Yael Fuhrmann-Naaman – Erich Mendelsohn

Do transboundary and transnational properties promote international cooperation and representativity?

Oshrat Wolfling-Assa, Ruth Liberty-Shalev & Tal Alon-Moses

In the spirit of the 1945 UNESCO Constitution, the World Heritage Committee strives to promote international cooperation. It is evident in the Committee’s support of transboundary* and transnational** properties as tools for encouraging international cooperation and improved representation of state parties and heritage themes. Thus, international cooperation does not merely aid heritage protection but also endorses UNESCO’s intents to foster ‘intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind‘ and to boost the 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development Goals.

The presentation will analyze transboundary and transnational properties on the World Heritage List and present their inscription trends and characteristics to examine whether they succeed in promoting cooperation and diversity. Our analysis will address four indicative aspects – the participants (i.e., the involved state parties and global regions); the inscription trends; heritage types (natural versus cultural); and lastly property types (transboundary versus transnational).

Our findings demonstrate a clear shift from natural transboundary properties in the 1980’s and 1990’s to cultural transnational properties in the last two decades. We will argue that despite the aspiration to promote international cooperation and improve representativity, most resulting inscriptions correspond to existing trends and inclines on the List, e.g., the dominance of the European/North American region. To conclude, we will address the proposed Erich Mendelsohn’s nomination considering our investigation.

* Transboundary property - a continuous area which extends across the borders of neighboring countries.

** Transnational property - a series of components located in the territory of different countries.

Oshrat Wolfling-Assa is a PhD Student in the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion, Israel, and a member of ICOMOS Israel. She is an active architect holding a bachelor’s degree (BArch) in architecture and a master’s degree with honors (MArchII) in architectural conservation, both from the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion.

Ruth Liberty-Shalev is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, where she leads the Conservation of Built Heritage Unit. She is also a practicing architect specializing in the conservation of archaeology and built heritage 1994 and holds an MA (cum Laude) in from Oxford Brookes University. Between 2008-2017 she served as head of the monitoring committee of the Israel National Commission to UNESCO, and on the Israeli delegation to UNESCO World Heritage Committees. Since 2022 she serves as Board member of ICOMOS Israel. Her practice, Ruth Liberty-Shalev Architecture & Conservation, is located in Haifa, Israel.

Tal Alon-Mozes is a landscape architect and Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. She holds a MLA degree from UC Berkeley and a PhD from the Technion. Her scope of interest includes the histories of the designed landscapes of Israel. Among her published works are two edited books on Israel’s modern landscape architects, and numerous articles.

Erich Mendelsohn: Heritage in Private Ownership – Conservation and Public Exposure of OUV in Jerusalem

Amnon Bar Or, Tal Gazit

We suggest a practical approach for conserving two privately owned iconic buildings designed by Erich Mendelsohn. Both buildings were designed during his time in Mandatory Palestine, they are located in the heart of the city and are part of the historic urban landscape of Western Jerusalem:
Residence Of Salman Schocken, 1934 – 1936 in Rehavia.
Anglo-Palestine Bank, 1937 – 1939 on Jaffa Street.

Both buildings have been recognized as having cultural heritage values, yet for years they have been the subject for various initiatives, ignoring the buildings’ historic values. In Israel, economic feasibility usually relies on private projects and the public usually cannot access the buildings. However, there are examples from around the world of historical buildings that have been designated public uses, exposing the public to their cultural values. We should adopt this approach and create a balance between preservation requirements and economic viability.

We believe that the solution can be achieved through a three-tiered method:

Restore – conservation of the building and returning it to its original state, preserving its cultural values at the highest level.

Reduce – Use the mechanism of TBR (Transfer of Building Rights), giving the private owner an incentive to preserve the historic building and build a new structure elsewhere, whilst receiving additional building rights as a compensation.

Reclaim – creating a practical architectural solution that will preserve the cultural heritage values of the buildings, and define significant parts of it as publicly accessible.

