The first entry of C20’s Building of Month was published over 20 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, which continues today. 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 across the world. In the archive below, you will find over 250 entries spanning more than 30 countries.
For pitches, or to discuss ideas, please contact: joe@c20society.org.uk
Joe Mathieson is editor of Building of the Month. He is an Architectural Adviser at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust and a C20 volunteer.
Ted Cullinan, 1992 Ted Cullinan first visited the great Georgian landscape park of Studley Royal in Yorkshire as a schoolboy. Evacuated to Canada with his mother and siblings at the age of eight, on the outbreak of the Second World War, he returne...
Irvine Development Corporation (1973-75) At 1.5km long the Irvine Centre, when completed, would have been visible from orbit. Conceived as the megastructural centrepiece to Scotland’s fifth post-war New Town, the vital statistics for this enormous...
Peter Moro & Partners, 1969 The University of Hull’s Gulbenkian Centre opened in 1969. It was the first completely new building for the teaching of drama at a British university, reflecting not only the growth of this subject within post-war...
Milton Keynes Development Corporation, 1975-9 On 25 September 1979, the recently elected prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, declared the Shopping Building in Milton Keynes open for business. The largest indoor shopping centre in the UK represented...
Rodney Gordon for Batir International Architects (1979-82) On one of the most exclusive London thoroughfares, a building by an architect more often associated with the crafting of mid-century concrete megastructures, blends glossy swagger with eng...
Nikola Dobrović, 1936 Lopud is the middle island in the Elaphitic archipelago, distanced a single nautical mile from the mainland and only seven miles from Dubrovnik’s northern harbour. The small town of the same name, stretched along a sandy b...
Sigurd Lewerentz c. 1958-1963 To the south-east of Stockholm city centre lies the first stage of the Sörmlandsleden hiking trail. A 1000km recreational route first established in the 1960s, the trail winds its way through the spectacular lowlands...
Lina Bo Bardi, 1977- 1986 The adaptive reuse of modern industrial buildings is familiar to us today, but it was not a well-established practice when SESC Pompéia was conceived, or even when it opened in 1986 some ten years later. A leisure centre...
Bill Forrest (1970-74) According to the Ham & High in 1977, the Chester Road hostel, was ‘one of Camden’s most attractive new social services buildings’. It was designed by a person whom Neave Brown described (in the National Life Story ...
Josef Paul Kleihues, with Norbert Hensel, 1992–94 This museum is a piece of urban design. In the small town of Telgte, a place of pilgrimage in Westphalia, north-west Germany, Josef Paul Kleihues (1933-2004) installed a showpiece example of how ...
F. O. Hayes, with T. G. Bell, K. Dean and Muriel Jamieson, 1966 Amma, the heroine who opens Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, a once-renegade black feminist playwright, is now enjoying new renown with a sold-out run at the National Theatr...
John A. W. Grant, 1937-40 Fountainbridge Library on Dundee Street in Edinburgh is a rare and important example of modern Scottish architecture. It was designed by John Alexander William Grant (1886/7-1959) and was built between 1937 and 1940. Char...
Bétrix & Consolascio (Marie-Claude Bétrix and Eraldo Consolascio, with Bruno Reichlin), 1982 One of Switzerland’s most significant buildings of the postmodern era is located in the industrial area of Uster, a small town outside Zurich. The...
Arthur W. Ecclestone (1948) The grade II listed Iron Duke, situated on Jellicoe Road in Great Yarmouth, facing the North Denes Dunes and out to the sea, was built as the flagship public house for the Lacons brewery. At its height, Lacons had over...
Clough Williams-Ellis (1946) A circle or oval on a steep declivity is hard to design, the more so if it has to harbour a solemn enclosure. What height should the encircling walls have? If there is to be a level surface within, they must be shall...
Russell Jones (2006) Client: Clinton Greyn (1933-2019) Working at Paddington Library in 1984 I had no idea Clinton Greyn was a successful actor who had played a Victorian James Bond in the television series, Virgin of the Secret Service (1968) ...
MJ Long and Colin St John Wilson, 1965 Conduit Head Road, a wooded lane to the west of Cambridge, is full of architectural delights. Several 1920s villas, two by George Checkley and one by Justin Blanco White, line its southern stretch, while to t...
Richard Gilbert Scott, 1959 Biggin Hill sits atop an outcrop of the North Downs, now finding itself in the southernmost fringes of the London borough of Bromley, tucked just inside the M25. The parish church of St Mark’s originated in the early ...
Nicoll Russell, 1976-82 Between the late 1950s and the mid 1980s, the landscape of theatre in Britain was transformed by the construction of new theatres. From Inverness to Plymouth, Aberystwyth to Ipswich, these theatres were typically supported ...
Derek W Brown, 1963. by Lynn Pearson Why was Scunthorpe’s unusual and stylish co-op pharmacy totally ignored by all but the local press when it opened in 1963? Co-op buildings featured regularly in architectural journals between the wars, whe...
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