Russia holds an enduring fascination for architectural conservationists. The periods of perestroika and glasnost have revealed a country that has fought, often on limited resources, to preserve its vast architectural heritage. In the aftermath of the Second World War, if those in the West saw a...Read more
Commissioned by Count Nicholas Petrovitch Cheremetiev (1751–1809) at the close of the eighteenth century, Ostankino palace ranks among the most important surviving estates in the Russian Federation. The one-story neoclassical building is composed of a central pavilion, which is flanked by an...Read more
For the past four years, the Palace Museum in Beijing and the World Monuments Fund (WMF) have partnered in the restoration of the Forbidden City’s Lodge of Retirement (see Qianlong’s Private World, ICON, Winter 2003/2004). The two-story lodge has the most exquisite interior of the elaborate...Read more
Moscow’s Modernist legacy is one of the finest in the world, but also one of the most neglected. Built in the feverish early years of the revolution, the buildings are experimental in form and materials and presented Moscow with dramatic silhouettes to mark the new era of socialism. However,...Read more
It is ironic in this age of quick fixes that many are seeking solace in the intense, imaginative world of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century architect Sir John Soane, whose stripped-down classicism, loved for so long by purists, has witnessed an extraodinary revival in recent years...Read more
Behind the Narkomfin Dom Kommuna’s austere bands of double-height windows unfolds a six-story blueprint for communal living that is as ingenious as it is humane. Built between 1928 and 1930 by a team of architects and engineers led by Moisei Ginzburg, a member of the post-revolutionary Union of...Read more
This spring, the World Monuments Fund will be featuring the work of renowned Turkish architect and photographer Ahmet Ertug˘ in a new exhibition—Vaults of Heaven: Sanctuaries of Byzantium—on view at its Manhattan gallery. Prior to the exhibition’s New York debut, gallery curator and ICON...Read more
It ought to be inconceivable that a city with as rich an architectural legacy as Moscow could continue to lose so many of its historic buildings, having already lost so much of its cultural heritage during the twentieth century. Yet that is precisely what is happening—photographs taken of streets...Read more
Angkor, a vast Hindu-Buddhist temple complex in north-central Cambodia, is among the most magnificent architectural wonders of Southeast Asia. Founded more than a millennium ago, this ancient city was the one-time seat of the mighty Khmer Empire, which ruled most of the region between the ninth and...Read more
It has been 40 years since the founding of the International Fund for Monuments—as WMF was first known—which has become the leading private organization dedicated to safeguarding and preserving imperiled architectural heritage around the globe. To mark the occasion, ICON asked WMF president Bonnie...Read more