In our lecture we will give a brief introduction to, past, present, and future issues related to these tiers, proposing the guidelines for a conservation-centered approach.

We hope that this program will be an example for an integrated solution.

Amnon Bar Or – Tal Gazit Architects Ltd. Since its establishment by architect Amnon Bar Or in the Old City of Safed in 1978, the office concentrated on planning and management of the Safed Old City’s Restoration Project and planning of the preservation and restoration in the excavations of the Roman-Byzantine City in Bet-She`an.

In 1990, the office switched its main arena to Tel Aviv. Within the parameters of its activities, the office deals with historical and architectural documentation; planning of preservation and restoration; planning and reuse of historic buildings for contemporary needs and preservation and development of historic sites.

Within the framework of its activities in historic Tel Aviv, the office planned the architectural preservation of some of the most significant historical sites in the city, such as Levine House (the Old Russian Embassy, 46 Rothschild St., Tel Aviv) and the planning, preservation and relocation of buildings in the Sarona Templar Colony (Kaplan St. Tel Aviv).

Amnon Bar Or. Prof. Architect, General Manager and Owners. Born in 1951. Established his independent firm “Amnon Bar Or Architects Ltd.” in 1990. General Manager and owners ever since

Tal Gazit. Architect, Partner. Born in 1980. Graduate of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Haifa Technion (2009). Joined the office in 2009. Associate Partner since 2012. Partner since 2016

OUV, Attributes and Values – A way of Understanding the Concept of Outstanding Universal Value

Birgitta Ringbeck

The World Heritage Convention is based on the concept of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) meaning according to § 49 of the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention: a “cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity.”[1] But only 33 years after the General Assembly adopted the World Heritage Convention, the Statement of Outstanding Universal Value (SOUV) was included for the first time in the 2005 Operational Guidelines and has become operational since 2007. While the draft version is the mission statement for the preparation of a World Heritage nomination, the final version approved by the World Heritage Committee is the central reference document for justifying inscription and assessing developments, risks and threats following recognition as a World Heritage property. A SOUV provides a clear, shared understanding of the reasons for inscription and of what needs managing in order to sustain the Outstanding Universal Value for the long-term. The concept of OUV will be explained using successful examples and a proposal for a draft SOUV of selected examples from Mendelsohn´s œuvre.

[1] https://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines/

Birgitta Ringbeck, Dr., Ministerial Advisor (retired), was from 2002 to 2022 the commissioner of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany and from 2012 to 2022 also head of the World Heritage coordinating body, based in the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. From 2012 to 2015, she was member in the German Delegation to UNESCO´s World Heritage Committee. She studied art history, archaeology and ethnology in Münster, Bonn and Rome and began her career at the Regional Association of Westphalia Lippe, working on the research project History of Traditional Architecture in the Beginning of the 20^th Century. From 1990 to 1997, she was Head of Department of Preservation of Regional Traditions and Culture at the NRW-Stiftung, a foundation for the protection of nature, regional traditions and culture in Düsseldorf/Germany. Between March 1997 and December 2011 she was the director of the Supreme Authority for the Protection and Conservation of Monuments at the Ministry of Construction and Transport of the Land North Rhine-Westphalia. Ringbeck is the chair of the board of trustees of the German World Heritage Foundation and member of ICOMOS, ICOM and TICCIH. Her primary fields of expertise are monument preservation, industrial heritage, World Heritage nominations and World Heritage management.

Electric Mendelsohn, Giving Architectural Form to Electricity

Achim Reese

A prominent feature of Erich Mendelsohn’s work is the integration of electric lighting into his architecture. Less attention has been paid to Mendelsohn’s particular focus on the architecture of power plants. Apart from presenting them in his publications, Mendelsohn designed several power plants electricity himself. Furthermore, he highlighted electricity generation in the production facilities he planned: Prominently positioned in the main axis of the hat factory in Luckenwalde, the power plant of the Leningrad textile factory occupies a prominent position on the street corner. Not alone an expression of modernity, Mendelsohn also showed great interest in the Atlantropa infrastructure project. If the architect thus assumed that a common power supply could connect different countries and thus obtain a peacemaking function, it must finally also be asked whether Mendelsohn’s relationship to electricity is even spiritually grounded.

