On March 13-16, 2019, 350 preservationists attended the Preserving the Recent Past 3 conference in Los Angeles to share the latest strategies for identifying, protecting, and conserving significant structures and sites from the post-World War II era.
Program
The Conference program included three tracks of presentations on advocacy challenges and preservation strategies, history and context and technical conservation issues and solutions for post-World War II resources. Presentation sessions ended Friday with a closing session and reception at the Getty Conservation Institute. Full and half day tours provided participants the opportunity to visit preservation and recent past sites throughout the area.
Final program information is available here.
Building on a legacy
In concurrent presentation sessions, plenary talks, a pre-conference symposium, and tours, Preserving the Recent Past 3 built upon the groundbreaking prior conferences—Preserving the Recent Past (1995), and Preserving the Recent Past 2 (2000)—to address key issues in the preservation of modern historic resources. Much has changed in the two decades since these important events. A variety of resources have reached fifty years of age; innovation continues in the treatment of postwar materials and assemblies; and new survey techniques for suburban and urban landscapes have emerged. Buildings and sites from this period reflect the dynamism, creativity, and tensions of the society that created them. They tell stories—of mass suburbanization and urban disinvestment and reinvestment, of multiple and successive modern styles, innovative products, and new social and activist movements.
Topics
- rehabilitation and reuse strategies for recent past buildings and sites
- conservation issues, sustainability and solutions for post-World War II resources
- techniques for surveying recent past neighborhoods and commercial districts
- advocacy challenges and opportunities for the recent past
- historic trends and themes related to recent past buildings, sites, and landscapes
- significant postwar era sites of underserved communities
- new digital approaches to documenting and interpreting recent past sites
- Postmodernism, Brutalism, postwar period revivals, and questions of style
PRP3 Principal Sponsors:
Glulam Sponsors:
Aluminum Sponsors:
Concrete Sponsors:
Cooperating Partners:
American Institute of Architects — Historic Resources Committee
Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation
Association for Preservation Technology International
California Office of Historic Preservation
California Preservation Foundation
ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Twentieth Century Heritage
National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers
National Council for Preservation Education
Society for Commercial Archeology
Society of Architectural Historians