[MSN] War, economic development and global climate change pose threats to extraordinary buildings and cities, according the World Monuments Fund's 2008 Watch List of the 100 most endangered sites.

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War, Tourists, Climate, Gazprom Threaten 100 Sites, Fund Says 

By James S. Russell

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- War, economic development and global climate change
pose threats to extraordinary buildings and cities, according the World
Monuments Fund's 2008 Watch List of the 100 most endangered sites. 

Released yesterday at the fund's Manhattan headquarters, the list ranges
from familiar locales like Machu Picchu and St. Petersburg to obscure ones
like the pinnacled mud-brick Wa Naa's Palace in Ghana and Leh Old Town, a
medieval Himalayan settlement in Ladakh, India. 

The WMF, which launched the biennial list in 1995, says 75 percent of the
sites it has listed in the past are out of danger, though many still need
considerable attention and investment. 

``Sounding the alarm helps advocates to join forces to protect our world's
shared architectural heritage,'' said Bonnie Burnham, the WMF's president.
The fund has awarded about $47 million in grants to Watch List sites, which
in turn has attracted an additional $124 million of governmental and
nongovernmental aid. 

Armed conflict and its aftermath have damaged or destroyed ancient
settlements in the Asian and Mesopotamian cradles of urban civilization. The
Watch List includes sites in the Middle East, Afghanistan,
Bosnia/Herzegovina, Cyprus and Sierra Leone. All of Iraq, which was on the
2006 list, appears on the new one. Fund grants are training Iraqi experts
who will return when conditions improve. 

Bamiyan Buddhas 

The destruction of great works of art can stoke long-held grievances,
explained Marilyn Perry, the WMF's chairman, or motivate aid. When Taliban
warriors blew up the monumental 7th- century Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan,
``the world wept for these great artifacts it had never known about,'' Perry
said. By listing it, the fund hopes to spur additional international efforts
to stabilize the site, which still possesses important wall paintings, and
assist in conservation of statue fragments. 

The WMF also has come to recognize the danger posed by global climate
change. Melting permafrost and rising seas threaten to swamp Herschel
Island, a historic Inuit whaling town in Canada. ``It may not be
salvageable,'' Burnham said. 

Frequent floods also afflict Sonargaon-Panam City, a medieval trading hub in
low-lying Bangladesh, while encroaching desert may destroy the Chinguetti
Mosque in Mauritania. In listing New Orleans, the fund worries that the
billions spent to date have yet to assure the future of its extraordinary
past. 

Loved to Death 

Some critically important places are being loved to death by insensitive
development. Poorly managed tourism threatens once-remote Machu Picchu, the
ancient Incan city in Peru. A tower for Gazprom, Russia's powerful oil
company, will deface the onion-domed low-rise skyline of St. Petersburg. 

The Watch List includes examples of important modern architecture, because
its significance often goes unrecognized until it's too late. The 2008 list
includes Florida Southern College, in Lakeland, Florida, an elegantly domed
and arcaded campus complex designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. 

The project was underfunded when it was built starting in the late 1930s,
and substandard materials were used. The maintenance and appropriate
adaptation of the structures for current needs has long vexed the college. 

Insensitive new buildings threaten the sublime vista to the ocean from the
Salk Center in La Jolla, California, a masterpiece by Louis I. Kahn. 

Sometimes listing can have immediate impact. Squabbling government agencies
have united behind a plan to conserve the Roman aqueduct in Segovia, Spain.
New funders have also stepped in to augment a $125,000 grant by American
Express. 

``Sometimes it's simply a matter of drawing attention,'' said John Stubbs,
the fund's vice president of field projects. 

(James S. Russell is Bloomberg's U.S. architecture critic. The opinions
expressed are his own.) 

To contact the writer of this story: James S. Russell at
jamesrussell at earthlink.net . 

Last Updated: June 7, 2007 00:04 EDT

http://www.bloomberg.com/

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