Buildings in Britain were first set aside for storing firefighting equipment in the seventeenth century, in the wake of the Great Fire of London. These were often storage sheds or farm buildings, but as technology became more advanced specialist buildings were needed to house it: fire stations. The golden age of fire station design was the late Victorian period and a wonderful and eclectic collection of buildings from the time still stands in Britain. The changing threats dealt with by fire brigades in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries meant that new designs were needed to accommodate new equipment, but the basic layout of a modern fire station would stil ..

Brutalist architecture is ever-present in the British urban landscape, from car parks and bus garages to schools, universities and cultural centres, from the small college campus to vast residential mega-structures. Taken from the French phrase 'b ton brut', meaning raw concrete, the name brutalism identified an emerging style of angular and sculptural form and rough, exposed industrial materials. The pioneering architects of the style such as Peter and Alison Smithson, Erno Goldfinger and the Owen Luder Partnership optimistically believed they were forging a new utopia. Their confidence is apparent in the uncompromising, bold, even bolshy buildings such as Lond ..