Malmi Airport reselected to the global List of 100 Most Endangered Sites
Friends of Malmi Airport Society
Press release 21 June 2005
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| Photo: Tuomas Kuosmanen |
Historic, lively Malmi Airport in Helsinki, Finland, has been reselected to the global List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. The List of 2006 was published in New York on 21 June 2005.
The World Monuments Watch program of the international World Monuments Fund publishes the List every two years. Highly endangered cultural treasures from all corners of the world are selected by an international, independent panel consisting of leading experts in the field, e.g., from the UNESCO World Heritage Center and its advisory organizations ICOMOS and ICCROM.
On the 2004 List are, e.g., the Chinese Palace of Catherine the Great in Oranienbaum near St. Petersburg in Russia, historic lower Manhattan in New York, and the historic center of Prizren in Kosovo.
Almost 70 years old, lively Malmi Airport is the oldest international airport still in operation in Finland, by far the most important aviation education center in the country and the only general aviation airfield in the capital region. As a living whole the Airport is on the global scale an exceptionally authentic example of a 1930's international airport. The Airport is threatened by closure and residential construction.
The Finnish National Board of Antiquities has in 1993 designated Malmi Airport a built cultural environment of national importance, and has in its statements underlined the meaning of continuing aviation activity to the Airport's cultural value. The Airport, complete with its runways, is also on the list of sites of the international DoCoMoMo Working Party which documents and conserves significant sites of modern architecture.
"A panel of top experts has now twice seen fit to select Malmi Airport on an eminent global list of cultural treasures. No one can in earnest deny the international cultural value of the Airport any more", says Chairman Tero Auranen of the Friends of Malmi Airport Society.
The Friends of Malmi Airport Society, founded on 23 March 2002, aims to preserve the Airport and to develop, promote and support the prerequisites of its operations.
More information:
Tero Auranen
Chairman
Friends of Malmi Airport
tero.auranen@pelastamalmi.org
Raine Haikarainen
Vice Chairman
Friends of Malmi Airport
raine.haikarainen@pelastamalmi.org
http://www.wmf.org
http://www.pelastamalmi.org/en
Call to preserve world monuments (mp3, 2 MB)
Interview with WMF President Ms. Bonnie Burnham after the previous selection, 26 September 2003