Unesco has designated 17 buildings by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris) as World Heritage Sites. The decision was announced by the world heritage committee of the United Nations cultural committee, which met last week in Istanbul for its 40th session. The conference was suspended on Saturday during the attempted military coup in the city, but resumed on 17 July.
Le Corbusier’s Complexe du Capitole in Chandigarh in India; the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, Japan; the House of Dr Curutchet in La Plata, Argentina; and the Unité d'habitation residential housing block in Marseille, France, are among the designated landmarks. The architect’s trademark concrete, iron and glass structures are a “testimonial to the invention of a new architectural language that made a break with the past”, Unesco says in a statement.
The Antigua Naval Dockyard and related archaeological sites in Barbuda in the Eastern Caribbean; Oscar Niemeyer’s Pampulha Modern Ensemble, created in 1940 at Belo Horizonte in Brazil; and the Khangchendzonga National Park in the Himalayan range of northern India were also named World Heritage Sites.
Meanwhile, five World Heritage Sites in Libya, including the archaeological site of Cyrene, were placed by Unesco on its list of World Heritage in Danger because of the ongoing conflict in the beleaguered north African country.