Achim Reese studied architecture at RWTH Aachen und the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Working as editorial staff of the Berlin-based architecture journal ARCH+ from 2012 to 2015, he begun his dissertation Places for the Self. The Architecture of Charles W. Moore and its Socio-political Aspirations as a pre-doctoral fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, Italy, in 2016. Completing the thesis in 2021, Achim Reese is now working as an editor in Berlin. Moreover, he is teaching architectural history and theory at the Technical University in Munich.

Mendelsohn and the New Design for Living: Personal Privacy and Changing Community

Michele Stavagna

This paper reconstructs Mendelsohn’s ideas about social housing in the early 1930s. Then, the international debate and the foundation of the CIAM prompted him to deﬁne his own position about it. Mendelsohn thought the core meaning of dwelling to be a matter of privacy as self- isolation from the world. He envisioned a technical update of the traditional house that adapted the suite apartment to German customs. To foster social aims, he asserted common facilities and mixed functions to be part of residential settlements.

In mid 1920s, Mendelsohn designs a mixed housing and commercial facilities settlement ‒ the WOGA Complex in the west side of Berlin. The project nature changes in the early 1930s. The housing for middle-class customers develops into a housing for low-income rental with high user turnover. Mendelsohn seeks now to play an active role in the public discussion on “minimum dwelling” among the European modernist scene. He plans a big Apartment House, adding three more smaller apartment houses joined together ‒ the “Kreuzhäuser”. Mendelsohn makes an implicit reference to it in an article of late May 1931, “Group No. 1 – Group No. 2”, which addresses the topic of modern housing and appears in the catalogue of the SOWO exhibition. This market fair show runs parallel to the German Building Exhibition in Berlin 1931. Mendelsohn’s client and publisher Lachmann-Mosse sponsors it to promote modern interior design. Mendelsohn’s text is also related to his brief joining the German chapter of the CIAM. He attends the CIAM special meeting in Berlin. Here, in June 1931, his ideas ﬁnd a hostile reception by the left front of the young modernist architects. One year later, the book on his own house Am Rupenhorn and his solution for a low-cost Growing House meet an unfavorable reception. The then rising economic and political crisis in Germany undermines any mass market solution for the housing problem.

After his forced emigration in 1933, Mendelsohn tries to carry on his vision in a major project for the London White City in 1935. With his new partner Serge Chermayeﬀ, he claims now the need of a public actor to manage it. This would better balance social aims and market value of this huge-scale project. The economic depression prevents an implementation of this ambitious plan. Mendelsohn’s ideas remain statements on paper. They linger though as premonition of issues that the architectural debate will only address later in postwar times.

Michele Stavagna studied architecture and the history of architecture at the Università IUAV in Venice. He obtained a PhD in the History of Architecture and Urban Design with a study on the photo books designed by Erich Mendelsohn in the 1920s. Michele Stavagna’s research focuses on the modernist architecture and design in the context of modern mass society. Other major research topics are the photographic medium in architectural theory of the 20th century and the Work of Erich Mendelsohn. He has taught Theory and History of Industrial Design at the Università degli Studi di Trieste (Italy) and has given lectures at various European universities and at symposiums in Europe and the USA. He has written many articles on his researches and is editor and translator of the Italian edition of Die Baukunst der neuesten Zeit by Gustav Adolf Platz (Compositori: Bologna 2010). He is the author (with Carsten Krohn) of the monograph Erich Mendelsohn ‒ Buildings and Projects (Birkhäuser: Basel 2021) and has in preparation a book on the Luckhardt Brothers and Alfons Anker. Since 2005, Michele Stavagna lives and works in Berlin and is a correspondent for the magazine der architekt.

