Given Wright's global cachet, you could be forgiven for thinking that getting on the list would be as easy as the U.S. men's basketball team waltzing its way to an Olympic gold medal. But the Wright buildings didn't make the cut Sunday when the UNESCO World Heritage Committee placed 21 sites on its prestigious World Heritage List during a meeting in Istanbul that was disrupted by the attempted coup against the Turkish government. And in a twist that would have wounded the master's ego, a collection of 17 works by one of his rivals, the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier, were inscribed on the list.
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The committee was "very encouraging" but cited a series of issues, mostly technical, as the reason it did not list the Wright properties, Janet Halstead, executive director of the Chicago-based Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, said Wednesday.
The advocacy group worked on the nomination with the U.S. Interior Department and the National Park Service.
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Friday night's failed coup attempt delayed the committee's discussions over the Wright nomination.
"They had started the debate on our nomination, finished for the day, and were to take it up the next morning," said Halstead, who watched the proceedings in an online live stream. "And then the coup happened that night.
"They had to suspend the meeting for the day. For a while, they weren't sure if the meeting would convene or not. They did reconvene on that Sunday. That's when they made the decision."
Halstead noted that the listing of the Le Corbusier sites required more than one try to succeed. She said that advocates of the Wright sites could tweak their nomination in an attempt to win inclusion on the list when the committee holds its annual meeting next summer. But that step hasn't been determined yet.
"We're still regrouping and deciding how to go about this," she said.