Twentieth Century Society, 70 Cowcross Street, London (2026)

25/08/2026

NEWS: A sad update on one of our cases from the Risk List 2025-26 campaign. The former National Wildflower Centre in Court Hey Park, Merseyside, has now been demolished. In its place is…an area of tarmac (pic 3).

Designed by Hodder and Partners (2000), the 520ft linear building was one of the most idiosyncratic of all the Millennium-era projects, achieved during a period of unprecedented public expenditure, political will, and cultural ambition.

The operator of the £1.35 million wildflower centre went into liquidation in 2017 and the empty building had been a repeated target for vandalism and arson. The Society attempted to contact Knowsley Council to discuss the future of the building, yet sadly received no reply.

Instead of a costly and wholly unnecessary demolition, we proposed retaining the structure as a community café or a pared-back sculptural folly in the park - a Peterlee Apollo Pavilion for the 2020s.

Now, it’s just another lost landmark.

Images © 1,6 Martine Hamilton Knight (Hodder + Partners); 2,4,5. Stephanie Johnson; 3. Knowsley Council.

24/08/2026

EVENT: Join C20 and friends for a very special date at the Southbank Centre - Brutal(ism) Love and Hate.

📆 Sun 27 Sept, 4pm
📍Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London
🎫 Book tickets: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/brutalism-love-and-hate/?mc_cid=74558b2482&mc_eid=8a4ce987e0

To celebrate the recent listing of the Southbank Centre, we're delighted to be taking over the Purcell Room with our expert panel leading a lively discussion unravelling brutalism’s rise, fall and future.

Featuring:

• Samira Ahmed; Author, journalist, broadcaster and C20 President.

• Eva Branscome; Professor of Architecture and Cultural Heritage at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture.

• John Grindrod; Author of How to Love Brutalism

• Rhael 'Lionheart' Cape; Architectural poet.

• Noris Obijiaku; Architectural influencer and digital creator, known online as MrChuck.

• Sandy Rattray; architectural historian, Southbank Centre governor, and C20 Chair.

📸 Image credit: Andrew Eberlin

19/08/2026

NEWS: We’re delighted to announce that following our recent 2026 AGM, Sandy Rattray has been elected as the new Chair of the Twentieth Century Society. He succeeds Hugh Pearman, who stands down after four years in the role.

Sandy is a long-time member of the Society with a successful career in finance. He worked for Goldman Sachs and Man Group before developing his enthusiasm for architecture by enrolling in The Bartlett’s MA in Architectural History at the University of London. His thesis on the Royal Festival Hall put him in contact with Allies And Morrison, architects for the 2007 renovation.

He is currently an advisor to Allies and Morrison, senior adviser to Capula Investments, a board director of MSCI Inc., a governor of the Southbank Centre and chair of the King's College London Mathematics School.
Sandy has also co-edited a new book on the Royal Festival Hall: A Living Icon, published by Merrell, and recently appeared on the television programme Kevin McCloud’s Listed Britain explaining the history of the building.

➡️ Read a Q&A with Sandy on the C20 blog , covering his background, interest in twentieth century architecture, and priorities for the organisation: https://c20society.org.uk/2026/08/19/qa-with-new-c20-chair-sandy-rattray

18/08/2026

NEWS: The Bernat Klein Studio (1972) is ready to progress ‘from rescue to restoration’, as the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust (SHBT) has launched the search for a conservation design team to lead the restoration of the Peter Womersley’s Category A-listed modernist building, near Selkirk in the Scottish Borders.

The three-storey pavilion, where textile designer Bernat Klein (1922-2014) created fabrics worn by Coco Chanel and Jean Shrimpton, has been abandoned for more than two decades and was added to C20’s Risk List in 2015. Following decades of decay, it was finally purchased by a coalition of Scottish heritage and design bodies for £279,000 last summer.

The Contract Notice is published on Public Contracts Scotland with a submission deadline of noon on Friday 11th September.

Dr Samuel Gallacher, Director of SHBT, said: “The Bernat Klein Studio is one of the most significant buildings of its era in Scotland, and this appointment of a design team is the point at which we progress from rescue to restoration.”

“Indeed, this is a seminal project for SHBT, a new approach to conserving modernist architecture. We are looking for a team with the skill and imagination to bring a remarkable building back into use, and to do justice to the legacies of both Bernat Klein and Peter Womersley.”

