To think I got into this place a lifetime ago on the strength of two A levels and glandular fever www.thetimes.com/article/b3a3...

How about a masterpiece OF kitsch?

So long, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, 1939-2025. One of the most original and inventive architects of his generation, an inspiring and effective President of the Royal Academy, and a gentleman.

Welsh flags outnumbering St George flags by about 100:1 at the Last Night of the Proms

But who will play them in the inevitable film? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Good to find a painstaking restoration project (the Big Ben or Elizabeth Tower) on the RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist. Bit odd to find a house and a house extension also on the list - such projects don't win the Stirling because there are other awards for those. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

EVENT: C20 Open Mic Night 📆 Thu 25 Sep 2025, 6.30pm 📍Cowcross Street + Online 🎫 c20society.org.uk/events Returning after a hugely popular debut, another evening of short talks by young & early-career specialists in 20th century heritage - from Sainsbury's public art to a Crittall Windows new town.

So tired of the performative flag waving going on. It's so un-British. We don't have a cult of the national flag as the USA does. We don't regard it as a sacred object. Until recently our prime ministers managed without it as a backdrop. Our monarch still does. We know what country we are in. Bah.

Please do not use the words 'iconic' 'dystopian' and 'vibrant' anywhere near me, lest I turn violent.

I'm going to run away and join the 'geopolitical circus'.

The broadcaster Samira Ahmed was recently appointed president of the Twentieth Century Society. She talks to Apollo about conserving the built environment and making people feel that it matters

Couldn't at first work out what they'd done to my local Lidl. They made it quite hard to get to the checkouts, via a narrow corridor. Then I found you couldn't exit at all after that unless you had kept your paper receipt to scan. Drastic action to reduce now endemic level of theft.

I have eaten the first Victoria plum of the season from the slowly dying plum tree in our garden. It was delicious as only a ripe, thin-skinned, yellow-fleshed Victoria plum can be.

This is more like it. @tommckinney.bsky.social on the R3 breakfast prog gathering examples of loved modernist buildings from listeners. Seifert's Tolworth Tower, Spence's Coventry Cathedral, ACP's Dunelm House in Durham among them. Lovely @c20society.bsky.social

Great news! Welcome @samiraahmeduk.bsky.social!

I am thrilled to be President of the Twentieth Century Society. Honoured to support the work of celebrating and protecting our architectural heritage.

BBC Radio 3 doesn't appear to be on Bluesky, which forced me back to X to admonish it. A slowed-down music quiz on the breakfast show? Excruciating.

This always puzzled me. Why DID meat - all home-produced - have to be rationed for 9 years after the end of WW2? Was it all diverted to export, in which case which countries bought it?

The grand-daughter is attracting large fowl again

11 pm and still just about daylight up here on Iona

Hottest day of the year and I have to go to one of those London clubs with a strict jacket-and-tie dress code🥵

Anyone want to buy a 1971 Ted Cullinan Olivetti building? Julyan Wickham and Tchaik Chassay, both then with Ted, were also on the design team. The Derby one is up for sale. Offers around £1m www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/derby-n...

Excellent news!

Good news, with more in the next post...

Not every day you get to visit a building cited by UNESCO as a reason for withdrawing World Heritage Site status. But I think Everton FC's new stadium in Liverpool's North Docks is of a scale and (unusual) design right for its location. My words: www.ribaj.com/buildings/br...

Fascinating the grand-daughter by munching toast. She can't get the same noise response yet

Grand-daughter finds peacock at the door

Amid all the gushing tributes to Alan Yentob and his impact on culture and the arts on the BBC it might be nice to have some explanation of why there is now no arts and culture on the BBC.

Two of the great American success stories would be Harvard University and Apple. The orange Ubu Roi naturally targets both.

Well, this is unexpected. My most recent book, on theatre designers Charcoalblue, has been shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize alongside works by Simon Russel Beale, academic treatises on Shakespeare etc. Quite an honour! www.str.org.uk/grants-prize...

Look at me, on a train, going to a city, to visit a new building, to write it up for a magazine, just like I always used to do.

'According to the Met Office, this is the world's first cloud-based supercomputer dedicated to weather and climate science.' - BBC

Entering the National Gallery's Grade I listed Sainsbury Wing with its new foyer. It's bleached, characterless, probably works just fine for a main entrance in the wrong place.

Quote post this with a picture of an aeroplane you'll accept as a bribe.

Circularity in excelsis. Re-used, not lost. Returned to the birthplace of its designer. So chuffed by this, thanks to the Kaplicky Foundation and to my chums in the @c20society.bsky.social

Tomorrow everyone! 5pm London time. I have an Erskine subterranean Guggenheim beneath Soho Square to show. And @osaumarezsmith.bsky.social will be joining me for the after-chat

NEWS: We're very pleased to announce that the modernist Brighton & Hove Reform Synagogue (1966-67), a dedicated Holocaust Memorial believed to be Internationally unique, has been saved from demolition with a Grade II listing designation. ➡️ c20society.org.uk/news/listing...

High risk nap location

Very sad loss of the 1917 WW1 Hangar 3 at Old Sarum Airfield. Grade II* listed, storm-damaged, on Historic England's 'At Risk' register and within our period @c20society.bsky.social See its characteristic timber Belfast trusses here is.gd/w2QZnA (fire image Dave White Photography/Wiltshire Times)

What's this arriving at Canary Wharf, I wondered? Turns out it is a new 'House of Gods' hotel, nearly complete. It will be 'a world of unapologetic opulence at an affordable price point'. Lovely, but I can't find anything saying who designed it. Anybody know?

Upscale Express: next Thursday 24th at 5pm I'll be giving a FREE Zoom lecture on the genesis and building of London's mighty £19 billion, Stirling Prize winning, Elizabeth Line. Includes drawings by Ralph Erskine of the ditched early 1990s version! Register here: thebaltrust.org/part-4-upsca...

This was fun to do

Hat-tip to Fosters for making their self-developed environmental software available free to all www.fosterandpartners.com/news/foster-...

🚨 Reuse Them or Lose Them: C20's Risk List campaign 2025 is here! From a Millennium pop music museum in Sheffield to a Bauhaus-inspired 1930s department store in Bradford, a 1970s brutalist football stand in Newcastle, to a 1980s ‘High-Tech Nissen hut in London. c20society.org.uk/buildings-at...

Fascinating to visit the restored Space House for @c20society.bsky.social's top 10 buildings at risk of demolition lauch. In awe of the views AND C20's tireless campaigning for amazing architectural heritage, now embracing some 1990s gems 🙏🌿🌻

On top of groovy Space House for the launch of @c20society.bsky.social Risk List 2025. Spot the Wren cathedral. Thanks to Tyler Goodwin of Space House restorers Seaforth Land. A shining example of re-use!

The Dow index: three days that shook the world

👀 London Calling 📍Shoreditch / Southwark / Dalston Reuse Them or Lose Them Protect Britain's modern heritage: Read the #C20RiskList from 09.04.25 (Graphic design Studio Hunter, illustration Mark Long, in partnership with Build Hollywood)

Before: generic but OK. After: vile, mean.

Thought my radio had gone wrong but it was just Pierre Boulez.