Design activism is on the rise. The most recent and public expression of this movement can be examined at New York’s Center for Architecture. Modernism at Risk: Modern Solutions for Saving Modern Landmarks recently opened to large crowds and runs through May 1. It chronicles efforts taken to save, or try to save, Modern architecture’s significant buildings. For me, the most inspiring of these initiatives is the ADGB Trade Union School (left), built in 1930 in Bernau, Germany, by architects Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer. (Meyer, you may recall from your history class, was the second director of the world-shaping Bauhaus design school where Wittwer was an instructor.) The activists in this case began working together in 2001, creating the kind of positive and sustained energy such efforts demand. Local government, business, and academia participated in devising a competition to save and restore the building. Now it’s not only a great place to learn, but a resource for the community as well as an inspiring case study for scholars and architects wanting to know more about the living, breathing buildings of the early Modernists.

Sadly, the record for saving Modernist masterpieces remains spotty. One of the most distressing losses to the cause is Paul Rudolph’s Riverview High School, built in Sarasota, Florida, in 1958 and demolished to make way for a parking lot in 2009. Our film, Site Specific: The Legacy of Regional Modernism (below) was chosen by the curators to be part of the show at the Center. It tells the story of innovative design followed by a willful resistance to new ideas and benign neglect. Though the local and international community of architects mounted a strong campaign to save Riverview—they convinced the World Monuments Fund to put it on its most endangered list—the building was in such bad condition that it was impossible for the school board and the public alike to imagine its rebirth, even though at least one proposed renovation scheme had great potential for bringing Rudolph’s design into the 21st century and creating a smart asset for the community.

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