The restoration of the Studio is being led by Scottish Historic Buildings Trust in partnership with the National Trust for Scotland and the Bernat Klein Foundation. The procurement process to select the design team is being supported by The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS). The first phase of the project to restore the Studio is being supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund alongside a range of other funders, including The Architectural Heritage Fund, Pilgrim Trust, Path Fund, William Grant Foundation and Scottish Borders Council.

14/08/2026

Good News Friday: The historic Electric Cinema on Station Street in Birmingham has been officially added to the city’s Local Heritage List.

Opened in 1909 (slightly before C20’s period begins, in 1914) and extensively remodelled in 1937, it was the UK’s oldest working cinema before abruptly closing in February 2024, with plans to demolish it for a 50 storey residential tower.

This sparked a high-profile and ongoing campaign to save the venue, with leaseholders Glenbrook Property - a Manchester based developer- facing criticism for their inaction and for allowing the building to fall into a state of disrepair.

Earlier this year Flatpack Festival shared visualisations by Tim Ronalds Architects exploring how a restored and renewed Electric could look, as part of a wider feasibility study on the future of the cinema, backed by the BFI and Architectural Heritage Fund

While not carrying the same statutory protection as national listing, local listing does mean an asset’s heritage significance becomes a material consideration in planning decisions affecting the site.

Cllr Deborah’ Harries, Cabinet Minister for Culture, said: “It’s great to see such a variety of sites being added to Birmingham’s Local Heritage List, which reflects the city’s architectural, cultural, social and industrial history.”

“I’m especially pleased to see The Electric Cinema being added to that list as, until it closed in 2024, it was the oldest working cinema in the UK, and completed a vital role in our city’s cultural heritage. Today’s decision further underlines the council’s commitment to recognise the significance of our city’s heritage.”

Image credits: 1. Roger Wasley; 2. Tim Ronalds Architects; 3. Birmingham Live

13/08/2026

☎️ Bless the telephone (Part 3)

To celebrate 40 years since the very first telephone box in Britain was listed, C20 Society has revived its famous campaign and submitted listing applications for four more quirky and historic kiosks. After starting on the Isle of Lewis and heading south to the Peak District, finally we reach the Cotswolds…

The great agricultural depression of the 1870’s hit the village of Guiting Power, Gloucestershire very hard and by the beginning of the 20th century, its houses were in a dilapidated state. In the 1930’s a Ms. Moya Davidson began to buy up properties in the village in order to ensure that they continued to be rented to local people.

Mr Raymond Cochrane acquired the Estate in 1958 for agricultural research purposes and continued the restoration work begun by Davidson. Over the course of several decades, some 40 houses were internally modernised, externally restored and re-roofed, with water and sewerage also improved. It was as part of this modernisation programme that the former Blacksmiths shop was remodelled to incorporate a telephone kiosk, at some point between 1958 and 1962.

Led by Longborough-based builders Thomas Williams & Sons, the 18th century former Blacksmiths shop facing the village green was sensitively remodelled to incorporate a bus shelter and parish noticeboard beneath Cotswold limestone alcoves, with a public payphone built into the corner. This highly unusual kiosk is accessed via a K6 model door painted in Dark Battleship Grey with red glazing bars - a colour scheme permitted by the GPO in national parks or areas of outstanding natural beauty.

Today only three other examples in their original rural colour scheme are thought to be in existence; at the National Telephone Kiosk Collection at Avoncroft Museum, Worcestershire; the Royal Crescent in Bath (Grade II), and at Pinkney, Wiltshire.
Only one other telephone kiosk built within another building is known to be listed; that at Hambleden Post Office, Buckinghamshire (Grade II)

Images credit: 1. travelib prime; 2,3. Upper Windrush Local History Society (Sunday Mercury, 7 April 1962)

12/08/2026

☎️ Bless the telephone (Part 2)

To celebrate 40 years since the very first telephone box in Britain was listed, C20 Society has revived its famous campaign and submitted listing applications for four more quirky and historic kiosks. After starting on the Isle of Lewis, we head south to the Peak District National Park…

Located in the highest parish in Derbyshire, the unusual kiosk at Chelmorton dates from 1934. Villagers wanted an independent telephone kiosk in preference to a public payphone within the village post office. The model offered by the General Post Office (GPO) – presumed to be the concrete K3 kiosk, in service between 1929-35 and intended for use nationwide - was rejected as being ‘too modern’ for the rural, upland setting. An article in the Derbyshire Countryside magazine from April 1934 stated:

“This [kiosk] may suit the surroundings of Buckingham Palace or Leicester Square” they said, in effect, “but it isn’t good enough to harmonise with the grim stone walls of one of the highest villages in England.”

