A news story from ThisIsGloucestershire.
Stroud Civic Society’s own vice chairman, Tim Mars, announced, on April 1st, that Stroud’s notoriously ugly police station may be in line for Grade II listed building status.
Tim said, “It’s about time Stroud police station got the recognition it deserves. Its etiolated horizontality offers an elegant geometric counterpoint to the heterorthogonality of the topography”.
“Stroud has an enviable portfolio of post-war buildings which too often don’t get the attention rightly afforded to its 19th Century heritage.”
He revealed that the police station is the first of several concrete buildings the society wants to see listed because of their new found “retro” appeal. “Stroud Civic Society is today making an emergency application to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to spot-list Tricorn House at Cainscross to prevent demolition or alteration of this iconic building,” said Mr Mars.
“The Merrywalks multi-storey car park, perhaps the best New Brutalist building in the South West, should have been listed years ago. While the next-door cinema/shopping/bowling complex is too recent to qualify for listing, this daring and witty homage to 1920s Russian Constructivist architecture still has the power to shock and amaze.
“Like Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao or Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin, this building has at a stroke put Stroud on the map. No longer is Stroud seen as a fuddy-duddy arty-crafty backwater but as a cutting-edge happening place on the cusp of now.”
(Top photo © David Gruar and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.)