Docomomo US is pleased to share the following selection of articles and recorded presentations that explore an extensive range and breadth of topics under the subject of this year's thematic focus, Revisiting Urban Renewal. 

A proposed renovation to the exterior facade, lobby, and atrium of KRJDA's 60 Wall Street would turn this unique postmodern resource into another bland and generic space. 

Citing concerns about condition and repair costs, leadership of the Church of Saint Mary in Alma, Michigan is seeking to demolish the town's "most architecturally significant building," as described by William Scott Jr., biographer of William Wesley Peters, the church architect and long-time Frank Lloyd Wright associate. Local groups including Docomomo US/Michigan are advocating to save it.

In Coral Gables, an ongoing conversation concerns the beauty of our architectural heritage. Does our design sensibility begin and end in the 1920s, when the city was founded as part of the City Beautiful Movement? Or do we view our built environment as a dynamic work in progress – a “moveable feast” of diverse building styles that reflect changing standards of beauty, utility, and sustainability.

Urban and suburban development led to radical changes in the way we live, work, and gather. Docomomo US will explore the multifaceted theme of urban renewal as the 2023 annual theme seeking to revisit and better understand the complexity of the projects that were built, their positive and negative significance, and their impact today.

The elegant Historical Studies and Social Sciences Library at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, built in the early 1960s by Wallace K. Harrison, is under threat. Resulting from an exemplary collaboration between the architect of the United Nations and the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the Institute, this graceful building is a well-kept secret, deeply ensconced in the recesses of the campus, invisible from the road and known only to its users. The minimalist vocabulary of the interior is striking, but the library's most salient feature is its inventive roof structure, which is at the core of the current crisis. 

Docomomo US/Chicago and coalition rally to stop a major threat posed to a Chicagoland modern campus.