Preserving the Recent Past 4

Celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the groundbreaking Preserving the Recent Past conference series, PRP4 will provide a new forum to share the latest strategies for identifying, protecting, and conserving significant structures and sites from the recent past.

Program

The conference 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 training workshops.

Building on a legacy

In concurrent presentation sessions, plenary talks, workshops and tours, Preserving the Recent Past 4 will build upon the groundbreaking work of its prior conferences —Preserving the Recent Past (1995, Chicago), Preserving the Recent Past 2 (2000, Philadelphia), Preserve and Play (2005, Chicago) and Preserving the Recent Past 3 (2019, Los Angeles)—to address key issues in the preservation of modern historic resources. Much has changed in the thirty years since this conference series began. A variety of resources have reached fifty years of age; innovation continues in the treatment of postwar materials and assemblies; and new survey techniques for suburban and urban landscapes have emerged. Buildings and sites from this period reflect the dynamism, creativity, and tensions of the society that created them. They tell stories—of mass suburbanization and urban disinvestment and reinvestment, of multiple and successive modern styles, innovative products, and new social and activist movements.