C20, No 1 2025

C20 We can thank the Scottish Heritage protection system for the 30-year rule regarding eligibility of modern buildings for listing, eventually adopted in England. The latest issue of C20, the magazine of the Twentieth Century Society (No 1, 2025) notes that while we are yet to see any 21st century buildings listed anywhere in the UK, Historic Environment Scotland (HES) has added an extraordinary site significantly over that threshold to its inventory of gardens and designed landscapes. This is Crawick Multiverse in Dumfries and Galloway, designated in April 2024, just seven years after its completion. Designed by Charles Jencks, it was constructed between 2011 and 2017 across 22.5 hectares. Protection, enthusiastically supported by the society, has arisen out of a pioneering and continuing project examining designed landscapes of the recent past.

This initiative intends to identify, recognise and celebrate Scotland’s modern gardens and designed landscape heritage from 1945 to the early 2000s. The society notes that the examples identified so far are all cherished by their owners, well looked after and unlikely to be threatened by either neglect or major plans for change any time soon, so designation has been broadly welcomed. There are, nevertheless, a number of other key landscapes, notably in Scotland’s new towns, where HES says it currently has no designation assessment worked planned.

Repurposing modern historic commercial buildings can often be problematic, but a major mid- 20th-century building in central London by Richard Seifert, Space House (the former headquarters of the Civil Aviation Authority and once occupied by CABE), has recently successfully been rehabilitated. The beautifully and thoroughly illustrated article by Catherine Slessor notes that alongside Space House only two other buildings by Seifert and Partners are listed: London’s Centre Point (1961–66) since 1995, and Birmingham‘s Alpha Tower (1970–72) since 2014. They and Space House are all listed Grade II.

The spring issue of C20 also has articles by authors of new books on architecture of the period. Kathryn Ferry discusses coverage of her book based on vintage British seaside postcards, observing that a little rose-tinted nostalgia is not necessarily a bad thing. John Barr explains the coverage of his new book on the optimistic 1960s, which marked a heady period of opportunity for British universities, and explores how a radical wave of architecture reflected that vision.

This article originally appeared in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 184, published in September 2025.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation