Preserving Modernist Architecture?

Should preservationists fight to save a modern corporate office building?

1 minute read

July 27, 2001, 10:00 AM PDT

By Chris Steins @planetizen


The Wilde Building in Bloomfield, Conn. was named of the of the 11 most endangered places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Yet the building is a modernist box that may would be happy to see demolished."The Wilde is a modernist 1957 corporate headquarters, a crisp glass jewel set in one of those green rural campuses that corporations loved to create in the 1950s and 1960s. The owner wants to demolish it... The Wilde was a collaboration of the best and the brightest of the time. Sculptures by Isamu Noguchi stand in the landscape. Noguchi also designed three of the building's four interior courtyards. Legendary designer Florence Knoll created the interiors. It was an idealization of the American suburban dream."

Thanks to Chris Steins

Thursday, July 26, 2001 in The Boston Globe

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