Biographical or Thematic Approaches of Serial Transnational World Heritage? Erich Mendelsohn’s Designing and Building for the Modern Diaspora

Jörg Haspel

“World Heritage transnational serial nominations embody the essence of the spirit of the World Heritage Convention: the principle of the universal value of heritage for humankind and the role of transnational cooperation in the recognition and conservation of the world’s heritage”. This is how ICOMOS Europe recently summed up its experience with the nomination and management of transboundary and multi-part bi- or multinational World Heritage sites. A completely new dimension of geographical expansion and complexity as a World Heritage series had already opened up a few years ago by the inscription of a selection of works by Le Corbusier with 17 properties in seven countries on three continents (2016). “The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement” is seen by some experts as an epoch-spanning signal for a multilateral reorientation of World Heritage policy.
In particular, World Heritage initiatives for 20th century sites increasingly seem to be taking the biographical or monographic approach of the Corbusier series and the labelling of the application with a prominent architect’s name as a model for promising nominations. The inscription from the USA in recent years of eight buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright in the UNESCO register (2019), the inclusion of a handful of buildings and facilities by Joze Plezcnik in Slovenia (2021) or the current candidate list of Finland with a dozen of works by Alvar Aalto and Portugal with an undefined number of objects by Alvaro Siza stand for a trend of name-dropping and personal attribution to prominent master designers, as they are unknown on the UNESCO list for the heritage of the architectural and urban planning history of earlier centuries.
Using the example of the architectural oeuvre of Erich Mendelsohn, which was created in four decades before, between and after the two world wars and has been preserved with over 40 buildings in eight countries in Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, the paper will explore the question of the World Heritage potential of the preserved Mendelsohn buildings. It will also address the question of whether the Le Corbusier project and a biographical approach should play a model role for future World Heritage proposals or to what extent it can also play an exceptional role that confirms the rule of thematically, typologically and regionally-chronologically argued World Heritage designations.
The programmatic World Heritage studies and relevant World Heritage guidelines, as prepared and published by UNESCO and the Advisory Bodies (ICCROM, ICOMOS, IUCN) for World Heritage nominations, as well as the thematic and regional comparative studies and bibliographies presented by ICOMOS for the cultural heritage of the modern era, are to be considered, including the most recent study prepared by the Getty Conservation Institute in cooperation with the International Scientific Committee on 20th Century Heritage Conservation of ICOMOS and published in 2021, “The Twentieth-Century Historic Framework. A Tool for Assessing Heritage Places”.
An important reference point will be the nomination and management experiences of World Heritage care in Germany, which has a high proportion of bi- and multinational World Heritage sites as well as Modernist World Heritage positions – and where, as is well known, Erich Mendelsohn had his home and centre of work until his emigration in the spring of 1933, before he finally migrated via the UK and Palestine to the USA and was able to take up his professional activities as an architect and teacher again and again with changing partners before he passed away in 1953.

Jörg Haspel, Prof. Dr. phil. Dipl.-Ing., graduated in Architecture and Urban Planning in Stuttgart and in History of Art and Cultural Studies in Tübingen till 1981. He then became a custodian in the inventory department of the Monument Protection Authority in Hamburg and taught at the Hamburg University. From 1992 till 2018 he was Berlin State Curator of Historic Monuments (Landeskonservator) and from 2012 to 2021 president of ICOMOS Germany. Since 2014 he is chairing the Board of Trustees of the German Foundation for Monument Protection (Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz).
Jörg Haspel is a permanent member of the Expert Group on Urban Heritage Conservation of the Federal Government in Germany and a founding member of the International Scientific ICOMOS Committee on the 20th Century Heritage Preservation (ISC 20C). He teaches as an honorary professor in heritage conservation studies at the Technical University of Berlin. His research and publication activities focus on the modern heritage of metropolitan culture. He is a member of the Action Group “Dissonant Heritage” of the Urban Agenda of the EU.

