Owen Hatherley’s new book ‘Modern Buildings in Britain: a Gazetteer’ is now available! It is a definitive guide to modern British architecture and includes a fantastic section on Leeds.
Inspired by the book, we are launching a creative competition and offering you the chance to win a copy!
Ostensibly a gazeteer, the book is about civic functionality, shared spaces, and the public buildings we risk to lose if we don’t take them seriously. It’s full of the urban (and suburban) invention which we’ve become so used to that we scarcely notice it – in carparks, shopping centres, ring roads, schools and stations.
Illustrated by more than 300 specially commissioned photographs, it also explores the century-old story of modernism as it has been built, lived in and contested in Britain.
“Leeds doesn’t give up its modernist treasures easily - a casual visit will present you with a mishmash of grandiose Victoriana, cheap and cheesy high-rise newbuilds and bricky, pitched-roofed ‘Leeds Look’ office blocks of the 80s. But underneath that is one of the great modernist cities in the country. Pretty much everything has happened in Leeds, with something great from every period - from the 1930s, with Cachemaille-Day’s smouldering, German Expressionist style Church of the Epiphany in Gipton to the Brutalist mini-metropolis of Chamberlin Powell and Bon’s 1960s campus for the University; and from the dramatic but ecologically dubious heavy 60s engineering of the inner ring road at Woodhouse Lane, to its opposite at LILAC in Bramley, an architecturally strong and socially imaginative eco-housing co-operative, in the 2010s. ”
Grab your copy of ‘Modern Buildings in Britain: a Gazetteer' now from the Modernist book shop!
Competition!
We are launching a Modernist Buildings competition in collaboration with Penguin Books LTD! We want to see your creative take on one of the Leeds twentieth century buildings Owen highlights in his gazetteer:
University of Leeds South Campus 1967-70
Bank of England 1969-71
Church of the Epiphany, Gipton 1936-8
St Nicholas’s Church, Gipton 1965
Leeds City Station Concourse 1938
Leeds Inner Ring Road, Woodhouse Lane Section 1964-9
The chosen piece will win a copy of ‘Modern Buildings in Britain: a Gazetteer’, worth £60! 2 runners up will win Leeds Modernist goodies. To enter:
Post your submission on Instagram or Twitter
Tag Leeds Modernist
Include the hashtag #ModernBuildingsGazetteer
The deadline to enter is THURSDAY 21ST APRIL 2022!
We welcome all submissions and look forward to featuring our favourites!
Check out our previous ‘Creativity in Lockdown’ competition here.