Located steps from City Hall in Buffalo’s Lower West Side, Shoreline Apartments was a public housing complex designed by architect Paul Rudolph and completed in 1974. Today, the brutalist structures are among the most hated buildings in the city, and are being demolished and replaced with new, Victorian-style townhouses. This project documents a history of the complex from its planning to eventual demise, using it as a lens to explore the legacy of modernism and public housing in Buffalo. The project also collects the untold stories of the buildings’ inhabitants, and poses critical questions about equity in architecture and historic preservation: Whose buildings are important? Whose stories get told?

Cheng Yang “Bryan” Lee is the curator at El Museo, a nonprofit arts organization in Buffalo, NY focused on underserved artists and communities. His interests span contemporary art and design, the built environment, and the politics of diversity. Originally from Malaysia, he studied architecture, anthropology, and sociology at the University at Buffalo.

Barbara Campagna, cocurator for this project, has worked for the past 30 years as an architect, planner, and historian, and was inducted into the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows in 2009. She has lectured extensively, organized many conferences, serves on a variety of nonprofit boards, is the author of two books, and has held faculty appointments at the University at Buffalo and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Recently, she was a prominent voice in the campaign to save the Shoreline Apartments from demolition, and taught a graduate seminar, “Preserving Modern Heritage,” which documented Buffalo’s modern architecture for the Docomomo United States registry.

William Vogel is the executive director of El Museo. He has a degree in American studies from the University at Buffalo and has been involved with El Museo since 2015. He oversees all operations of the organization including administration, finance, and fundraising, and coordinates special projects at El Museo.

Founded in 1981, El Museo Francisco Oller y Diego Rivera is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary work by underserved artists, as well as cultural programming that engages diverse communities of Buffalo and Western New York through the arts and humanities.