Docomomo International is proud to present the second issue of the Docomomo Journal co-edited with the International Specialist Committee on Interior Design (ISC/ID), represented by guest editors Zsuzsanna Böröcz and Deniz Hasirci. Established at the Council Meeting during the 16th International Docomomo Conference in Lisbon in 2016, the ISC/ID has since grown and evolved, as evidenced by significant activities, including seminars, discussions, and publications. Already before the establishment of the ISC/ID, interior design and modern living have been explicit themes in two Docomomo Journal issues: no. 46 Designing for Modern Life and no. 47 Global Design, both published in 2012, extended beyond the architectural scale to encompass the qualities of interior space and the constituent elements and materialities of daily life.

The CONCRETO Code Book represents foundational research conducted within the broader framework of the CONCRETO Academy Project, officially launched in 2024.

The CONCRETO Academy was established to address the increasing demand for specialised skills and craftsmanship in the conservation of concrete historic architecture. Leading this initiative, the Pier Luigi Nervi Foundation has played a pivotal role in safeguarding modern heritage, driven by its commitment to preserving the profound legacy of the Italian engineer-architect and builder Pier Luigi Nervi. Designed as a research hub, the CONCRETO Academy develops training programmes rooted in the principle of Learning by Doing, blending theoretical knowledge with technical expertise and hands-on practice. Participants of the Academy are not students, but fellows engaged in an apprenticeship model that fosters active skill-building and knowledge exchange.

The Code Book serves as the foundation upon which all teaching and learning activities within the Academy are structured. While primarily focused on the European context, its reach extends globally, leveraging insights from the extensive CONCRETO Network of partners and experts. Through rigorous literature review, open questionnaires, and strategic interviews, the Code Book defines the current state of concrete conservation, identifying key challenges and opportunities within the field. This publication is intended for all professionals engaged in the conservation of historic concrete architecture.

The idea for this special issue was born during the Imperfect Modernism conference in a discussion with the guest editors Liutauras Nekrošius and Kateryna Didenko. Held in Vilnius in May 2024 and organized by the guest editors of this special issue, the conference brought together scholars, architects, and experts in heritage preservation from Canada, Cyprus, Eritrea, Georgia, Germany, Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, and Ukraine. A wide range of issues was discussed, highlighting the uniqueness of regional adaptations in conservation, restoration, and adaptive reuse of buildings, sites and neighborhoods of the Modern Movement shaped by each country’s political, economic, and socio-cultural factors, while also revealing shared patterns.

Turning to the discussion on the concept of Modernism, it is worth noting that different manifestations and perceptions of modernist heritage have evolved throughout the 20th and 21st centuries across diverse contexts and value systems. Scholarly debates, conservation practices, international initiatives, and local experience have shaped the concept as layered and flexible, now encompassing not only doctrinal modernist works and interpretations but a broader spectrum of modernities. [...]

The heritage field in general and heritage conservation in particular present a distinct discipline: the past, present and future are constantly at odds with each other. There is a need to find a balance between preservation and renewal and there is a constant discussion about what to preserve and how to preserve it. The discussion on what to preserve takes place in the field of valuation: the statement of significance. Decisions in the field of conservation have a high degree of complexity, as they involve many dimensions and multiple actors with possibly different and conflicting objectives (e.g. conservators, local authorities, owners).

Natural stone has been used in many historical structures all over the world. Pieces of stone taken directly from nature - whether or not worked - were used for a wide range of objects many centuries ago already. Old stone constructions such as Stonehenge near Salisbury in England, the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens, the Borobodur on Java, but also the many medieval cathedrals in France appeal to everyone’s imagination. It was mostly such traditional monuments that brought John Ruskin and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to their opposing views on conservation and restoration. The principle of minimum intervention, described in the Burra Charter (1999) as doing as much as necessary and as little as possible echoes through many national and international charters and other policy documents. It is widely supported, but in the case of natural stone conservation, this principle does not provide an unambiguous direction. [...]

