The first entry of C20’s Building of Month was published nearly 25 years ago, in October 2001. Then chairman, Gavin Stamp, decided to write about a derelict building instrumental to the foundation of C20 as the Thirties Society in 1979 – Oliver Hill’s modernist Midland Hotel, Morecambe (1933). In 2008, this vast sea fronting complex was refurbished and restored to its original use.
Since Stamp’s article, Building of the Month has developed into an invaluable platform to document and ultimately help save countless twentieth century buildings in the UK and globally. In the archive below, you will find over 250 entries spanning more than 30 countries.
For pitches, or to discuss ideas, please contact: mark@c20society.org.uk
Mark Bessoudo is editor of Building of the Month. He is a writer, researcher and architectural historian and a C20 volunteer.
Anthony Hollaway, by Richard Brook The former University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) campus, now part of the University of Manchester, is home to some of Manchester’s finest 1960s buildings and structures. The sculptu...
Maciej Nowicki, by Andrew Saint Raleigh, North Carolina, is not a prime destination for the architectural globetrotter. Yet it was there at the cumbrously named State Fair Livestock Judging Pavilion, aka the Dorton Arena, aka the ‘Cow Palace’, t...
Bradford Odeon (formerly New Victoria/Gaumont) Words and pictures by Mark Nicholson The Bradford Odeon building currently faces a very uncertain future on two counts. Disused for eight years, the submission of a planning application to demolish it co...
Words and pictures by Professor Alan Pert The Barrowlands, or The Barrowland Ballroom was originally built as a dance hall. It was designed with excellent acoustics for the unamplified orchestras which formerly graced its stage, and a sprung dance fl...
Desmond Rea O'Kelly, completed 1965 Text and photos: Paddy Cahill Dublin, the capital city of the Republic of Ireland, has fewer high-rise buildings than most of its European counterparts. Even so, plans are under way to demolish the cit...
Powell & Moya, 1949 Text and photos by Nevil Hopkins Because of Chichester’s almost overwhelmingly Georgian appearance, it seems an unlikely setting for twentieth century architecture, but there are gems to be found. The most celebrated is wit...
Text and Images by Robert Proctor Despite its sudden expansion in the 1950s with the arrival of the car industry, Leyland remains a pleasant Lancashire town of Victorian terraced cottages and suburban greenery. It would seem an unlikely setting for ...
Text and images by Barnabas Calder This is Cambridge’s most elating piece of Brutalism. No other post-war building in the city has such a Piranesian charge to it, nor such elegantly ostentatious engineering. By the mid 1960s the university had be...
Text and Images by David Walker Kensington & Chelsea Town Hall is often considered the last work of Sir Basil Spence. It was completed on 29 November 1976, ten days after the passing of its architect. But Spence had in fact been commissioned in ...
Austen T Parrott for Widnes Borough Engineers' Department Text and all photos: Eddy Rhead Even its most staunch supporter would be hard pressed to claim that the town of Widnes, on the banks of the River Mersey, is a beautiful place. It is ...
Summersgill to Ellisgill Courts off Langcliffe Drive, Local Centre and Sheltered Housing, Glowers Lane, Heelands, Milton Keynes Commenced on Site: 1976 Client: Milton Keynes Development Corporation Architect: Henning Larsen Executive UK architect: Pe...
Clifton Roman Catholic Cathedral, Bristol, by Ronald Weeks of the Percy Thomas Partnership, 1966-73 Text and images by Robert Proctor Set amongst the leafy stone terraces of Clifton, the Roman Catholic Cathedral Church of Saints Peter and Pa...
Built by the former Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch,now London Borough of Hackney Text and images by Stefan Muthesius When one thinks of the splendours of Twentieth Century architecture, ‘Council Housing’ - the British term for publi...
Words by Mark Goldie, photographs by Barry Phipps There is a chapel at Churchill College, but no chapel of Churchill College. The preposition denotes a truce after a battle, a donnish compromise. It was a device by which those who passionate...
Words and images by Simon Pepper The former-LCC Ossulston Street housing estate may be familiar to British Library users entering through the courtyard on the St Pancras (east) side. Look to your left and you can’t miss it. Built between ...
Words and photographs by Barnabas Calder This is Paul Rudolph at his most expressive. Yet although the Government Service Center is a near neighbour of Kallmann McKinnell and Knowles’s Boston City Hall, many architectural tourists visit the latter...
Text by Elain Harwood, Images Courtesy Arup Associates When the wind comes from the south, a sickly smell pervades Nottingham’s smart western suburbs. It is a reminder that cigarettes are still made here as well as consumed in their thousands on...
A massive building in one of the world’s biggest cities, the Copan Building in São Paulo has a highly distinctive presence. Seen in the background of television news programmes and in advertisements, its sinuous shape and distinctive ribs of concr...
Laurent Stalder Translation by Steven Lindberg Black and white images courtesy Architectural Press archive/RIBA Pictures Collection ‘C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas l’école’ (it’s magnificent, but it’s not a school) – with this...
Ron Thom’s work at Trent University, Ontario by William Fawcett Trent University is a fascinating contemporary of Britain’s new universities of the 1960s. The campus masterplan – on a greenfield site outside Peterborough, Ontario – was commi...
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