Speakers
Photo by Josh Miller
The International Docomomo Conference welcomes esteemed speakers from around the world to present a variety of modern preservation research, subjects, and projects.
Sessions take place Thursday and Friday at the University of Southern California, School of Architecture. Opening keynote on Wednesday evening and a closing plenary on Friday afternoon.
Opening Keynote
Wednesday, March 17
Thom Mayne in Conversation with Frances Anderton
Docomomo is pleased to announce Thom Mayne, Pritzker Prize-winning architect and founder of Morphosis and acclaimed writer and broadcaster Frances Anderton will open the 2026 IDC with a dynamic conversation that will set the stage for four days of programming exploring the conference’s central themes of climate, community, and creativity through the unique lens of Los Angeles and its modern movement.
As the conference welcomes participants from around the world, Mayne and Anderton will open with a reflection on Los Angeles as both a muse and a mirror for modernism’s evolution. The city’s sprawling, car-centric fabric, its complex social and cultural diversity, and its vulnerabilities to drought, wildfire, and heat all make it an ideal backdrop for examining how modern architecture adapts to new environmental and social realities. The keynote will invite attendees to consider how modernism’s promises of innovation, flexibility, and humanism might continue to inform the city’s and the world’s architectural future.
The conversation will also delve into the legacy of Los Angeles modernism – from the Case Study House program and Ray Kappe’s experimental domestic architecture to the daring new directions forged by Mayne and his peers in the late twentieth century. Mayne’s own trajectory embodies the tensions and possibilities of this moment: rooted in Southern California modernism yet evolving into something radically distinct. His practice, Morphosis, founded in 1972, has consistently challenged conventions of form, function, and sustainability while maintaining a deep engagement with the urban and environmental context.
Under Mayne’s leadership, Morphosis has produced an extraordinary body of work spanning civic, educational, and cultural projects across the globe and exemplifying the interplay between architecture and climate, community, and creativity, the very themes of this year’s conference. A founding figure of the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Mayne is also co-director of The NOW Institute, which collaborates with cities and institutions to design more resilient urban environments. His accolades include the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2005), the AIA Gold Medal (2013), and service on the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities under President Obama. Morphosis’s work has been exhibited internationally, including a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Guiding this opening dialogue will be Frances Anderton, one of Los Angeles’s most respected voices on design and urbanism. Known for her decades-long role as host of KCRW’s “DnA: Design and Architecture,” Anderton has shaped public understanding of the city’s evolving built environment. Her recent projects include the award-winning book Common Ground: Multifamily Housing in Los Angeles and The Angeleno Porch (featured in the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale) and exemplify her commitment to exploring how architecture fosters social connection and equitable housing. She has received the Esther McCoy Award from USC’s Architectural Guild for her contributions to architectural education and discourse.
Together, Mayne and Anderton will inaugurate the conference with a spirited exploration of Los Angeles’s place in global modernism – its influence, contradictions, and future. Their conversation will anchor a week of sessions addressing topics such as Late Twentieth-Century Modernism, Mobility and Sprawl, Modernism in the Sun, Community Adaptation and Repurposing, and Creativity and Collaboration.
The Opening Keynote Conversation: Thom Mayne in Conversation with Frances Anderton promises to be a defining moment of the 2026 International Docomomo Conference and a fitting welcome to a city that continues to shape, challenge, and inspire the modern movement.
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Thom Mayne founded Morphosis in 1972 as a collective practice engaged in architecture, urban planning, and design. Working globally, his work represents a wide variety of scales and typologies. Mayne cofounded the Southern California Institute of Architecture in 1972 and has held teaching positions at UCLA, Columbia, Yale, Harvard GSD, Bartlett School of Architecture, and many other institutions.
He co-heads the NOW Institute, a division of Morphosis that collaborates with communities, cities, and academic institutions to research and enhance urban environments. Mayne was awarded the Pritzker Prize (2005) and the AIA Gold Medal (2013).
He served on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities under President Obama from 2009 to 2016. Morphosis’s work has been featured in over 30 monographs, and the firm has received over 120 AIA Awards. They have been the subject of various exhibitions, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2006.
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Frances Anderton covers Los Angeles design and architecture in print, broadcast media and public events. She is the author of the award-winning book Common Ground: Multifamily Housing in Los Angeles.
She co-created, with Friends of Residential Treasures Los Angeles (FORT: LA) and Wyota Workshop, The Angeleno Porch: Six Social Spaces Shaping L.A.’s Affordable Housing, an exhibit for the US Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. She also hosted Rebel Architects: From Venice to the World Stage, a film made by FORT: LA about the seven iconoclastic architects, including Thom Mayne and Frank Gehry, captured in a famed 1980 photo by Ave Pildas.
From 2002 to 2020 Anderton hosted DnA: Design and Architecture, aired on KCRW public radio station. She also produced KCRW’s current affairs shows Which Way, LA? and To The Point. She currently contributes on-air stories and a regular DnA newsletter to KCRW, and teaches a course on LA housing typologies at USC School of Architecture.
Honors include the Esther McCoy Award, from USC’s Architectural Guild, for her work educating the public about architecture and urbanism.
Thursday, March 19
Hubert-Jan Henket: What Is the Meaning of the Words Modern Movement Today?
Docomomo US is honored to announce Hubert-Jan Henket, Dutch architect, scholar, and co-founder of Docomomo International, as the second keynote speaker of the 2026 International Docomomo Conference.
His address “What Is the Meaning of the Words Modern Movement Today?” will invite reflection on whether the classic definitions of the Modern Movement still hold true in our evolving world of climate urgency, social change, and architectural pluralism. Drawing on decades of experience in architecture, restoration, and advocacy for modern heritage, Henket will explore how modernism can adapt and whether Docomomo should broaden or preserve its guiding criteria.
Henket’s keynote comes at a pivotal moment for the conference and for modern-movement heritage worldwide. As the conference themes – climate, community, and creativity – underscore, the time is ripe for reexamining how modernism adapts to contemporary realities. Los Angeles, with its sprawling urban fabric and complex challenges, provides an especially fitting backdrop for this reflection.
Henket brings unrivaled authority to this conversation. In 1988, together with Wessel de Jonge, he established Docomomo International, setting in motion a global effort to document and conserve the architecture of the Modern Movement. Today he serves as its honorary president.
Over a distinguished career, Henket has specialized in the interplay between new construction, adaptive reuse, renovation, and restoration. His portfolio includes significant new buildings, as well as landmark restorations, including the celebrated revival of the Zonnestraal Sanatorium in the Netherlands, for which he and colleagues won the World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize. His work consistently balances social purpose, environmental context, and historical continuity – core values that resonate with this year’s conference agenda.
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Hubert-Jan Henket is a Dutch architect, preservationist, and educator. Born in 1940 in Heerlen, he graduated cum laude in 1969 from the Delft University of Technology, studying under renowned mentors. After further studies in urbanism in Helsinki and early practice in London, he founded his own firm in the Netherlands in 1976. He co-founded DOCOMOMO International in 1988 and served as its first president; today he is its honorary president. Over a distinguished career spanning more than five decades, Henket has practiced, restored, and revitalized modern architecture around the world. Known for combining new construction with sensitive adaptive reuse, his work often balances social purpose, historical continuity, and environmental context. As professor emeritus at leading Dutch universities, he has mentored generations of architects and preserved the legacy (while sparking new debate) around modern heritage.