C20 Magazine Issue 2023 2

The second 2023 issue of C20, the magazine of the Twentieth Century Society, marks the passing of Sir Michael Hopkins with a fine, illustrated survey of a number of his key buildings, noting which are already listed and which deserve to be listed but are not. It is pointed out that, when it comes to preserving the legacy of Britain’s high-tech trailblazing architects, some assurance can be gained from Hopkins’ work having an edge over some of his contemporaries on the basis that some were commissioned by establishment clients for their own long-term use and constructed with very high-quality materials. The society notes with regret its failure to persuade the DCMS to list Portcullis House, Westminster (‘one of the most ingenious and highly crafted design solutions of the late 20th century’), and that 22 Shad Thames in London (built for the designer and manufacturer David Mellor and subsequently acquired by Sir Terence Conran as his company headquarters) has faced the threat of a substantially harmful extension. This demonstrates to the society how vital it is that it continues to lobby on behalf of all such modern buildings of merit.

The issue’s eclectic range of material includes a photographic essay about the forgotten brutalist architecture of mid-20th-century Hong Kong; an article about the beautifully crafted, meticulously detailed and unaltered Grade II*- listed 1930s home of Lucy Archer, the daughter and biographer of the architect Raymond Erith, and an exquisite restrained Soanian design by her father in Suffolk White brick; and an article entitled ‘Going Gaga for Modernism’ by Carlos Finley, who suggests that, although architecture has always had a role in pop music aesthetic, recent releases suggest a modernist revival. Finley has produced a short playlist of both album art and music videos, identifying associated locations. He concludes that a new generation of stars continues to push 20th-century architecture into the foreground, and to vast audiences, giving these buildings the limelight they deserve.

This article originally appeared in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 180, published in June 2024.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation

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