Preserving the Recent Past 4
March 19-22, 2025
Boston, MA 

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the groundbreaking Preserving the Recent Past (PRP) conference series and the founding of Docomomo US, PRP4 will provide a national forum to share the latest strategies for identifying, protecting, and conserving significant structures and sites from the post-World War II era. Public and private stakeholders are invited from across the spectrum of preservation, nonprofit, and development organizations: specialists in architectural conservation, cultural landscapes, and history, as well as owners and site managers, design and construction professionals, planners, government officials, educators and students, and fans of postwar cultural resources.

Boston has a compelling concentration of modern and postmodern buildings, and presents a unique opportunity to explore many facets of recent past preservation—from the challenging legacy of urban renewal to opportunities for sustainable reuse and beyond.

Co-organized by Historic Preservation Education Foundation and the Boston Architectural College, and is presented in partnership with Docomomo US. The program will include 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, to take place on Thursday, March 20 and Friday, March 21, 2025.

In addition to the paper sessions, there will be additional opportunities for full- and half-day tours to visit preservation and recent past sites throughout the area, as well as a documentation training workshop on Wednesday, March 19 and Saturday, March 22, 2025. Docomomo US and its local New England chapter will take part in the paper selection process and will take the lead in organizing the conference tours.

Registration will open mid-December

For more information visit the PRP 4 conference webpage 

Image in graphic: Kresge Auditorium, MIT, Eero Saarinen. Photo: Wikipedia Commons