The Factory-as-Chimney

Tim Altenhof

Chimneys often mark the vertical pivot of a living room: as outlets of a fire place, they do not simply add an exhaust to dwelling houses but serve as important components of social spaces. Sometimes chimneys are so large that they comprise an entire building.

Erich Mendelsohn’s Steinberg, Herrmann & Co. hat factory at Luckenwalde, whose destiny is currently up in the air, is one such case. It has been widely discussed both in terms of construction and function. A multi-faceted roof on top of the dye works served to ventilate the interior space, and it still evokes images of the hats that were once produced inside. In the words of Luise Mendelsohn, Erich’s wife, the principle of this “chimney-like hood” was a “very simple one.” By contrast, most architectural historians portrayed the dye works as a technical innovation. The objective of this paper is twofold: for one, it will situate the hat factory within a prehistory of modernity, and it will attempt to shed some light on the status quo. Ventilation debates on health and experimental hygiene throughout the nineteenth century framed the chimney as a pneumatic device, doing the work that was necessary to discharge human exhalations from dwellings. The works of experimental hygienists in particular have raised awareness about the consequences of encasing breathing subjects, and they took concerns with ventilation increasingly seriously. Max von Pettenkofer or József Fodor, for instance, promoted the idea of the house-as-chimney, ascribing properties of the chimney to the house as a whole. If these debates were rather anthropocentric, considering breathing humans as the major polluters inside a building, in the case of Luckenwalde the toxic fumes accruing inside developed from the dyeing of felt required for the production of hats. Concepts to come to terms with both types of pollution, however, were similar in kind. The underlying assumption was that our lungs and with it our bodies are vulnerable to air pollution. If one would intuitively associate an organ with a period, it would no doubt be the eye with the Renaissance, the brain with the Enlightenment, and certainly the human lung with modernism. Rising from the dye vats, the steam at Luckenwalde could afflict some of the workers with pneumonia, except that it did not. A less famous cross section from the Renaissance could have served as a forerunner for Erich Mendelsohn’s architectural solution. Through this line of inquiry, the paper broadens our understanding of this structure, by confronting the perpetuated notion of innovation with previous discourses from within and without architectural history. Some notes on the current state will illustrate the tensions between the city and the owner, and the listed building and its future use.

Tim Altenhof is an architect and a university assistant in architectural theory at the University of Innsbruck. He holds a PhD from Yale University, where his dissertation, entitled Breathing Space. The Architecture of Pneumatic Beings, was awarded the Theron Rockwell Field Prize in 2018. An excerpt of this work on Erich Mendelsohn’s hat factory at Luckenwalde won the Bruno Zevi Prize 2018. During the fall semester 2022, Tim is an International Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) Essen, where he finishes his book manuscript, a monograph on the ways in which different conceptions of the atmosphere and a heightened awareness for breathing affected modern architecture in the early twentieth century.

Mendelsohn’s influence of the Israeli everyday realm: Gad Ascher and the PWD

Oren Eldar

In the small private archive of the architect Gad (Gûnter) Ascher, former Chief Architect of the Israeli Public Works Department (PWD), lies a reduced-size photo copy of a building. Stored in the basements of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the photo copy is the single architectural document of the dozens of buildings he planned. It depicts a small local Telephone Exchange structure in Haifa, in which the articulation of a repetitive structural beam is the main theme. Beside the plans, a tiny, rapidly-made sketch drawn in black pen, shows the future image of the building. Drawn in a perspectival view and with a low vanishing points, this sketch, produced by the fairly unheard of architect, is reminiscent of the great master architect, Erich Mendlesohn, for whom Ascher worked during Mendelsohn’s tenure in Jerusalem from 1935 to 1939.

