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.
by David Quoroll Sayers Croft is a remarkable place. Nearly a million young people have passed the Weeping Beech tree and down its welcoming drive, many of them enjoying their first real experience of the countryside, and a taste of freedom from the...
by Andy Davies In February 1969 a momentous debate within the University of London about the redevelopment of a Georgian square in their Bloomsbury home marked the end of the free hand of authorities to plan cities in the Modernist tradition. The sc...
by Siri Hoem Erling Viksjø’s government buildings in Oslo, The Highrise (1958) and The Y-block (1969), constitute a unique architectural whole, and are key works of Norwegian modernist architecture. Both are decorated with integral art made by P...
by Alison Sinclair Terry’s of York originated in 1767 in the sugar confectionery business of Bayldon and Berry which by 1824 occupied premises in the fashionable centre of York close to the Mansion House in St Helen’s Square and just round the c...
by Owen Hopkins One of the key moments in my recent book on the architecture and ‘afterlife’ of the great English Baroque architect, Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662–1736), comes towards the end, when the story reaches the 1950s and 1960s. These decad...
by Adam Nathaniel Furman Venturi Scott-Brown’s National Gallery Sainsbury Wing extension (1991) was born into a precarious no-man’s land between the warring camps of neo-modernists and traditionalists who had been tussling over the direction of ...
By Clare Price If you can bear the diesel fumes from the queue of National Express coaches waiting outside, stand opposite the entrance to the Victoria Coach Station Arrivals Hall in Eccleston Place and you will be rewarded with the sight of this fi...
by Elain Harwood This weekend house by Stout and Litchfield (1963-4) is at once convivial yet also intensely private. To enter its hidden domain is to be transported into another world, literally, for as you step gingerly across the stones of its ...
by Aidan Turner-Bishop The Cumberland Inn, Botchergate, designed in 1928 by Harry Redfern, architect to the Carlisle State Management Scheme, was built in 1929-30 in Tudor style. Carlisle was the centre of an experiment in the management of public h...
By Geraint Franklin The Furniture Industry Research Association (FIRA) was a direct result of the government’s measures for post-war reconstruction. The 1939-45 war led to a national reconfiguration of the furniture industry, redeploying labour an...
by Alistair Fair The origins of what was originally known as the New University of Ulster lie in a report produced in 1965 for the then Northern Ireland government by Sir John Lockwood, which, as Lord Robbins had done in 1963 with reference to Engla...
by Henrietta Billings Cressingham Gardens estate in south London was built between 1967 and 1979 to the designs of Lambeth Borough Architects, led by Edward Hollamby. It is impressive for the quality of the accommodation and layout, and for ...
by Barry Arden The Casa de Serralves, in the park of Serralves in Porto’s western suburbs, lies testimony to the enterprise and international good taste of its builder, Carlos Alberto Cabral, 2nd Count of Vizela. The villa forms part of the Serral...
Freya Wigzell The house at Slimbridge Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) was built for Sir Peter Scott, artist, conservationist and broadcaster, who lived there for over thirty years. The house closely reflects Scott’s life and personality. It ...
by Susannah Charlton A northern cousin of the De La Warr Pavilion, the Rothesay Pavilion brings the glamour of the International Style to the seafront of the Isle of Bute. Rothesay has been one of Scotland’s major seaside resorts since the late C1...
by Lou Robson The shabby foyer of Coventry's central baths holds few clues to the magnificent arena perched above. A modern kiosk is shoehorned into a corner and vending machines obscure the stone plaque marking the opening in 1966 by a Lord Mayor w...
When John Betjeman addressed the Solent Protection Society in the days before construction began on Fawley Power Station (1964-71, Farmer and Dark) he spoke of the “new architecture of power”. At Fawley, he argued, the plans would bring a “broo...
by Claire Bennie In these straitened 21st century times, the architectural and residential development world is feverishly concerned with building homes for the ‘private rented sector’. These are typified by small stacked flats, communal facilit...
by Alan Powers In the summer of 2014, the newly cleaned façade of the old St Martin’s School of Art emerged from scaffolding. Facing east in a narrow street and dimmed by decades of dirt, it was never easy to appreciate its quality, and Pevsner/B...
In the early 1970s, in the West Riding of Yorkshire (as it still was - just - then), three buildings went up within 12 miles and three years of each other, all the headquarters of northern building societies, and all in variants of high-brutalism. T...
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