This program is being offered as a hybrid program. You may attend either in person or on Zoom.

Join Amanda Loughlin with Heritage Consulting Group for this program on Post-Modern architecture. Like it or not, Post-Modern architecture (PoMo) is aging. This reality provides opportunities for historic recognition of these important relics of our collective history and the potential benefits that recognition brings. PoMo dates from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, but it reached its zenith during the 1980s. The national building boom of this decade created some of the most distinctive PoMo speculative office buildings like the 1986 One Bell Building in St. Louis. The boom also helped spur smaller examples of housing in urban cores, such as the three 1987 six-plexes constructed on vacant lots within the Santa Fe Place Historic District in Kansas City. Historic tax credits can help make the reuse and continued use of these buildings possible. However, public sentiment often obstructs efforts to recognize the historic significance of PoMo buildings. The style’s clearly identifiable aesthetics create disdain among some who view the buildings as too outlandish, reductive, or aesthetically displeasing to merit historic recognition. Others view PoMo buildings as simply too new to protect. For these reasons, PoMo resources, whether exceptionally important or not, continue to be lost or irrevocably altered before they can be fully understood and evaluated. Historic designation could both bring attention to the cultural importance of PoMo and allow for historic tax credit rehabilitations. Attendees will be able to:

1. Appreciate the historic significance of the Post-Modern architectural style.

2. Learn about two specific examples of the style in Missouri.

3. Discern how to evaluate a PoMo building to determine if it is a good candidate for historic tax credits.

4. Understand some of the challenges of rehabilitating a building constructed in the 1980s.

This program is worth 1 LU. Lunch will be provided for those who attend in person. For those who attend on Zoom, you must attend the full session to get AIA credit. If you leave the Zoom meeting early, no credit will be reported. 

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