Leicester Engineering Building celebrated at new exhibition in London
Designed by James Stirling and James Gowan in 1963, the angular red-brick-and-glass Engineering Building is a modern architectural icon. Love it or hate it, you can’t ignore it. The building is Grade 2* listed; it was included on the Telegraph’s list of the 50 most inspiring buildings in Britain (along with St Pancras, Ely Cathedral and Stonehenge!); and it has even been featured on a stamp.
The Architecture Foundation exhibition is “an immersive moving-image environment with documentary films and a field of video interviews” which “asks the question of who the Leicester Engineering Building is for, provoking difficult questions about the design of any building in a mediated world in which every design decision is caught between the address of multiple audiences; popular and elite, lay and literate, local and global.”
Complementing the exhibition are a series of events. Unfortunately you’ve just missed the first one on Saturday, a debate between architects, critics and users featuring our Emeritus Professor of Engineering, Alan Ponter.
On Thursday 14 April the Foundation will screen a series of short films about the Leicester Engineering Building including archive BBC footage from the 1960s. And on Thursday 21 April there will be a debate between contemporary architects about the importance of the building. Admission to both events is free but places must be reserved because of limited capacity.
The Architecture Foundation is a non-profit independent body based in Southwark at Ground Floor East, 136–148 Tooley Street, London SE1 2TU. The exhibition is open between midday and 6.00pm, Monday to Saturday until 30 April.