This paper asks to take Ascher’s sketch and his relation to Erich Mendelsohn in order to explore the question of influence in architecture. Ascher’s works will be explored in order to investigate whether the heritage of a master architect exists only in his own works, or whether it permeates through the works of his former employees. Beyond exploring the general idea of influence in architectural production, this paper asks to complicate this theme through engaging with the history of the “International style”, an era in which a dogmatic approach created a similar image of architecture, and arguably, sought to universalise style itself.

This inquiry will be demonstrated not only through Ascher’s design in Mendelsohn’s office. Rather, I will explore the dozens of governmental buildings designed by him, such as post offices and telephone exchanges, health facilities, city councils and courts he had planned throughout Israel. Tracing his development as an architect during his study years in Berlin and in Stuttgart, his works in other offices, and the experience he gained while working at the British PWD, this paper will suggest the idea of influence not as a matter of quotation, but rather an inherent aspect of design, through which historical relationship can be traced.

Oren Eldar is an architect, scholar, and lecturer, based in Tel Aviv. He is the curator of “Cloud-to-Ground”, the Israeli Pavilion for the upcoming 18th Venice Biennale of Architecture. The exhibition will focus on the architecture of telecommunication infrastructure in Israel – a subject on which he is currently completing his Master’s thesis as an Azrieli Fellow at Tel Aviv University.

Eldar received his B.Arch from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem in 2011, and had been teaching since theory and history of architecture, as well as studio classes in different schools – Bezalel, the Technion In Haifa, Shenkar College in Tel Aviv and the new Negev School of Architecture in Be’er Sheva.

On the last decade, he has conducted various pieces of research, among them for the “urburb” exhibition, which represented Israel in Venice in 2014 – and published dozens of articles in local and international publications.

Garden and Architecture at the Villa Weizmann in Rehovot

Ada V. Segre & Yulia Leonova

In 1934 Erich Mendelsohn was commissioned his first building in Eretz Israel, a villa for Chaim Weizmann, “a president-to-be in a state-to-be”. The outstanding status of the client, the zenith of the glory of the architect, his spiritual affinity with the Land of Israel, the exceptional topography of the site, – everything promised that a masterpiece was going to be created. Later recognized as such, the architecture of Weizmann House has been widely researched; less so, the landscaping of the estate.

While being laid out on a hill proportionate to the house, and organically bound with it, the garden is an inseparable part of the Mendelsohn’s volumetric composition. To date, its design is essentially the same as the original; it illustrates Mendelsohn’ approach to landscape architecture: connections between in and out, up and down, orthogonal and circular, static and dynamic.

The well-known expressionist sketches by Mendelsohn – the two arcs outlining sky and earth encircling the building — are literally embodied in the Villa Weizmann setting.

To reach the villa, one has to undertake a ceremonial entrance through the curving drive, which offers a sequence of changing viewpoints of the south façade, the latter being the most representative.

Amongst the garden’s features, the winding terraces are unique: Mendelsohn referred to them as “amphitheatralischen Terrassen”, as they were displayed in a theatrical formation. There are elements in the garden echoing the architectural forms of the building, amongst them those relating to theatrical forms.

All these, whilst they are characteristic of Mendelsohn’s style, also comply with trends in garden design of the first three decades of the 20th century. Amongst them, the rationalist “architectonic” and the “expressionist” garden inspired by a several metaphysical theories of the milieu of the architect, play a significant role.

To reveal these points, the present contribution is comprised of an outline of the history of the designed landscape, as well as of a description of the garden with its special features. These are contextualized through stylistic analysis and by comparison with other similar Mendelsohn projects. An evaluation of the garden from the conservation perspective, both as part of the whole site and on its own right, is also proposed.

