‘Gingerbread houses’ in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Two of Frank Lloyd Wright’s domestic structures, an ageing sanatorium in the town of Tombeek, Belgium and a 16th-century castle in central India that once served as a royal residence are among the 100 most endangered architectural and cultural sites around the world, according to the World Monuments Fund (WMF).

Every two years the New York-based conservation group issues a list of threatened sites to call attention to ethnic heritage that is in danger as a result of neglect, vandalism, war or environmental disaster. An international panel of experts in archaeology, art history and preservation puts together the roster based on hundreds of nominations from all over the globe.

Past lists have included such famous landmarks as the Taj Mahal and the Valley of the Kings, as well as homes such as Vernon Mount in Cork, Ireland, the Mohammed Ali House in Ethiopia and the historic neighbourhoods of New Orleans.

Bonnie Burnham, WMF’s president and chief executive, says the fact that the 2010 list comes in the midst of the most severe global economic recession in a generation presents an opportunity for her organisation to “be brought into the centre of the action of [preservation efforts] around the world”.

“There is a lot of stimulus money around,” she says. “And governments, not just in the US, are turning attention to cultural sites because of their symbolic value in society – but also because they represent opportunities for hands-on employment.”

The initiative certainly serves its purpose: many of the heritage sites on past lists have been rescued or are well on their way to being preserved. Since the programme’s inception 14 years ago nearly half of the listed 544 sites have received WMF grants totalling $50m. An additional $150m has been raised from other sources – mainly foundations, private donors, and corporations – as a result of the publicity generated by the list.

Here we take a look at some of the residential sites included on 2010’s “most endangered” list.

Gingerbread houses, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Nicknamed “gingerbread” houses by American tourists in the 1950s, these turn-of-the-century dwellings are situated along the twisting streets of Port-au-Prince’s Bois Verna neighbourhood, just a few blocks away from the city’s bustling downtown. The houses – there are dozens of them – are brightly coloured and are characterised by timber frames and carved wooden façades.

The architects who created them incorporated foreign influences into their designs but “adapted their plans to fit the local culture”, according to Conor Bohan, executive director of the Haitian Education and Leadership Programme, which nominated the site. “The architecture is very typically and uniquely Haitian.”

It is particularly noteworthy because it incorporated “green designs 100 years before the green movement,” says Bohan. “The features of the house – the high ceilings and peaked roofs that draw the heat up and out, and the floor-to-ceiling doors, which allow for a cross breeze but also shut out the blazing sun – are extremely efficient. From an engineering perspective, these houses are fascinating.”

While there have been isolated preservation projects in the past, political instability and economic strife have precluded substantive programmes in the country and many of the Gingerbread Houses have fallen into disrepair. Bohan’s organisation plans to restore a single residence to serve as a model and resource centre for continued preservation efforts in the community. The renovation plan is one of “progressive preservation”, he says.

“We want to install low-flow plumbing and solar panels to show that, despite the fact that these [houses] are 100 years old, they can be adapted for modern use.”

Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, US and Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona, US
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed both these modernist structures as workshops for his apprentices and seasonal homes for his family: Taliesin (pronounced tally-eh-sen) in Wisconsin was for summer while Taliesin West, in Arizona, was for winter.

Both served as laboratories of innovation and design experimentation for Wright and his disciples. For instance, Taliesin West, constructed between 1937 and 1942, is built into the rugged terrain of the American south-west. The house strives for functionality: Wright used canvas-covered roof flaps, which admit a soft, natural light throughout the home and the building’s linear design hovers over the sun-scorched earth, reflecting the surrounding natural habitat of desert and mountains.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, US

“Everything was very planned and thoughtfully done,” says Anne Maley, interim chief executive of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which nominated the site. “The windows are at eye-level so that you can watch the sun setting when you’re sitting down for dinner. Wright wanted to make sure that even when you’re indoors you’re connecting with your environment.”

He began construction on Taliesin, which is situated on the crown of a hill, in 1911 and continuously reinvented its interior spaces, courtyards and terraces until his death in 1959. “His vision was so forward-thinking for the time, and both these houses embody that,” Maley says. “He was dedicated to using natural building materials and using the environment to create beauty.”

