As preservation of modern design becomes more and more commonplace, how we adapt and expand modern landmarks pushes the boundaries of preservation practice. The Secretary of Interior Standards for the Rehabilitation of Historic Buildings are guidelines for making changes to historic places, but presuppose an understanding of buildings that is much less conventional with more contemporary resources.

When significant features include the absence of ornamentation, large, uninterrupted spaces, clean surfaces, metal finishes, and energy-inefficient large single pane glass windows, how do designers respond respectfully? And how do preservationists point them in the right direction when most of us were educated to understand buildings over fifty years old?

Traditional building methods and materials, such as unreinforced masonry, reinforced concrete (now over a century old), and wood frame have helped preservationists develop guidelines and expectations for rehabilitation, alterations, change of use adaptations, and additions to designated historic places. When the language of architecture, and the materials expressing this language change, the challenge of mediating between new and less new falls to those interpreting the guidelines.

This presents a challenge to the professional preservation community. In 1995, the Historic Preservation Education Foundation and a consortium of preservation agencies came together to address issues unique to preserving the recent past. The group produced an extensive binder's worth of articles pertaining to advocacy, scholarship, and conservation of modern resources. The collection of work points to problems, including the expansion and preservation of modern landmarks like Dulles Airport, designed in 1962 by Eero Saarinen, which is now part of the canon of more contemporary landmarks featured in text book overviews of architectural history.

Almost a decade later, advocacy for modern resources is growing, and awareness is slowly rising. The Los Angeles Conservancy, comprised of nearly 8,000 members supports a Modern Committee dedicated specifically to just this sort of advocacy. The Committee, formed in 1984, is still in the vanguard of grass roots advocacy protecting the recent past. But advocacy is only one piece of preservation practice. What preservationists do with buildings once they're saved requires close knowledge and appreciation of the structures themselves and the variations of form and materials employed by designers in the middle of the last century.

Modern Problems

Seattle's Landmarks Board has been grappling with this issue as more and more modern landmarks become designated. The majority of more contemporary landmarks have come before the board in advance of proposed alterations and site planning.

As a part of their Libraries for All initiative, funded in part by a 1998 levy, a number of local libraries, including the 1960s central library downtown, were evaluated as potential landmarks. From this preservation planning work, three modern libraries became official city landmarks. These include the Lake City Branch, the Magnolia Branch and the North East Branch libraries.

The Lake City Branch library, which is discussed in this month's Pending Landmarks feature, presented a number of challenges to the design firm selected for the building's expansion, which will more than double the library's square footage and connect the building to a civic center featuring a number of community services. The Landmarks Board was also challenged to review and analyze the proposed plans to assure that the addition complied with the Secretary of the Interior Standards and was respectful of the character-defining features exemplified in the building itself.

The Board requested that the historic entrance -- an award winning bronze gate by artist George Tsutakawa -- remain the primary entrance. After some reworking of the plans, this directive has benefited the overall design. The 8 x 8 gridded ceiling in the 1965 reading room (the building's primary space) is echoed in a grid of the same dimensions in the addition. The brickwork of the original is referenced by the use of brick along the base of the addition. The new brick is dark which, along with a muted palette of other materials, allows the existing library to take the foreground.

The overall massing and scale of the new addition are clearly distinguishable from the low, and mostly solid horizontal form of the 1965 building. The current design resulted from several discussions about the appropriateness of a number of ideas. "The issues were at a level that considered community values and design ideas," according to Stan Lokting, principal at ARC Architects. Though the process was somewhat lengthy, Lokting felt that the design was better for having been through Landmarks Board review.

Other additions and alterations to modern resources include the new base for the Space Needle, which includes the gift shop, as well as renovations of the interiors of the revolving restaurant. Hat n' Boots, a novelty structure designed in the 1950s as a gas station on Highway 99, was designated a city landmark last year. As a part of its preservation plan, Georgetown community activists have planned for its removal to a nearby park where it will serve as a centerpiece.

As with more traditional landmarks, the adaptability of modern resources and politics sometimes stand in the way of their preservation. In the case of the Twin Teepees restaurant, a 1930s structure once standing on Aurora Avenue North, the building's strange footprint, small square footage, and unique but challenging conical forms made adaptive reuse economically infeasible without a comprehensive preservation plan that might have involved tax credits, grants, as well as organizational and technical assistance from a preservation agency. The owner tried to preserve the building without outside assistance, failed, and demolished the building without spending much time seeking other alternatives.

The most recent controversy surrounding the 1962 monorail hinged on the public's perception of the system's concrete pylons. According to one of the historic monorail's original engineers whose testified at a public hearing on July 9, the old system could have been adapted to the new technology with some changes. Public opinion prevailed. For more information on the history of this issue, refer to the Preservation Seattle archives.

The 1960 International Style Central Library, was another modern causality of circumstances, politics, and maintenance issues. The building's original layout was reconfigured, and the character defining features associated with the original design were obscured. The building's relatively grunginess, and the possibility of a grand new structure helped avoid much contest to the Seattle Landmarks Board's decision not to nominate the building for designation, even though a landmarks nomination was prepared.

Only Part of the Solution

Recognizing the historic significance of modern design is critical to preservation of the recent past; our state's preservation office, along with the western Washington chapter of DoCoMoMo (the Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement) has spearheaded the Nifty from the Last Fifty initiative to do just that.

But this is just the beginning. Preservation and conservation of historic places requires advocacy, technical expertise, funding, good policies, good administrators of policy, and a receptive real estate market. As demand for modern, architect-designed residences grows, and appreciation for modern design helps protect commercial and office buildings, preservationists and preservation architects will have to sharpen their thinking about appropriate adaptive strategies.

Academic institutions producing tomorrow's preservationists need to include both theoretical and technical aspects of modern resource preservation within their curricula. Field schools focusing on the practical elements of building documentation need to direct some attention on modern building methods and materials. Because contemporary design practice often follows from design practice and theory from the last generation of architects (some of whom are still around), those seeking an education in modern building preservation (that is, from the 1930s to 1970) should branch out into architectural coursework, especially in the areas of structure and theory.

Many advocates of modern resource preservation are, not surprisingly, architects.

Integration of modern resource preservation methods within the field, however, will require engagement from the preservation community as a whole. Even with the best engineering, modern gems will not stand without balanced support.

View last month's Techniques & Technology article

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