It hasn't been an easy year for 20th-century architecture. The world bid adieu to Tokyo's Hotel Okura, mourned the loss of Paul Rudolph's Government Center, and said a tearful farewell to Josep Lluís Sert's Martin Luther King Jr. School. And that doesn't even begin to account for those perishing under the weight of abandonment, neglect, and water damage. So who is going to come to the defense of our many embattled midcentury structures? The Getty Foundation's Keeping It Modern program, of course. According to a recently released announcement pledging over $1.75 million to the conservation of imperiled landmarks, everything from Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Hill House to Walter Gropius' residence can breath a sigh of relief, at least for this year.
The Getty Foundation aims to focus in on "the cutting-edge building materials and structural systems that define the modern movement" that were often "untested and have not always performed well over time." The funds—which, for the most part, don't actually go towards implementation—will be used for conservation research that will turn each recipient into a salutary test case. This year's focus? According to Antoine Wilmering, the Getty Foundation's senior program officer, it's concrete. "The use of concrete, while visually striking and radical for its time, has created a unique set of challenges for conserving some of the world's most important modernist structures," he explains.
Below, peek a look at all the buildings the Getty Foundation thought were worthy to conserve this year—and, simultaneously, all the ones they didn't. East Asia, the Middle East, and Africa were all overlooked, at least for this year.
∙ The Getty Foundation [Getty Foundation]
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