The Southbank Centre, once voted Britain’s ugliest building, has been granted listed status, in a decision hailed by campaigners as the coming of age of brutalism.
Successive governments have resisted six separate proposals to list the centre – a set of concrete buildings made up of the Hayward Gallery, the Purcell Rooms and the Queen Elizabeth Hall, plus a makeshift skatepark in its basement.
But after a 35-year campaign the government has agreed to give Grade II status to the Southbank Centre, which was designed by the architects department at the former London council council led by Norman Engleback.
It confirms a turnaround in the building’s reputation. When it was completed in 1967, engineers voted Queen Elizabeth Hall “the supreme ugly” in a poll of new buildings. The Daily Mail carried a picture of the Southbank Centre under the headline “Is this Britain’s ugliest building?”
Catherine Croft, the director of the Twentieth Century Society (C20S) said the listing decision was “long overdue”.
She said: “The battle has been won and brutalism has finally come of age. This is a victory over those who derided so-called ‘concrete monstrosities’ and shows a mature recognition of a style where Britain led the way.”
She also pointed out that the decision ended an anomaly of the centre being the only unlisted building in the arts complex on the south side of the Thames.
Its neighbouring buildings are deemed to be of higher architectural value. The modernist Royal Festival Hall is Grade I-listed and the National Theatre, which like the Southbank Centre is also brutalist in style, is Grade II*.
Croft said: “We’re absolutely thrilled that this internationally recognised concrete masterpiece of postwar architecture has finally been accepted as part of our national heritage, some 35 years after the C20S first campaigned for the Southbank Centre to be protected.”
She added: “The lack of listing had become a complete anomaly; it is admired as one of the best brutalist buildings in the world, so this decision is obviously very well-deserved and long overdue.”
In 2018, the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) justified its decision to reject listing the Southbank Centre by saying its architecture was “not unique or groundbreaking”. In 2020, it made the building immune from listing in a licence that expired last February.
The owners of the building had requested to extend this immunity for five years, but the DCMS has accepted the advice of its heritage body, Historic England, which said the Southbank Centre had “bold geometric formations clustered to sculptural effect with a correspondingly dramatic silhouette”.
Its recommendation praised the building’s “use of exposed concrete in which the building’s monumental scale is countered by the fine texture and tactility of its surface finishes, executed with exemplary technical skill”.
The Southbank Centre urged ministers to fund a multimillion-pound refurbishment programme of the buildings. A spokesperson said: “The listing underlines the need for government investment in our buildings – all of which they own. The Southbank Centre has asked the government for £30m to support improvements to our infrastructure in our 75th anniversary. We look forward to working with the government to ensure these buildings are able to thrive long into the future.”
Previous plans for the Southbank Centre have included wrapping it in a shell designed by the late Terry Farrell, and putting it under a glass roof in a £70m scheme by the late Richard Rogers.