This practice paper deals with the curriculum renewal of the Bachelor’s Bouwkunde program of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft. It focuses on design education as a form of CBL and its pedagogical fundamentals in particular. The paper describes the program and the intentions for curriculum renewal, followed by an explanation of the new learning objectives and assessment strategy. Finally, it touches upon the team development process and lessons learned so far.

Holistic learning objectives and a holistic assessment strategy were developed to foster the curriculum renewal objectives and accommodate the integrative nature of design, design thinking, and design education. The design program’s learning objectives are based on four strongly related skills that were further detailed for every course: position, knowledge, research, and communication. To do justice to the importance of coherence and interaction between these four different parts, design needs to be assessed holistically. At an abstract level, aspects that count for all spatial designs were formulated, no matter how different they appear in various design outcomes: coherence & meaning, correctness & elaboration, communication, and research. However, they are strongly connected and are hard to assess independently.

In the academic year 2024-2025, the renewed learning objectives and assessment strategy are used in education practice. We expect these will help to address the essence of developing and assessing (design) proposals to intervene in complex systems. Its use will be actively monitored, and the outcomes will be used to improve next year’s curriculum.

The rapid urbanization and technological advancements in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have placed its modern architectural heritage from the 1970s and 1980s at increasing risk of being unrecognized and lost, particularly in Dubai following the discovery of oil. This research addresses the critical need for the documentation and heritage representation of Dubai’s modern heritage, a city undergoing rapid transformation within a globalized urban landscape. Focusing on the Nasser Rashid Lootah Building (Toyota Building), an iconic early 1970s residential high-rise representing the modern architecture of Dubai and a significant milestone in its architectural history, this study explores a replicable and cost-effective approach to digitally document and conserve urban heritage under threat. The existing building was meticulously documented and analyzed to highlight its enduring value within the fast-changing urban fabric. Through the innovative combination of drone photography, ground-based photography, and HBIM, a high-resolution 3D model and a semantically organized HBIM prototype were generated. This research demonstrates a replicable measure for identifying architectural values, understanding modernist design typologies, and raising local community awareness about Dubai’s modern heritage. Ultimately, this study contributes toward developing recognition criteria and guiding efforts in documenting modern high-rise buildings as vital heritage worthy of recognition, documentation, and future conservation in the UAE.

Welke instandhoudingsopgave komt op ons af met de recente focus op het erfgoed van de tweede helft van de twintigste eeuw? Niet alleen in Nederland en België, maar in veel landen wordt nadrukkelijk gekeken naar de erfgoedwaardigheid van de gebouwen, complexen en structuren uit de periode 1960-1990. Afhankelijk van de wettelijke context, politieke en sociaal-maatschappelijke markeringen in periode deze wordt de precieze tijdspanne in verschillende regio’s anders gedefinieerd. In Nederland staat de periode bekend als ‘Post 65’ en is een vervolg op de Wederopbouwperiode vanaf 1945, na het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog.
In diverse steden en dorpen zijn de lokale bouwkundige hoogtepunten van na 1965 al benoemd en de eerste voornemens tot aanwijzing als rijksmonument zijn begin september 2025 wereldkundig gemaakt (Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed 2025).

Neither pre-cast concrete nor the company Schokbeton itself is typical for the period 1975-2000, but the paper material saved from the former laboratory of the Dutch pre-cast concrete factory holds an intensive record of concrete recipes and references to buildings from the period 1945-2000. The recipes together with a large number of sample castings left on the factory site in 2015 after the bankruptcy of the company shed an interesting light development of concrete aesthetics. (Fig. 1) [...]

Docomomo International is proud to present the first Open Issue of the Docomomo Journal. Creating the opportunity for scholars, practitioners, policy makers, activists or any other group of authors to publish in our journal without having to wait for a thematic Special Issue on a theme that would fit their topic felt like the logical next step in (the continued) continuing professionalization of the Docomomo Journal. [...]

