UMass Law UMass Law: Sirman Moderates Conference Panel on Brutalist Architecture

UMass Law Visiting Professor Brian Sirman moderated a session at the Preserving the Recent Past 4 (“PRP4”) conference.

UMass Law Visiting Professor Brian Sirman served as moderator for a session at the Preserving the Recent Past 4 (“PRP4”) conference, held in Boston in March.  Sirman’s session, “What’s Next for Boston Brutalism?”, centered on the fate of several Brutalist landmarks in Boston and Cambridge, including the long-embattled Boston City Hall, which was the subject of Sirman’s book, Concrete Changes: Architecture, Politics, and the Design of Boston City Hall.  Sirman’s current research explores how laws and manners respectively bear on the built environment, focusing particularly on how laws both give rise to and respond to controversial architecture. 

PRP4 provided a forum to share the latest strategies for identifying, protecting, and conserving significant structures and sites from the recent past.  The conference was co-organized by the Historic Preservation Education Foundation and the Boston Architectural College, in cooperation with Docomomo US, the National Park Service, and the U.S. General Services Administration’s Center for Historic Buildings.