Announcing the Winners of the 2024 Modernism in America Awards
Docomomo US is pleased to announce sixteen recipients of the 2024 Modernism in America Awards. Now in its 11th year, the Awards celebrate the documentation, preservation and reuse of Modern buildings, structures and landscapes built in the United States or on U.S. territory and recognize building owners, design teams, individuals, and preservation organizations that have made significant efforts to retain, restore, and advocate for the aesthetic and cultural value of such places.
This year’s award-winning initiatives truly went above and beyond, taking on herculean tasks to provide us with shared community assets, a sense of play in our design, and iconic Modern spaces adaptable to current day needs.
The awardees were selected by a distinguished panel of experts led by jury chair Gail Kennard, president of LA-based Kennard Design Group, the legacy firm of her father, Modernist architect Robert Kennard. Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Senior Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, landscape historian Steven Keylon, and architect and freelance journalist James Russell, FAIA round out the group. Speaking on the projects recognized, Kennard stated her hope that “twenty to thirty years from now, people will look back and appreciate that these sites are still around and serving a purpose and be glad that someone had the foresight to preserve them.”
The Commercial Design category awardees deserve special mention this year. Despite the question marks hanging over commercial office space in a post-Covid world, these teams forged ahead. With a light touch, attention to details and playful pops of color, Lever House, Mariners Medical Office Building, and King Liberty Center show that well-designed spaces can be adaptable to current day needs. It is a plus to see property owners who value retaining Modern design details without the need to put a new stamp on the design or white-wash historic elements.
Earning a special Citation for Art Preservation, the restoration of a set of Concrete Play Horses designed by Costantino Nivola and the Marble Garden designed by Herbert Bayer at the Aspen Institute highlight the important interplay of art, architecture, and landscape. These Modern cultural landscapes humanize design – they can be touched, climbed on, moved through, and provide a sense of play and whimsy within design for adults and children alike.
This year’s Advocacy Awardees deserve notice for their monumental undertakings. One, the Aluminaire House, was decades in the making and spanned the entire length of the country. The other, Marcel Breuer’s Cottage in Wellfleet, took many years of discussions, patience, perseverance, and a giant leap of faith to meet a staggering fundraising goal. These incredible efforts to obtain and preserve significant modern homes and make them available to the public are monumental victories and a win for everyone.
The Inventory/Survey field was robust this year, a positive sign that more entities are taking on the critical work of documentation and identification of significant Modern resources – the first step in preserving them. Four of the winning projects: Heritage at Risk Survey 2023, Docomomo US/MN Minnesota Modern Registry, Elizabeth Scheu Close: A Life in Modern Architecture, and The Edith Farnsworth House book, expand on, and at times, correct, current scholarship and take an inclusive approach to their efforts. We hope to see this trend continue. We are also excited to announce our first-ever student project award in this category, a research paper on the Philadelphia Police Administration Headquarters.
Speaking on the impact of the Awards program, Docomomo US Board Member and Awards Committee Chair Meredith Arms Bzdak noted, “All of these projects are highly complex. They required extraordinary commitment and dedicated individuals to bring them to life. We are happy to give them the recognition they deserve.” Liz Waytkus, Executive Director of Docomomo US, concurred and expressed her enthusiasm for the awarded projects, stating, “it is a joy to see projects that celebrate and revitalize the diverse cultural histories of this country and increase public awareness of and access to art, architecture, and design of the Modern Movement.”
The winners will be honored at an Awards Ceremony on November 7th at the Design Within Reach Showroom in West Hollywood. A special evening fundraising party will be held on November 8th at a private home in Los Feliz designed by Case Study architect J.R. Davidson.
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