This contribution investigates how Docomomo Full Documentation Fiches could be adapted to everyday residential heritage and encourage circular renovations in marginalised territories (peripheral and socioeconomically fragile areas). Existing buildings represent resources for cities but often constitute a degraded, obsolete, and energy-intensive asset. Before renovations, a significant step in shifting to a circular economy is collecting quality data about buildings. Documentation becomes a tool to interpret not only masterpieces but also everyday architectures and to introduce circularity in their analysis. Docomomo has documented masterpieces using the Full Documentation Fiches (FDFs); these tools contain some specifications that exclusively address masterpieces and lack specifications about buildings’ context in terms of circularity of local materials and stakeholders. This research aims to provide a template to holistically document everyday residential heritage by: (1) adapting specifications from the original FDF template; (2) evaluating the architecture; and (3) mapping local materials and stakeholders to be involved in renovations. First, the study selects in the marginalised inland Marche region (IT) three 1950-1976 housing projects not of renowned authorship but conveying a modern optimism. Second, the original FDF template is adapted to everyday heritage; an adaptation table identifies specifications not applicable to non-masterpieces and integrates specifications that address everyday housing and circularity. Finally, the adapted template is tested on the selected buildings by collecting information through additional tools (e.g., archival material). The results are three adapted FDFs for the selected buildings which testify that Docomomo FDFs can be applied beyond masterpieces and widen knowledge about buildings’ context. Adapting the FDF template represents an effective method to update the specifications with coherent justification. The adapted template could be digitalised and extended to other building typologies. The study envisions the adaptation of Docomomo’s tools as an initial step to guide holistic documentation that suits circular approaches for everyday heritage.

In 2022, Docomomo International launched a call for papers on Modern Movement in Ukraine together with Docomomo Ukraine. More than 20 proposals were received, most of them from authors based in Ukraine itself—despite the difficult circumstances. The Docomomo Journal 67 presented a first selection of those articles to display regional and architectural particularities and current challenges of archiving, documenting, protecting, and preserving the modern heritage. Nearly 100 examples of Ukrainian modern buildings were presented in a graphical overview. The modern Ukranian architecture was dominated by Constructivism from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, with Kharkiv as the epicenter of production, while Socialist Realism with the Stalin Empire emerged from 1932, lasting until 1955, with Kyiv as the capital of Ukraine. From December 1919 to January 1934, Kharkiv was the first capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the cultural, economic, and educational center of the new Ukrainian Republic. The status as new capital led to prestigious master plans and construction projects, among them the world-famous Derzhprom building at Freedom Square–as a symbol of Constructivism–or the Kharkiv Tractor Factory–as a symbol of the industrialization of agriculture. The leading role of Kharkiv as a forerunner and capital of Constructivism is often expressed by the famous State Industry House (Derzhprom) built from 1925 to 1928. Being the only modern ensemble in Ukraine nominated as UNESCO World Heritage, it became and still is the focus of identification and pride—despite the many controversial reflections and discussions about the conservation efforts and changes carried out since the original construction in the 1950s and after the year 2000. This explains the many articles dealing with Freedom Square and Dherzprom as a reaction to the call for papers in 2022 and also Docomomo International’s commitment to dedicate this special issue of the Docomomo Journal to Kharkiv under the title From Constructivism to Modernism in Kharkiv.

Voor woonhuismonumenten is binnenisolatie vaak de enige manier om de thermische
prestatie van het massief metselwerk te verbeteren. Maar tegenvallende isolatiewaardes,
vorstschade, schimmelgroei of houtrot van ingewerkte houten balken liggen op de loer. De
veelheid aan isolatiesystemen, die elk pretenderen dé oplossing te zijn, maakt het voor
eigenaren moeilijk om te besluiten of na-isolatie een veilige keuze is voor hun gebouw en
welk systeem dan de voorkeur geniet.

