Docomomo US Announces 2026 Theme: Recreation and Play
In 2026, Docomomo US turns from religious sites to the rituals of recreation and play, exploring modern landscapes where communities gather for activity, leisure, and joy. The theme includes informal and formal skateparks, roller‑skating and hockey rinks, parks, small amusement parks, swimming pools, playgrounds, and art and sculpture that support these uses.
Bay Area focus
In the Bay Area, sites such as San Francisco’s Embarcadero Plaza and the National Register‑eligible Vaillancourt Fountain continue to face threats, from deferred maintenance and displacement to misunderstandings about uses such as skateboarding, which are central to youth culture and creative expression. Docomomo US also highlights the restored Oakland Monster at Lake Merritt, honored with a Civic/Institutional Design Citation of Merit in 2022 for work led by local advocates and the Oakland Public Works Department.
Oakland Monster by Robert Winston. Courtesy Oakland Public Library, Oakland History Room
Equity and historic landscapes
The Recreation and Play theme will additionally examine mid-twentieth-century sites shaped by systemic segregation, exclusion, and discriminatory design and management practices. Recreational places such as swimming pools, beach pavilions, and parks were often governed by discriminatory policies and practices that restricted access for communities of color, Indigenous communities, disabled people, LGBTQ+ communities, women, and low‑income families.—Documenting these stories remains essential to understanding how inequities were embedded in the design and the use of these spaces, and how their social and cultural impacts continue to influence who feels welcome, safe, and represented in them today.
Tour Day 2026
Docomomo US chapters and partners across the country will host Recreation and Play–themed tours for Tour Day on Saturday, October 10, 2026, and continuing throughout the month of October. Docomomo US–Northern California will participate by highlighting Bay Area sites of modern recreation and play; details will be announced closer to Tour Day.
Get involved
The Recreation and Play theme is part of Docomomo US’s ongoing effort to explore and protect modern places, following earlier themes such as Places of Worship (2025), Corporate Campuses (2024), and Revisiting Urban Renewal (2023). Those interested in submitting articles or sites related to Recreation and Play can contact Docomomo US at info@docomomo-us.org.