Hugh Pearman

Any followers wanting to find me elsewhere, I have the same handle in the blue place. Happy to welcome you there.

Sublime!

1️⃣ Our 2025 Coming of Age list of the best British buildings now eligible for national listing is topped by the extraordinary Neasden Temple in Brent - Europe’s first traditional Hindu temple. (BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir - Chandrakant Sompura, 1992-95) ➡️ c20society.org.uk/coming-of-age/…

Please @BBCRadio3 don't persist with this slowed-down music thing on the breakfast show. It's excruciating.

🔵 @Everton's new home by @bdp_com & @MEISarchitects is a worthy addition to a historic dockside ow.ly/PviM50W6nKv 💪 'It is on a scale & with a tough, industrial quality entirely suited to its site. Walk towards it, it hoves most satisfyingly into view,' says @hughpearman

NEWS | It's Coming Home: Following an appeal by C20 Society, we're delighted to announce that the Future Systems classroom pod (2004) in Richmond has been saved from demolition by the @KaplickyCentre. It is now set to be restored and become the first posthumous Jan Kaplický building in his native Czech Republic. ➡️ c20society.org.uk/news/its-comin…

I'll be joined by architectural historian Otto @OSaumarezSmith for the concluding discussion. This is the last in the British Architectural Library Trust's Spring series on the architecture of British transport since Georgian times. Get on board! thebaltrust.org/part-4-upscale…

Upscale Express: next Thursday 24th I'll be giving a FREE @thebaltrust Zoom lecture on London's mighty, Stirling Prize winning, Elizabeth Line. Includes drawings by Ralph Erskine of the ditched early 1990s version! Register here: thebaltrust.org/part-4-upscale…

@sgaventa @C20Society Better to include than to isolate, I reckon. That way you get a counter-narrative going. I'd do the same for Create Streets, not that they'd ask.

@C20Society @hughpearman Please don't encourage him and his stupid thesis - you fight for ' boring' which usually means elegant or subtle - buildings to be saved !

Eleven post-war buildings that people love.❤️ C20 Society Chair, @hughpearman, recently met up with Thomas Heatherwick at his King’s Cross studio, to discuss the attention-grabbing Humanise campaign with its criticism of ‘boring’ post-war buildings and ground rules on how to make new buildings more engaging. Hugh came armed with a longlist of post-war buildings that the Society reckoned fulfilled the Humanise principles. Could they agree on a Top Ten of not-at-all-boring buildings? As it turned out, they compiled an Elevated Eleven. Click the link below to view the list and see if you agree! c20society.org.uk/2025/04/15/ele…

@cyhsal Wanna see my Ralph Erskine drawings of the ditched early 1990s version of Crossrail?

@hughpearman I’m glad people appreciate Ralph, at least this is a point of agreement!

We had fun doing this

@form_architect Thanks. I feel bad for having to google who she is.

@form_architect Could you translate that?

@TheSimonEvans @TheConWom @Sean_Walsh_1967 Final sentence "To be thought of not as the greatest philosopher England has produced...." Correct.

Sir Roger Scruton: philosopher and grand panjandrum of Apple Day conservativewoman.co.uk/sir-roger-scru… via @theconwom A lovely tribute by @Sean_Walsh_1967

@RichardBattye @PhinHarper @C20Society Well, there's also the 'new' foyer added by Haworth Tompkins 22 years ago. But then, the 1951 RFH was listed Grade 1 despite the radical changes of the 1960s. By Norman Engleback's LCC team, also responsible for Hayward etc!

@PhinHarper @hughpearman @C20Society Be fun to see the replacement pyramids listed!

9 years ago we thought we'd launch a new kind of architecture award, a kind of antidote to all the flash stuff. Less aesthetics, more ethics. Thus the #MacEwenAward. 'Architecture for the Common Good' we called it. Every year it delivers!

And much too long

@AaronBastani @boys_nicholas Every building in central London has the ghosts of earlier buildings gibbering round it. The trick is not to lament one of those ghosts but to look impartially at what exists now. It's a magnificently evocative period piece. Just my opinion.

@boys_nicholas Even if like you the 60s hotel. Why demolish its predecessor? All that embodied carbon!

It really really matters that a disproportionate portion of the small group of people who will disagree with Aaron work as architects or planners. What I term the “design disconnect” is real and it …

@RobertKwolek Yes, that is a tricky requirement given the development of styles over time. And who gets to decide? I guess conservation areas provide a guide to some of it.

This has profound implications in areas with local policies requiring “reflecting the local character”

In my experience, something many planners don't understand, but which local residents do, is that post-war housing is not part of the character of a place. With rare exceptions, post-war housing *erodes* the character of a place.

@RobertKwolek My objection to them is how wasteful of land they often are. So very low density in most cases. Terraces are returning however, yea even from mass-market builders.

@RobertKwolek No Robert, these suburban extensions to towns have their own character, just as the once-reviled interwar estates do. They are often more popular than the historic centres with buyers because they are designed to accommodate the motor car in areas with poor public transport.