Historic England (HE) has listed 17 bold, playful, brightly coloured post-modern buildings of the late 1970’s to 1990’s across six categories: culture, housing, education, civic, commercial and law, and ranging from Crown Courts in Cornwall to warehouses in Slough and housing schemes in London Docklands.
Image: Shadwell Basic Development by Christine Matthews, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14193425
Historic England writes:
The listings follow Historic England’s research into this architectural style and recommendations that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport give these buildings heritage protection.
Post-Modern architecture emerged in the 1970s as a critical reaction to Modernism. In Britain it was closely associated with the economic boom of the 1980s. After a period out of favour, the 2011 exhibition ‘Style and Subversion’ at the V&A marked a revival of interest in Post-Modernism.
The style was an important strand of late 20th century architecture, but Post-Modern buildings can be vulnerable to change and loss which is why the best examples have been selected for listing.
Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, said: ‘Post-Modern architecture brought fun and colour to our streets. Housing schemes were enlivened with bold façades, a school technology building was decorated with columns designed as screws, a business park injected with glamour. These are scarce survivals of a really influential period of British architecture and these buildings deserve the protection that listing gives them.’
Read more and see the complete list
