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.
Climate and Sustainability
Since 2023, and in the face of the growing climate catastrophe, Building of the Month has focused on twentieth century buildings that were designed with energy efficiency as a major consideration. The buildings selected varied greatly in their approaches. From the BedZED complex in Sutton – a compound of houses and amenities that used reclaimed and recycled materials in its construction – to Eltham’s Street Farmhouse – inspired by political ecology and designed to revolve around regenerative cycles such as the anaerobic digestion process – to the cross-ventilation and night cooling systems of the post-war Solar Campus, Merseyside. The architects of these buildings and others variably addressed the issues of insulation, ventilation, solar gain, renewable energy generation and the conscious minimisation of embodied carbon. Given the importance of all these areas and more, we have decided to continue our environmental theme into 2024.
Our understanding of, and interaction with, the environment is interpreted through multiple different lenses and is undoubtedly embedded in a process of trial and error – of backwards and sideways steps, as well as forward. But in 2024 the chosen buildings will have been designed with the overriding ambition to address climate and sustainability. In its variety, Building of the Month will demonstrate that environmental conscience is not new within the architectural profession. It has been a preoccupation for a very long time.
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.
German Architectural Federation (DBA) (architect-in-charge: Roland Korn), 1977-1990. In post-war Germany, the desire to rebuild “murdered cities” led urban planners, architects, and political figures in West and East Germany to propagate new com...
Russell Diplock Associates, 1964 Those arriving for the first time at Margate station often stare with disbelief at the 18-storey residential block which stands between them and the resort’s famous beach. The younger visitors (who tend to admire i...
Kodak House, Rathmines, Dublin by Donnelly, Moore and Keatinge (1930), with modifications by William Sedgewick Keatinge (1949-51) The inner suburb of Rathmines, Dublin, is an area in flux. Once host to a mix of light industrial units and housing, it...
Walter Gropius with Adolf Meyer (1924) by Alan Powers, trustee and former chairman of C20 Society Much has been said and written about the Bauhaus, not least in this centenary year of its foundation. The best way to judge the Bauhaus is by its prod...
With Richmond House under threat and the Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal project underway, eyes have once again turned to Portcullis House and Westminster Underground Station. Although the modifications are as yet unspecified, following...
This month, the noted author, historian and curator Neil Bingham writes about the Meeting House from the perspective of one using it for the purpose it was intended. For an hour, we sat in silence. Only twice was it broken, momentarily, when a Frie...
Le Corbusier, 1962-1967 Chandigarh, the modern capital of the truncated state of East Punjab, was born in the wake of India’s partition in 1947 that led to the creation of Pakistan and with it the loss of Lahore. Today, it is a well-known modern c...
Sir William Whitfield, 1982-84 When the Society was launched 40 years ago in the sumptuous Art Deco Ball Room of the Park Lane Hotel, the keynote speech was made by the veteran Parliamentarian Lord St John of Fawsley– then Mrs Thatcher’s Minist...
Mervyn Seal, 1976 These delightful and unique holiday homes were designed by the Torbay architect Mervyn Seal (1930-) in 1976 for Sladnor Park, a holiday camp at Maidencombe, just north of Torquay. Seal’s early housing in the area was well-known l...
Maguire & Murray, 1962-7 Millions of rail passengers travel through Crewe. Those who leave the station will find a railway town of nineteenth century redbrick terraced and semi-detached houses. Yet, about two kilometres away from the station, is...
Feliksas Vizbaras (1931-2) “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us” - this famous phrase by Sir Winston Churchill could be applied to one of the unique stories of the 20th century, which comes from Lithuania in Northern Europe. It is...
Peter Smithson (2001-8) It is not well-enough known that Peter Smithson designed a museum, and that it was actually built. Perhaps that is because it’s in a sleepy suburb of a sleepy German town. Or perhaps because it was designed so late in his c...
by Tim Benton In 1926 Eileen Gray bought a plot on the Côte d’Azur, squeezed between a railway line and the rocky coastline with a beautiful view over the Bay of Monaco. Here she designed and built, with the help of her lover Jean Badovici, a vil...
Boston City Hall, Massachusetts, USA Kallmann, McKinnell and Knowles (with Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty), 1962–1969 by Mark Pasnik As the keystone of Boston’s ambitious sixty-acre Government Center project, Boston City Hall represents an im...
by Kenneth Powell This year marks the 70th birthday of the Aldeburgh Festival, founded in 1948 by Benjamin Britten, then a relatively low-key regional event, now a major feature of the international musical calendar. The principal base of the Fest...
by David Knight The Church of Santo António da Polana, inaugurated in 1962 to the designs of Nuno Craveiro Lopes, is an extraordinary formal gesture in its context – a 20th century suburb of Maputo, Mozambique – but it also represents an extrao...
March 2018 by Alistair Fair Sixty years ago, the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan saw the completion of the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, as the beginning of a new era. ‘Enter most theatres and you enter the gilded, cupidaceous past’, he wrote. ‘En...
February 2018 by T J Zupančič “Construction of the International Automatic Telephone Exchange, nicknamed The Piano, was quite a big technological challenge in the 1970s,” explained a sprightly, forthright Milan Mihelič, then 85, in a charmin...
by Geraint Franklin The Roehampton Lane estate, designed by Bill Howell, John Killick, John Partridge and Stan Amis, was one of the jewels in the crown of the London County Council’s feted post-war housing programme. Its magnificent site conjoined...
By Sam Hawksford White. In 1957, the sculptor John Bunting began to rebuild the ruins of a hillside farm to serve as a memorial chapel for those killed in the 1939-45 war. Although the artist produced figural sculpture for churches throughout his lif...
Look for past Buildings of the Month by entering the name of an individual building or architect or browsing the drop down list.
Become a C20 member today and help save our modern design heritage.