The Architects Journal has reported that heritage campaign group, the Twentieth Century Society, has launched a nationwide campaign to get ten ‘wildly inventive and underappreciated’ leisure centres listed. Included in the list is Coventry’s Sport Centre known locally as ‘The Elephant’.
Twentieth Century Society president and former Architecture Review editor Cath Slessor hailed leisure centres as “a welcome escape from perennial British gloom, transporting you to a different, more pleasurable world”.
She said: “Back in my architect days, I used to work for a firm that specialised in leisure centres, they took architecture to new and often bizarre heights of imagination. Now, sadly, many are at risk, but to lose such cherished local fixtures would diminish the communities they were designed to serve and jeopardise a rich seam of social and architectural history.
“The decimation of local authority budgets have forced many centres to close like the ‘Elephant’ in Coventry. The soaring energy costs has increased the threat to many other leisure centres.”
The Coventry Society submitted The Elephant for listing in 2015, but it was turned down by Historic England.
The ten leisure centres submitted for listing by the Twentieth Century Society are as follows:
In England –
- Coventry Sports Centre (Elephant) by Coventry City Architects’ department (1973-76)
- Center Parcs Dome, Sherwood, by Center Parcs Architects (1987)
- Concordia Leisure Centre, Cramlington, by FaulknerBrown Hendy Watkinson and Stonor (1973-77)
- The Dome, Doncaster, by Faulkner-Brown Hendy Watkinson Stonor (1986-89)
- Ships and Castles Leisure Centre, Falmouth, by Robertson Partnership (1992-93)
- Walker Activity Dome, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, by Williamson, Faulkner Brown and Partners (1963-65)
In Scotland –
- Bell’s Sports Centre, Perth, by David Cockburn (1966)
- Clickimin Leisure Complex by FaulknerBrowns Architects (1985-2005)
- Perth Leisure Centre by FaulknerBrowns Architects (1984-88)
In Wales –
- Wrexham Waterworld by Williamson Partnership – (1965-67)
You can read the full article in the Architects Journal.