“That is all we have,” said the Post Office.
“Then we shall design and build our own” said Chelmorton.
“Agreed!” said the modern and most obliging post office officials.

Derbyshire Guild of Craftsmen member Mr R. Moseley created a unique kiosk to the designs of a local resident Mr L.J.Rowse, in a Derbyshire vernacular using local materials to suit the sensitive rural setting. Built for a cost of £18 in ripple-faced concrete blocks, with a pitched slate roof, cement rendered internally, with a sturdy English oak door painted in countryside green. A four-inch step was also incorporated to allow the door to open during the frequent winter snows experienced in the Peak District.

Only one other freestanding stone telephone kiosk is known to exist, at Pittencrieff Park, Dunfermline, Fife (1928), listed at Category B

Images credit : 1. Deborah Vernon; 2,3. Richard Bradley, Derbyshire Life

11/08/2026

☎️ Bless the telephone (Part 1)

To celebrate 40 years since the very first telephone box in Britain was listed, C20 Society has revived its famous campaign and submitted listing applications for four more quirky and historic kiosks.

First up, we head to the windswept Western Isles of Scotland, at the same time artist William Arnold was making his own remarkable journey north.

The unique ‘Hebridean Storm Door’ variant of the K6 kiosk is only found on the remote Isle of Lewis. Due to very high winds in this exposed location, a special double door model was fabricated by the Saracen Foundry in Glasgow; while the standard large single door could be blown open in high winds and torn from its hinges (see pics), the double doors were more manageable to open and close, being held shut by the wind.

Only two examples are known to survive in their original locations, at Crulivig and Eneclate. The former has the Tudor crown in its moulding, dating it to between 1935 and 1953, though this kiosk is sadly now disconnected. The latter has the St Edward Crown, which was introduced in 1953 but due to protests over the use of an English insignia, the casting was switched to the Crown of Scotland in 1955 - dating the kiosk to between 1953-55.

While the Society took the statutory listing route with to safeguard their future, artist William Arnold took an even more creative approach to keeping the Eneclate kiosk in use. His ‘Saving Public Telephony’ project crowdfunded more than £1,000 to drive the 1,700 mile return trip from Cornwall to Lewis last week, placing the 52 calls required annually by BT to keep the kiosk connected. Madcap but brilliant!

Images credit: 1. John Maher; 2. Martin Fowler; 3-5. William Arnold; 6. Barry Lewis.

10/08/2026

NEWS: Yes, Prime Minister? The Roman Catholic Church of St Oswald & St Edmund Arrowsmith (1925-30) in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Wigan, has been upgraded from Grade II to Grade II* by DCMS.

Considered the masterwork of architect J Sydney Brocklesby, the French Romanesque style church contains an unrivalled collection of stained glass by Harry Clarke, an artist whose influence on early modernist religious glass was profound.

In 1934 FX Velarde, one of the leading Catholic church architects of the 20th century, also designed a small shrine to house the Holy Hand of St Edmund Arrowsmith - the severed hand of the Jesuit priest that gives the church its name.

Images credit: Historic England.

07/08/2026

🗓️ For August’s Building of the Month, Irma Naira explores the monumental Villa Ottolenghi (1974-78) near Lake Garda, one of the final projects by Italian architect Carlo Scarpa.

✍🏼 ‘Commissioned to build a villa in a vineyard by Venetian powerbroker Carlo Ottolenghi, Scarpa composed an experiment in how much domestic architecture can be theatrical before it stops being a house at all. It sets the stage for the resident’s life through alleys, cuts and shadows: a villa that plays more like an underground ruin and a celestial observatory than a bourgeois lakeside dwelling, a remarkable building that escapes all rules and the quest for a unique order.

Perhaps the real protagonists of this project are the carefully designed ‘dancing columns’ - nine great verticals, 88cm in diameter, assembled as alternating Palladian drums of Prun marble, Trani stone and smooth concrete. Though referencing the nearby Palladio’s Villa Serego, about 25km away, Scarpa made the rusticated stone drums more feral by commanding the masons to pound the marble with sledgehammers so that the rough, broken surfaces contrast with the polished concrete rings.

The result is that the columns no longer merely support the roof; they choreograph perception, establishing a rhythm of glimmers, overlaps and barriers through which traversing the house seems like floating among inhabited instruments.’

➡️ Read more on the C20 website: https://c20society.org.uk/building-of-the-month/villa-ottolenghi-lake-garda-verona-italy -cookie-notice

All images © Åke E:son Lindman

Twentieth Century Society

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