In deze syllabus, die wordt uitgegeven bij het symposium op 20 november 2024 met als titel
Energetische prestaties van massieve baksteengevels in woonhuismonumenten, wordt
verslag gedaan van het onderzoek dat in de periode 2019-2024 is uitgevoerd naar massief
baksteenmetselwerk. Het onderzoek vond plaats in de context van de programmatische
samenwerking MonumentenKennis (fase 2) waarin werd samengewerkt door secties
Heritage & Architecture en Environmental & Climate Design van de Faculteit Bouwkunde,
TU Delft, de afdeling Bouwfysica en Duurzaam Bouwen van de KU Leuven en de Rijksdienst
voor het Cultureel Erfgoed. Het project heeft plaatsgevonden binnen het programma Erfgoed
en Duurzaamheid van de Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed en is gefinancierd binnen de
Kaderregeling van het Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap.

It is a long-standing and well-appreciated tradition of Docomomo International to emphasize its diversity expressed in buildings, sites, and neighborhoods due to different geography, language, education, and personalities. The term multiple modernisms has been coined to express regional, stylistic, and constructive differences in the formal and philosophical expression of Modern Movement across the globe, within the continents, and even within countries. Docomomo conferences and Docomomo Journals have used and interpreted the term over the last 30 years to express and acknowledge the diversity in the growing community of national working parties. We only need to refer to the recent Docomomo Journal no. 67 (2022) on Multiple Modernities in Ukraine, or no. 36 (2007) on Other Modernisms, published in parallel with the 2006 Docomomo International Conference in Istanbul and Ankara (Turkey) with the same title. Other issues highlighted local and regional particularities together and, at the same time, referenced common roots and personal links, such as the preservation technology dossier no. 13 on Perceived Technologies in the Modern Movement 1918-1975 published by the International Specialist Committee on Technology (ISC/T) in 2014. In that publication, the specific and long-term collaborations of architects with engineers and artists were explored often leading to exceptional solutions in structure, design, and function.

Adaptive reuse (AR) of heritage buildings is a complex process involving many stakeholders with different ambitions. Recently, a theoretical model has been proposed to facilitate this process. However, the validation of this model and investigation of the nexus between process steps, methods/tools used by architects, and the effectiveness of projects are still lacking. This paper aims to validate the model by examining four AR projects in the Netherlands, considered effective as winners of a prestigious architectural prize. The research methods included literature reviews, case visits, and interviews with architects and other stakeholders. The model was refined, and methods/tools used by architects in the process steps were identified, highlighting their link with the effectiveness of results.

While heritage conservation is usually associated with the action of “keeping”, circular approaches are often seen as focusing on flexibility, and disassembly. Both share the common goal of using existing resources efficiently and avoiding waste. The conservation of cultural heritage is a complex issue that requires a cautious balance between maintaining heritage values associated with tangible and intangible attributes and managing change to answer the challenges of future use. On the one hand, mining the urban environment for material resources, risks irreparable damage to the historic urban fabric. On the other hand, salvaging components from heritage buildings and re-purposing them can be a sustainable strategy to extend a buildings’ lifetime and minimize construction waste. In the case of buildings threatened by demolition, as several churches in the Netherlands, salvaging components might even be the only way to keep (some) of this heritage alive. In these cases, circular design approaches need to go beyond inventorying materials and components: the traceability of values and meanings to the involved communities become key factors driving reuse strategies. The Zero Waste Church graduation studio at TU Delft provides architecture students with the opportunity to discuss how heritage values might shift to integrate sustainability as a value to preserve. The students selected cases based on three key circularity principles: refuse, reduce, and value retention. By choosing vacant buildings, the students were prompted to refuse the notion of building new and to value space as a limited resource. Some of the selected buildings faced demolition, resulting in projects that have the potential to reduce material waste. Through a heritage value assessment, the students demonstrated that despite being under threat, these heritage buildings still add value to local communities. Students explored creative approaches to redesign from values related to tangible and intangible attributes. This approach aims at instigating awareness and transformative attitudes towards the built environment. Individual students approach the challenge from different perspectives, contributing to a multitude of readings and strategies to deal with the complexity of bridging heritage and circularity. The implementation of the first edition of the Zero Waste studio faced challenges when conflicts arose in determining what to keep, add or transform. A key learning from this experience is that circularity needs to be an integrated part of a design project from the earliest stages. While a fully zero waste heritage may be an unachievable ambition, the aim is to trigger reflection and adopt an explorative approach towards a project.