But the experimental nature of the design of these homes compounds the conservation challenge because the dry desert heat and the harsh Midwestern winters have taken a toll. “It’s not about neglect,” she says. “Funding is the issue; these are expensive homes to maintain.”

Machiya townhouses, Kyoto, Japan
Unlike many cities in Japan, which were ravaged by the second world war, the neighbourhoods in Kyoto’s city centre survived intact, along with many of the machiya, or traditional townhouses.

A machiya townhouse in Kyoto

These buildings, typically long wooden structures that contain several small interior courtyard gardens, served as both residences and workspaces. They date from the Edo period (1603-1867) and arose from the city’s growing merchant class and artisan traditions.

The townhouses elegantly balance form and function, according to Fusae Kojima, executive director of the Kyomachiya Revitalisation Study Group, which nominated the site. They are almost entirely built with natural materials, such as wood, paper and earth, and their design makes good use of the natural circulation of wind and warmth, so they are highly adaptable to the changing seasons.

“Urban living has always required a certain amount of separation from nature,” Kojima says. “The original machiya craftsmen understood this and strived to create natural environments through the use of open-air gardens that skilfully introduce light, air and greenery to interior living spaces.”

As development in Kyoto has intensified, however, the machiya have been disappearing. In less than a decade 13 per cent of the prewar structures have been destroyed and replaced by multi-storey apartment buildings, commercial buildings and parking lots.

Kojima’s group has called for efforts to protect the machiya and create incentives for preservation, and plans to restore a typical example, which would serve as a model project and resource centre.

Russborough, Blessington, County Wicklow, Ireland
At the base of the Wicklow Mountains, about 20 miles south of central Dublin, stands majestic Russborough, a Palladian mansion thought by many – in agreement with the historian and writer Mark Bence-Jones – to be “the most beautiful house in Ireland”. The manor, which was designed for the first Earl of Milltown in the mid-18th century, is situated in a large park that overlooks Blessington Lakes.

Russborough in County Wicklow, Ireland

The home, built of locally mined silver-grey granite, is beautifully maintained and includes stucco ceilings by the Lafranchini brothers, lavish furnishings and a hand-carved mahogany staircase . It and its surrounding demesne – in the medieval feudal system, demesne referred to the land that was retained by a lord for his own use – were donated to the people of Ireland in 1978 by the estate’s second owners, Sir Alfred and Lady Beit. The demesne contains one of the most intact designed landscapes ever created in Ireland but it has not been open to the public in 30 years.

While the house itself has been well preserved with grants from the Heritage Council, most of the original outbuildings and structures – including the bridge to Lady’s Island, and the stables – are in a state of disrepair, according to Eric Blatchford, chief executive of The Alfred Beit Foundation, which nominated the site. “We need to restore and repair the 18th-century landscape structures, including a wonderful but badly decaying walled garden, an ice house and a lime kiln,” he says.

New Gourna Village, Luxor, West Bank, Egypt
In 1945 Egypt’s Department of Antiquities commissioned Hassan Fathy, the renowned architect, to design and construct a new settlement, New Gourna Village, on the West Bank of the Nile. The government planned to relocate the people of Old Gourna there in an effort to stop suspected looting at the nearby Pharaonic sites and increase tourism in the region.

New Gourna Village in Egypt

The earthen village, designed to shelter 20,000 people, included housing and many public facilities but the plan was never fully realised because of political and financial obstacles, and opposition from the residents about the relocation.

New Gourna was at once Fathy’s greatest achievement and his most profound disappointment, according to WMF president Burnham. “He was such an important architect for his time and a visionary through his integration of traditional materials and technology with modern architectural principles,” she says. “We need to preserve what’s there; the fact that New Gourna was a failed vision is part of its story.”

Today nearly 40 per cent of the village has been lost through lack of maintenance and demolition. The boys’ school has been razed, while the theatre, the market and a number of houses are on the verge of collapse.

“Huge [amounts of] money [are] being put into developing tourist infrastructure in the West Bank at Luxor: they’re building huge plazas and big marinas. There is an opportunity to preserve New Gourna and make sure it’s not undermined by masses of people who might visit,” says Burnham. “The buildings that remain intact could become a museum to Fathy. It is already a pilgrimage site for his many followers.”