At the start of 2001 the UNESCO World Heritage
Centre, ICOMOS (International
Council on Monuments and Sites) and DOCOMOMO (Working Party for the
Documentation and Conservation of buildings, sites and neighbourhoods of the
Modern Movement) launched a joint programme for the identification,
documentation and promotion of the built heritage of the 19th and 20th
centuries - the Programme on Modern Heritage.
With
financial support from the government of the Netherlands, this programme
focuses on raising awareness concerning the heritage of architecture, town
planning and landscape design of the modern era, which is considered to be
particularly vulnerable because of weak legal protection and low appreciation
among the general public.
The
Programme on Modern Heritage aims to establish a framework of conceptual
thinking on the significance of this heritage, its preservation and some of the
pivotal issues concerning identification and valorisation. This framework is
being developed through the various Regional Meetings on Modern Heritage, which
have been implemented by the World Heritage Centre, and should facilitate
further, more concrete studies and exercises undertaken by the States Parties
concerned.
Modern heritage properties on the
World Heritage List (as at July 2006)
Modern heritage properties
(nineteenth and twentieth centuries)