This paper explores the opportunities for locals’ participation as a tool for the sustainable redevelopment of vacant heritage. It focuses on the Politiebureau Groningen Centrum (The Netherlands) as a case study to apply a novel approach to engage community participation in architectural redesign. It fills the academic gap on participation in heritage building redesign lacking diversity in stakeholder perspectives and overcomes some of the current participatory design tools’ downsides, identified in the previous literature: lack of transparent communication and high requirement for participants. This research employs a combination of methods structured by sets of divergent and convergent phases. Cognitive mapping, semi-structured interviewing, and a 2,5D model game were tested in the research for inquiry and redesign testing, the two key participatory stages. The research outcomes include participants’ perceptions and remembrance of the site for generating redesign scenarios, the common ground in their scenario preferences, and their contrasting attitudes toward the overall material and the specific elements. The 2,5D model game tool turns out effective in transparently delivering the redesign possibilities to participants and lowering the requirements of time, language skill, and learning capacity, thus being easily repeatable for other sites and participants to boost social and community values. Future research recommendations are given on applying the approach to larger samples covering all the minorities to get in-depth knowledge on the community’s collective perspectives in relation to their sociodemographic characteristics and validate the hypothesis on their preferences toward materials and elements.

Adaptive reuse (AR) of heritage buildings is common practice in The Netherlands and is becoming more and more common at the International level. While AR projects are generally considered positive actions towards preserving the qualities of heritage buildings, not all projects have similar (positive) impact. To propose a methodology for dealing with the AR of heritage buildings aiming for positive impact, the AR process has been studied. After a comprehensive systematic literature review, a theoretical model representing the steps of the AR process has been sketched (fig.1). This model depicts the ideal steps of architects in dealing with heritage buildings. To check whether these steps are actually followed, two effective AR projects, winners of the NRP golden phoenix prize, were studied namely ‘LocHal’ in Tilburg (fig.2) and ‘Energiehuis’ in Dordrecht (fig.3). During the research, the cases were visited, the published literature on the cases was reviewed, and architects and other stakeholders involved were interviewed. The interviews were based on the steps of the theoretical model but the model was not shown to the architects till the end of the interview. Finally feedback was asked from the architects if the model represented their actual steps and where they diverged. The analysis of the collected data confirmed that architects followed the steps reported in figure 1. However, the process was reported to be not linear, as suggested in the model, but to include several loops between some of the steps, mainly between steps 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5, and 6 (fig.4). Next to refining of the AR model, investigation of the case studies led to the identification of tools and methods used by architects, which have possibly positively influenced the effectiveness (positive impact) of the final result. Both case studies distinguished themselves, according to the NRP jury reports, because of their high ‘social value creation’. Involving end-users, other producers, and original users in different steps of the AR process has been identified as the main method used by the architects contributing to this positive impact.

Docomomo International is proud to present the results of the international project Shared Heritage Africa: Rediscovering Masterpieces and other selected papers from our call for papers Shared Heritage Africa – Campuses, published in December 2022. The SHA project itself, coordinated by Docomomo Germany, focused on rediscovering post-war modern buildings from the 1950s-1980s in the partner countries Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, and Rwanda. This period of independence from colonial rule, from the United Kingdom (Ghana 1957, Nigeria 1960, and Uganda 1962) and from Belgium (Rwanda 1962), has a great socio-political significance and influence on the educational systems and buildings. The rediscovery of this heritage focuses on exploring the values, challenges, and opportunities through the eyes of their contemporary users. Concentrating on the post-war modern buildings constructed after indepen-dence from colonial rule, the project celebrated projects that are situated at the periphery of the architectural discourse and, therefore, seldom documented despite their social, economic, and political significance.

After the two 2022-issues of the Docomomo Journal, number 66 on ‘Modern Plastic Heritage’ and number 67 on ‘Multiple Modernisms in Ukraine,’ this issue reveals another chapter of an often and diversely described theme of Modern Movement and a pressing subject worldwide: Housing.