Docomomo International would like to highlight the important and pertinent initiative launched by the Iconic Houses Network: ICONS AT RISK.
This initiative aims to encourage to preserve the world’s most endangered architecturally significant modern houses, by doing a documented inventory attached with the history of the houses, visual material, videos, latest news and literature references. Also, if there is a campaign for the preservation of a house, it is linked to it so that a petition or crowdfunding action can be directly supported.
In addition to identifying houses that are threatened by the wrecking ball or deteriorating rapidly due to lack of maintenance or vacancy, information can be found about masterpieces from architectural history that have since been demolished. But the website also brings success stories about houses that have been saved from demolition or a ruinous state, like Villa Cavrois near Lille, a masterpiece designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens in the 1930s, which opened to the public as a house museum in 2015 after an extensive restoration, with great success, recording 150,000 visitors every year.

Why an ICONS AT RISK list is needed
This international research project seeks to address the immediate vulnerability of architecturally and culturally significant modern houses of the 20th-century, which remain inadequately protected and supported in many countries. The project brings together a range of stakeholders (academics, heritage professionals, homeowners, and preservationists) to explore and address current threats to these culturally significant residences. The project has one principal aim: to raise public awareness of the modern house as a significant category of modern architecture at risk. With many houses in danger of being lost, especially those from the second half of the 20th century, because they are not yet recognized as “heritage”, we need to act now. So how to save them? ICONS AT RISK sets out to raise public awareness and support house owners to take action.

Information from Iconic Houses Network website.