Adapting the Aspirational Modernism of World’s Fairs

Thursday, January 16, 2025 
2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. ET

APT’s Technical Committee on Modern Heritage is pleased to launch a 2025 Webinar Series on Adapting Aspirational Modernism. 

As showcases for invention and innovation, world’s fairs have presented unique creative opportunities for bold engineering and iconic architecture symbolizing progress. While many fair structures were never intended to survive beyond an exposition, vestiges remain and continue to evolve as enduring expressions of civic pride and optimism. 

To introduce our series on adapting aspirational modernism, historic engineering and architecture scholar Dr. Matt Sneddon will discuss his dissertation research on the commemoration of science and the industrial arts in fairs and expositions, undergirding nationalistic narratives of technological progress. He’ll review the history of world’s fairs as platforms for modern design, industrial advancement, and cultural exchange, along with conservation and adaptation efforts to preserve and repurpose what the fairs have left behind. 

Continuing Education Credits
1 LU/HSW/PDH

Learning Objectives

The purpose of the training is to raise the competency of professionals responsible for projects involving aging modernist buildings designed to serve symbolic and short-term purposes.  

After attending this training course attendees will be able to:

1. Describe technical advances, architectural achievements, cultural symbolism, and common shortcomings reflected in modernist world’s fair buildings and structures

2. Apply archival and in situ research methods to understand the architectural intent, original construction, and physical evolution of surviving world’s fair structures. 

3. Identify lifecycle extension strategies for improving the durability and performance of buildings constructed for intensive and high-visibility short-term uses.  

4. Recommend measures for improving the functional and physical viability of sculptural structures characterized by high surface exposure to the environment. 

Registration Fees

• APT Members: $20
• Emerging Professionals: $15
• Students: $10
• Non-Members: $35

Register

Speaker:

Dr. Matt Sneddon Dr. Matt Sneddon’s interest in public history began with work for the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) documenting the site of the former Roebling steel wire works in New Jersey. Since then, he has worked on a wide variety of history and cultural resource projects as a HAER historian, consultant for the National Park Service, and historian for Historical Research Associates. Dr. Sneddon brings a background in engineering and specialization in the History of Technology to his work on the built environment. His dissertation at the University of Washington examined the commemoration of science and the “industrial arts” in fairs, expositions, and museums between the Revolution and Cold War with an eye for the political dimensions of nationalistic narratives of technological progress. As a resident of Seattle, he has frequent occasion to walk the grounds of former exposition sites, whether the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition or 1962 Century 21 Exposition, now part of the city’s urban fabric as university campus and civic center.