Historic England have enormous power when choosing to list or not to list a building. To preserve our richly textured historical cities, they shouldn’t hold back, writes Lucy Kenningham
In 1998, a fateful and surprising decision was made. Historic England, the public body that protects England’s “spectacular historic environment” unexpectedly granted a brutalist housing estate Grade II listed status.
Park Hill Estate was meant to be “the future of council housing” An attempt to build a utopia for former slum dwellers in Sheffield, it was built on a modernist, post-war dream that architecture could solve society’s problems.
But its listing decades later was a shock to many, who derided its brutalism and wondered if Historic England had completely lost their marbles. The estate had over time decayed, its skyways becoming havens of crime rather than harbouring meet cutes.
In 2009, commentator Stephen Bayley marvelled at the “intellectual chaos” of Historic England finding such a “horribly dystopian” neo-Corbusian building “fantastic”. The furore encapsulated the impossibility of an objective and selective building protection.
After all – what unites a rather........