Each month we highlight a building of our period, in the UK or internationally, that we think deserves attention. As well as featuring well-known examples, it has become an invaluable platform to document and ultimately help save many lesser-known, yet equally remarkable, twentieth century buildings. In the archive below, you’ll discover over 250 entries spanning more than 30 countries.
2023: Climate and Sustainability
Throughout 2023, the Building of the Month feature will focus on a selection of Twentieth Century buildings from across the globe that were designed with climate and sustainability at the forefront. Given the seriousness with which the climate crisis is unfolding around us, we have decided to use this column to highlight those buildings which have made a conscious and active decision to reduce their reliance on new materials and on mechanical heating and cooling. Instead they prioritise a careful and considerate dialogue between the building and the natural environment. As the need to lessen the carbon footprint of the built environment is made abundantly clear, we explore a collection of buildings that offer a diverse range of responses to this problem, but all with a similar ambition – to reduce the burden of architecture on the planet, and to provide a more passive and sustainable relationship with their immediate climate and context.
As our president Cath Slessor has written “Buildings account for nearly 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions and are rapacious consumers of resources and energy, yet too often sustainability is seen by architects and clients as just another box to tick.” This series of BOTM sets out to celebrate those architects and buildings who saw sustainability and engagement with the environment as an opportunity – as a responsibility – and not just a requirement. The buildings selected vary greatly in their approaches – from simple passive solar buildings, those with an interest in self-sufficiency and the use of recycled materials, to buildings that were at the vanguard of sustainable technologies. But in their variety, they demonstrate that an environmental consciousness is not a new thing for the architectural profession. Rather, it has been a preoccupation for a very long time.
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...
Black, Bayes and Gibson, 1965-67 by Valentino Danilo Matteis The Clore Pavilion for Small Mammals is one of the buildings that was planned during the rebuilding and modernisation of London Zoo, a process which began in 1956. The construction ha...
Lionel Brett (Lord Esher), 1967 At Christmas Common in the Chilterns sits a lofty house built for a lofty (yet always humble) figure, the architect and planner Lionel Brett, 4th Viscount Esher (1913-2004). James Lees-Milne, the queer architectural...
J. Sampson (Sam) Lloyd of Green, Lloyd and Adams, 1984-1990 The livery company halls that lie within the City of London comprise a remarkable collection of buildings, less well known than perhaps they should be. Their origins date back to the mediev...
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...
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.