LONDON’S most controversial listed building, the early 1960s Commonwealth Institute, has found new champions after government ministers secretly proposed to pass a special Act of Parliament to delist the building.
A former board member of the institute, Patsy Robertson, writes to The Times today saying: “The trustees must not be allowed to demolish this building”, suggesting it should be used “by other organisations which can fulfil the ideal of its founders”.
An application to delist the institute was rejected last year by the Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, who stated “the advice from English Heritage could not have been clearer. Our experts believe that this is one of the two most important postwar buildings of that period in London.”
In a sudden volte-face Ms Jowell wrote last month to her Cabinet colleague Ruth Kelly proposing the delisting of the institute under a special Act of Parliament to release funds for education from the sale of the site.
This followed criticism from the Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon that the refusal to delist was “selfish imperialism” by the UK Government blocking “educational programmes for 75 million children in the Commonwealth who have never seen the walls of a classroom”.
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Derek Ingram, a governor of the institute for 19 years, disagrees. “This is a very important building which must be kept. The British Government gave a golden handshake to the institute of £8.5 million, half ring-fenced for repairs to the copper roof which have now been carried out. The rest was intended as an endowment but has been frittered away. The proposals for demolition have been bulldozed through and people have not been consulted as to how the building might be used.
The purpose of the institute was to tell people in Britain about the Commonwealth. The current proposals will not go to the education of children in the Commonwealth but to a research institute in Cambridge”.
Patsy Robertson adds: “The institute should be the flagship of multicultural London, ready to explain to London’s Olympic visitors just how London came to be the city it is in. The institute was the place where the children of migrants, not immigrants, could find out about the Commonwealth countries their parents came from.”
One proposal is that the Museum of Commonwealth housed in Old Temple Meads Station in Bristol could move to the institute in whole or part where it would attract many more visitors.
Views on the architecture of the building remained divided. Alan Powers, of the 20th Century Society, says: “It is a very important building deserving of its Grade II* listing, exceptional too for its setting in the landscape by Dame Sylvia Crowe.” The architect Peter Carolin disagrees: “It was given a critical pasting on its opening, has been omitted from most architectural guides and has no international profile.”
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English Heritage compares the dramatic shell concrete roof to the expressive shapes of contemporary structures by Eero Saarinen in the US, Frei Otto in Germany and Félix Candela in Mexico.
The institute was designed by a leading practice, Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall and Partners (RMJM). One of the main job architects Roger (now Lord) Cunliffe has said: “It was built on the cheap. Like a worthy old carthorse it should now be put down before it eats all the fodder in the barn.”
Proposals for demolition have met strong opposition from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The deputy leader, Councillor Daniel Moylan, says: “We want to see this important listed building retained but will be helpful about the way the building and site is used. Not every flagpole on the forecourt has to be preserved.”
A spokesman for the Commonwealth Secretariat said: “The building is empty. It was not built to last. The proceeds will not all go to one body but to improve education.”