100 Buildings 100 Years

I have just been to the launch of a small exhibition at the RA to celebrate the publication of a book published by The Twentieth Century Society in which members of the society have picked one building to mark every year of the last century.   It’s an intriguing choice.   I had no idea that H.P. Berlage had designed a building in London (Holland House in Bury Street in 1915).   I was pleased, if surprised, to find the wacky ‘House in the Clouds’ in Thorpeness listed for 1923.   What’s missing ?  No work by Raymond Erith.   No St.Paul’s Bow Common (1960) nor Architects’ Co-Partnership’s Durham University Student Union Building (1965) nor Essex University.   Liverpool Cathedral is listed for 1978, which is a touch eccentric given that it was started in 1907, and the Brunswick Centre for 2006 when it was refurbished, not 1961 when it was built.   But, of course, the point of the book is to provoke dispute.

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