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. 

What are adequate assessment tools for our cultural and built postwar heritage? Given contemporary pressures like resiliency, climate change, and development, how can these evaluation criteria be reframed productively to meet current and future intertwining objectives? This session will explore the General Services Administration’s (GSA) 2023 revised Modern-era determination of eligibility tool (DOE Tool) and the recent efforts by Miami-Dade County’s heritage survey to discuss these critical topics.

"Heritage at Risk: Exploring Postwar Resources in Miami-Dade County"
Allan Shulman and Sarah Cody

"Celebrating the U.S. General Services Administration Postwar Federal Building Legacy in the National Register of Historic Places Using its Modern Era Assessment Tool"
Beth L. Savage and Kim Daileader

Why did Brutalism flourish in (sub)tropical regions and is the public perception changing? Ranging from Brazil to Florida and even Arizona, the three papers argue that the tropical conditions made Brutalism an expression of extraverted and vital energy, often in symbiosis with nature. The papers will emphasize that, far from being an international language, Tropical Brutalism adapted itself to the many regional realities and thus developed a wealth of architectural expression of concrete materiality whose future they will investigate.

"Brazilian Brutalism: Art, Technique, Aesthetic, and Malleable Plasticity"
Isabella Leite Trindade

"Tropical Brutalism: A Tale of Two Cities"
Anne-Marie Russell

"Heavy Constructions of Light"
Jason Alread, AIA, LEED AP

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.