Hasta La Ideas

Conservation group Twentieth Century Society has selected 10 UK buildings turning 30 to launch Coming of Age, a campaign drawing attention to the architecture it believes should be granted listed status.

Launching today on the 30th anniversary of the first Eurostar service leaving Waterloo International Terminal in London, the Coming of Age campaign collects noteworthy British buildings completed in 1994, making them old enough to be considered for heritage listing.

The 30-year-old projects chosen by the Twentieth Century Society include homes, an opera house, a stadium and a library by studios such as Populous, Grimshaw Architects and Hopkins Architects.

The Twentieth Century Society hopes to celebrate the diversity and unique quality of architecture from the recent past and is recommending the featured buildings be added to the National Heritage List to protect them from demolition.

“Why wait until the bulldozers are poised to intervene and try to protect outstanding British buildings such as these when it is possible to make an objective judgement far earlier?” asked Twentieth Century Society director Catherine Croft.

“With Coming of Age, the Twentieth Century Society proposes another way,” she continued. “These wonderfully rich and varied buildings offer us a snapshot of the now not-so-recent past.”

“They act as vivid manifestations of Britain’s aspirations and priorities at a time, in the early 1990s, which is now at the centre of our cultural nostalgia, but probably more distant than we might think from our world today.”

Read on for the Twentieth Century Society’s selection of the UK’s top buildings from 1994:

Kirklees Stadium, West Yorkshire, by Populous

Global architecture studio Populous’s Kirklees Stadium, now known as the John Smith’s Stadium, features banana-shaped trusses that support the roof load, eliminating the need for columns underneath and opening up spectator views.

The Twentieth Century Society said the stadium “quietly changed sports architecture forever”.

In 1995, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) awarded it the Building of the Year Award, which later became the Stirling Prize. The building is the only stadium to have ever won the prestigious award.

Waterloo International Terminal, London, by Grimshaw Architects

In 1994, the Mies van der Rohe Award and the RIBA Building of the Year Award went to the Waterloo International Terminal by Grimshaw Architects, known at the time as Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners.

It was completed for the opening of the Channel Tunnel, which connected Britain with France and mainland Europe for the first time. The station terminal closed in 2007 when Eurostar train services were relocated to St Pancras International but reopened 11 years later for national rail services.

The terminal building has a multifaceted glass and steel structure that spans over five platforms, which the Twentieth Century Society claimed “was a suitably contemporary monument to the new railway age”.

Glyndebourne Opera House, East Sussex, by Hopkins Architects

Situated next to a neo-Elizabethan country home, Glyndebourne Opera House is a 1,200-seat circular auditorium in East Sussex designed by London studio Hopkins Architects.

The studio opted for a modern form but chose materials intended to complement its historic neighbour, including handmade bricks, grey lead roofing and reclaimed pitch pine.

“A beautiful essay in fitting comfortably into a sensitive historical landscape without pastiche or pomposity, Hopkins seized this rare opportunity to build a large-scale purpose-designed theatre in the countryside, as only he could,” said the Twentieth Century Society.

RAC Regional Control Centre, Bristol, by Grimshaw Architects

The second Grimshaw Architects project to be featured in the Twentieth Century Society’s selection is the RAC Regional Control Centre in Bristol, which was built by a motorway junction as the headquarters for British automotive service company RAC.

Its main building has a rounded triangle shape with three floors of office space, arranged around a central atrium. A separate meeting room is suspended 35 metres off the ground from two steel spires.

“The RAC Regional Control Centre transformed an otherwise nondescript road-locked site near a major junction into a monumental statement – an energy-efficient, technologically advanced headquarters building that advertises the organisation’s qualities to motorway users,” the Twentieth Century Society explained.

Hauer-King House, London, by Future Systems

Inserted in a London conservation area between an 1860s pub and a Georgian terrace, Hauer-King House was completed by local studio Future Systems with a distinctive glass-brick facade.

Behind the glass bricks, the rear of the four-storey townhouse has a dramatic sloping glass roof, designed to maximise natural light in the white interior spaces.

“This wedge-shaped private house was one of the first built projects by Future Systems – a unique practice whose output embodied the optimism and fun of the 1990s perhaps more than any other,” said the Twentieth Century Society.

Welsh Wildlife Centre, Pembrokeshire, by Niall Philips

The Welsh Wildlife Centre by Niall Philips has a one-storey south-facing facade covered in timber and a three-storey glazed north facade, giving its visitor information spaces and cafe panoramic views over the nearby town and River Teifi.

Topped with a curving roof, the centre won the Royal Society of Architects in Wales (RSAW) Building of the Year.

“Niall Philips dabbled in early ecomodernism on the woody Welsh Wildlife Centre in Cilgerran,” said the Twentieth Century Society. “Where it led in design terms, many other nature and heritage visitor centres followed over the coming years.”

St John’s College Library, Cambridge, by Cullinan Studio

London architecture practice Cullinan Studio, formerly Edward Cullinan Architects, transformed and extended St John’s College at the University of Cambridge to form this library.

External bricks were chosen to match the existing building and internal spaces were designed as an interplay between dense areas of book storage and airy study spaces.

“Ted Cullinan conjured a techno take on Jacobethan at his St College Cambridge library, ably demonstrating his dynamic relationship with history in this light-filled and expansive new facility,” argued the Twentieth Century Society.

Pepsi Max Big One rollercoaster station, Lancashire, by Phillip England

May 1994 was when the Pepsi Max Big One opened on Blackpool Pleasure Beach, which at the time was the world’s tallest and steepest rollercoaster.

The ride was engineered by US rollercoaster designer Ron Toomer, but it’s the arched station by Philip England that the Twentieth Century Society deems worthy of heritage listing.

The conservation group claimed the station was “ingenious” for its ability to manage 1,700 passengers per hour on a constrained site while also vertically storing and loading trains “like the magazine of a gun”.

Garthdee Student Housing, Aberdeenshire, by Dixon Jones

“This is student accommodation, but not as we know it,” said the Twentieth Century Society, referring to Garthdee Student Housing by UK architecture studio Dixon Jones.

Designed for Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, the accommodation comprises two towers – one circular and the other rectangular – made from traditional local materials and coated in a pink hue.

Placed at the top of an embankment, the towers’ shapes were designed to minimise the impact on the natural landscape and overlook the River Dee.

Baggy House, Devon, by Hudson Architects

Baggy House is a six-bedroom home in Devon that the Twentieth Century Society said is “a remarkable synthesis of modernist and vernacular elements”.

Situated on one of the most unspoilt stretches of coastline in the UK, the home is designed by UK studio Hudson Architects to embody the contrast between the soft Devonian landscape and the rough cliffside below.

It features thick masonry walls on the north-facing facades for thermal mass, while a lightweight construction of timber, steel and glass was used for the south-facing facades.

The post Ten “outstanding British buildings” that are now eligible for heritage listing appeared first on Dezeen.