Brutalist Britain: Buildings of the 1960s and 1970s
Elain Harwood (Batsford £25)
THE Twentieth Century Society, which campaigns for awareness of architecture in Britain constructed since 1914, has taken the opportunity of the death of Elizabeth II to call for a so-called Certificate of Immunity from Listing to be lifted from two well-known Brutalist buildings: the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hayward Gallery on the South Bank, SE1. Set between the Royal Festival Hall—the centrepiece of the 1951 Festival of Britain—and Denys Lasdun’s National Theatre of 1976, listed Grade I and Grade II* respectively, this immunity leaves both buildings vulnerable to redevelopment and also, therefore, the coherence of this familiar mid-20th-century architectural ensemble. Should we care?
indirectly offers a response to this question. It is one in a well-judged and attractively produced series of books published by the Twentieth Century Society with the purpose, another multi-author volume produced by the society with Batsford in the same format, appears next month).