Ada Vittorina Segre, A graduate in ornamental horticulture (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1980), and at the University of Bologna (1986), she specialized in Conservation Studies at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, York University (D.Phil 1995), held post-doctoral positions (Technion, 1996), & at the Centre for Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti (Florence, Harvard University, 1997). She has been professionally involved in the conservation of: Secret Gardens at Villa Borghese, Rome and Doria-Pamphilj garden, Genoa & others (1998-2010). She has undertaken research applied to conservation on Templer’s Sarona, White City Gardens, Weizmann Institute landscape, Bialik garden in Tel Aviv, Ramat Hanadiv Memorial Gardens. She teaches Conservation of Historic Landscapes at the Western Galilee College and art history at the Technion (2010-2023).

Yulia Leonova, MA in Art History at the Russian State University for the Humanities. Research: Garden City Movement, Modernism, Expressionism, Crystal Architecture, White City of Tel Aviv, Patrick Geddes, Israeli Brutalism. Content expert in Ideal Spaces Working Group (Karlsruhe). Published articles on: Houses of H. N. Bialik in Tel Aviv and A. M. Gorky in Moscow; Light and shadow in Israeli architecture of the 1930s–1960s; Patrick Geddes’ ‘Inner Gardens’ of Tel Aviv; “Production” of city space by the artists of the early Tel Aviv; etc. Presented at the international conferences in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Porto. Participated in Venice Biennale for Architecture 2018.

Twentieth-century architecture, Transnational serial nomination and World Heritage List: Some examples for thought and research

Pierre-François TOULZE

In this paper, the first step will be to carry out an overview of the properties relating to 20th century architecture inscribed on the World Heritage List (WHL), as well as properties linked to a single architect, on the WHL or on the Tentative Lists (Gropius¹, Le Corbusier², Perret, Gaudi, Horta, Rietveld, Plečnik, Luis Barragán, Aalto, Van de Velde, Ödön Lechner, etc.). For these types of properties, we will mention a number of highlights relating to the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV), including the criteria for inscription, the justification of the components of the serial nomination, comparative analysis or possible extension³. It should be remembered that, for each of these properties, the Outstanding Universal Value is inseparable from the personality of each of their creators, but also cannot be understood without taking into account their respective cultural worlds and the influence that the works had.

Then, after briefly presenting the notion of serial property, we will show its evolution in World Heritage “jurisprudence” and in the history of the implementation of the World Heritage Convention, and in particular the recent development of transnational serial nominations for both natural and cultural properties.

We will then present how the figure of Erich Mendelsohn is evoked in the files of properties already registered on the WHL (e.g. The 20th Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (USA), Berlin Modernism Housing Estates, Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau, and Fagus Factory in Alfeld (Germany)).

On the basis of all these elements, the last part of the paper will be an opportunity for the author, who has not been involved in a transnational serial nomination about modern architecture, to propose some reaserch avenues in the context of a transnational serial nomination.

Note : This communication is not proposed by an architect or an art historian but by an independant consultant specialised in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention.

Pierre-François TOULZE is independent consultant since 2014, he is specialised in cultural heritage, in particular in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention and the elaboration of nomination files for the World Heritage List or management plans for properties already inscribed. He works closely with other international experts who are experienced in the evaluation of World Heritage candidate properties.

Pierre-François TOULZE is also a member of ICOMOS France (International Council on Monuments and Sites) and of the International Cultural Tourism Committee (ICTC), the international scientific committee of ICOMOS on cultural tourism. He is also a member of the evaluation panel of the World Monuments Watch programme of the American foundation World Monuments Fund and participates in the evaluation process of World Heritage candidate properties.

1.  Walter Gropuis (1883-1969) is directly linked to three different properties on the WHL : Berlin Modernism Housing Estates, Bauhaus and its Sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau, and Fagus Factory in Alfeld.

2.  First transnational file involving seven countries and three continents: Europe, Asia and America.

3.  For example, it is the case for The 20th Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright : ICOMOS then the World Heritage Committee encourage the State Party to proceed to the extension of the series in the future, when the conditions for the additional components are established (Decision : 43 COM 8B.38)