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.
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...
by John Grindrod What did Richard Seifert, Britain’s most ubiquitous designer of skyscrapers, think of his famous towers? ‘They are dramatic’ he told the Daily Mirror in 1974. ‘Each stands proudly on its own. It cannot be semi-detached.’[i...
by Alistair Fair The University of Stirling was established as part of the major expansion of Higher Education in post-war Britain. The only wholly new Scottish university of the 1960s, its foundation followed the Robbins Report of 1963, which accel...
by Susannah Charlton Hove Town Hall, built in 1970-3 to the designs of John Wells-Thorpe, is a remarkable example of 1970s Brutalist architecture, replacing the Gothic town hall on the site by Waterhouse (1882, destroyed by fire in 1966). It is a b...
by India Rose Matharu-Daley Unlike most cemeteries, the Cambridge American Cemetery, dedicated in 1956, lifts the spirits. Its art, architecture and landscape design communicate glory and gratitude, light and life, patriotism and pride. For the fina...
by Elizabeth Darling At first glimpse, St Mary’s Road, Peckham, in south London appears much like any other in this part of London. A residential street, it is lined by rows of early- to mid-nineteenth century houses. Should you continue further d...
by Henrietta Billings Think 1990s suburban office park. Think offices for a concrete production facility. Then prepare to be amazed. The former Ready Mix Concrete company headquarters in Egham, Surrey, not only won 9 architectural awards when it op...
by Alexandra Bullen Nearing Westbourne Park station, travelling west out of central London, the slender eastern profile of Trellick Tower incites little notice among the handful of housing blocks peppering the area. However, as the building looms la...
by Christine Hui Lan Manley Standing amidst a row of three-storey Victorian houses, Ashburnham Court – a modern housing development comprising fifty-four flats designed by Max Lock and Partners – is the first building encountered by those arrivi...
John Brandon-Jones, of Brandon-Jones, Broadbent and Ashton (Listed Grade II), by Alan Powers At first sight, this building looks like one of the many traditional civic structures that are usually seen as a hang-over from the 1930s. This one, at leas...
by Tim Livsey The University of Ibadan’s buildings present an interpretative labyrinth – but that’s what makes them so interesting. Planned and built between 1948 and 1958 to house Nigeria’s first university, the campus offers a spectacular ...
by Shahed Saleem When Hugh Casson and Neville Conder’s Ismaili Centre opened in 1985, it took a prominent place within South Kensington’s Victorian elegance, and symbolised the Ismaili Muslim community's identity and establishment in Britain. T...
by Jessica Holland Oliver Hill is recognised for his versatility as an architect, able to design in a range of styles, from Classical to Modern. Amongst his best-known Modern works are Joldwynds (1930–32) and the Midland Hotel (1932–33) in Morec...
By Matthew Steele At the end of June 2013, the building known affectionately by local residents as the ‘Toastrack’ was finally vacated by Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). Part of a major restructuring programme which has seen the univer...
by Otto Saumarez Smith Traveling northwards through Wood Green’s low-rise Victorian suburbia, it is a shock to come upon the massive scale of Shopping City (1976-81), which looms into view, a vast red brick colossus. It rises up on both sides of t...
by Alistair Fair Though the western fringe of Cambridge is home to a number of key twentieth-century buildings, including Churchill College and several Modernist villas, it is on the whole not an area of architectural distinction. Recent buildings f...
by Christine Hui Lan Manley The Churchill Gardens housing scheme by Powell and Moya in Pimlico was built as a result of a prestigious international architectural competition launched following the end of the Second World War. The competition attrac...
by Susannah Charlton, photographs Laurence Mackman Holborn Library is a milestone in the history of the modern public library, both as the first large, multi-functional, post-war library in London and for its pioneering architecture, with an elegant...
by John Graham In 1956 Frederick Gibberd established a branch of his private practice in Harlow in order to design key buildings in the new town but also to undertake work in other parts of the country. Bath Technical College was designed in this of...
Ola Wedebrunn Trondheim is a city at the mouth of the Nidelva, a river on the west coast of central Norway. Its location has many favorable resources and constructions of material character, wood, stone and modern technology, mythology, history; an ...
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