary building, a highpoint in expressive modern architecture. Commissioned to design the rink, Saarinen developed a uniquely sculptural building, resembling something like a slithering beast, with 2,900 seats set stadium fashion around a 200' x 85' skating area. Saarinen wanted to bring people into the rink on the southern, campus side and he wanted the movement of the skaters toward the goals to follow that processional route. The curved form also sweeps the observer along and into the action. The great arching spine of the building is visible and dominant inside and out, with the central arch reaching 75 feet in height and cantilevering out 40' on each end to support the roof over the entrances.

Featured Sites

Yale Center for British Art

Designed by Louis I. Kahn, one of the most significant American architects of the twentieth century, the building embodies the masterful realization of architectural ideas he had previously explored in notable commissions, such as the Yale University Art Gallery extension, Phillips Exeter Academy Library, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Kimbell Art Museum. Lauded for its intimate gallery spaces, noble courts, restrained palette of materials, and delicate handling of daylight, the building was awarded the 2005 American Institute of Architect’s prestigious Twenty-Five Year Award.

Featured Sites

Yale University Art Gallery

Louis I. Kahn’s Yale University Art Gallery is a simple, unadorned modern structure. The building’s overall plan is two conjoined rectangles, with a facade of glass and brick. On the northeast and northwest facades various rectangular pieces of glass interlock to form a curtain wall, while the southwest facade is of solid brick with projecting stone courses. A sculpture court is also incorporated into the building’s exterior. The gallery is an important visual and cultural presence at Yale and in the community of New Haven. The building functions as a Modernist addition to the original 1928 Yale University Art Gallery.

Featured Sites

Yale University Art and Architecture Building

The Yale University Art and Architecture Building was designed by architect Paul Rudolph to hold a combined art and architecture curriculum, including graphic design and city planning. Previously, all of these departments were housed separately in the Yale Art Gallery, Weir Hall, and Street Hall on Chapel Street. The seven-story building (with 37 changes in level) anchors its corner site with its monumental slabs of corrugated concrete. The interior features two large open spaces, one serving as a gallery and meeting room on the main floor, the other housing the architecture studios on the fourth and fifth floors. Rudolph arranged the rooms around these open spaces in a pinwheel-like pattern. To give the walls a distinctive texture, Rudolph invented a new technique: workers poured concrete into ribbed forms, and then with hammers smashed the ribs to reveal the complex aggregate. Architect critic Paul Goldberger later called the it a “dynamic sculptural building,” a “disciplined formal statement, free of the wild eccentricities of many sculpturally active buildings yet in the view of many critics possessing a drama that seemed, to many, to be almost a summary statement of modern architecture.”

Featured Sites

Survey of Modern Architecture in New Haven: Phases II & III

The Survey Award of Excellence is given for the Survey of Modern Architecture in New Haven Website. In selecting the project, the jury noted the very considerable amount of thoughtful work that went into the handsome design, organization and public accessibility of the website. The survey documented 124 examples of Modernist buildings built between 1930-1980. These buildings were then added to New Haven’s Historic Resources Survey that already included 6,000 historic structures. The New Haven Preservation Trust’s intent for completing and making this survey publicly accessible was to “invigorate the community of New Haven’s understanding and appreciation of the rich concentration of 20th-century Modernist architecture” and lay the groundwork for the preservation of “one of the country’s most aggressive modern building programs of the post-World War II era.”

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