Owen Luder
Brutalist architect whose buildings included the multi-storey car park featured in Get Carter
OWEN LUDER, the architect, who has died aged 93, was responsible for some of Britain’s most controversial buildings of the 1960s and 1970s. Like many structures designed in the Brutalist style that was fashionable at the time, they gained a small and dedicated following, but failed to win popular support or find protection in the building listing system; several ended in demolition.
The term Brutalism comes from the French “béton brut”, meaning “raw concrete”, and the buildings associated with the movement were characterised by their rough, unadorned concrete finish, functional design, and sculptural forms. Relatively inexpensive to build, this became the style of choice for many post-war shopping centres, government buildings and low-cost housing estates.
Many, however, seemed out of scale and jarring when set among older buildings, and were allowed to fall into disrepair. Furthermore the concrete finishes, often poorly detailed, did not weather well in the British climate: rainwater stained the facades and caused cracks, leaving buildings that in many cases became widely reviled.
Owen Luder’s Trinity Centre multi-storey car park in Gateshead was a notable example of Brutalism. Built in 1969 in Gateshead town centre, its raw concrete finish became chipped and stained over time. Looming above its neighbours, the car park dominated the Gateshead skyline, and gained wider exposure in 1971 when it took a starring role in the thriller Get Carter as the site from which Michael Caine throws Bryan Mosley’s podgy local businessman Cliff Brumby to his death.
The Get Carter Appreciation Society would organise tours of the structure, and it also inspired a Radio 3 programme, Between the Ears, which interspersed interviews with Luder and others with sounds recorded on a journey through the building.
The car park offered visitors seven levels of parking, raised above the adjacent shopping centre by piloti columns, and supported by two towers with stairs and lift access. A rooftop café was designed for the top level, serviced by a glass lift.
But despite offering dramatic views across the Tyne valley through large windows, it remained empty throughout its lifetime. A restaurant and nightclub were touted as alternatives, but its location, divorced from any other centres of activity, along with a problem getting the right water pressure to the top of the building, put off prospective tenants.
Three attempts were made to list the structure, supported by a few admirers of its dramatic presence in the city and those who felt it was of cultural significance as a good example of the Brutalist movement in Britain. Its refurbishment and new uses were suggested. But critics prevailed: it had become run-down, the lifts were often out of use, and drug addicts took over its stairways. In 2010 it was demolished to make way for a Tesco.
The decision was generally popular, though one critic wrote: “With this demolition, we’re exchanging architecture as a physical experience for buildings as a mute, grinning, lobotomised accompaniment to consumerism.”
Luder, for his part, was philosophical. On a final visit to the building before its demolition, sporting his characteristic colourful bow tie, he stated that Gateshead car park was “an iconic building and should have been listed”, but he accepted that cities need to change and grow.
(Harold) Owen Luder was born in Islington on August 7 1928, on what he called “the wrong side of the blankets”, to an unmarried mother, Ellen Mason, who worked in the garment industry pressing bathing costumes; three years later she married Edward Luder, whom Owen always considered his father (though he was never formally adopted). Neither his mother nor his grandmother told him who his biological father was.
In 1935 the family moved to south London where he attended Deptford Park Primary School, followed, owing to the dislocations of wartime, by Peckham School for Girls. Having decided on architecture as a career, he went to the Brixton School of Building, completing his architectural education at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture.
Luder founded his own practice in 1957, which became, a year later, the Owen Luder Partnership. The office expanded quickly in the booming economy, with commercial projects including the Tricorn Centre, a shopping centre built as part of a revitalisation scheme for Portsmouth that got its name from the similarity of the shape of the site to a tricorn hat.
Apart from a few admirers among diehard fans of Brutalism the shopping centre was not a success. The problem lay largely in its location: since it was not connected to Portsmouth town centre, it found few tenants. The centre fell into disrepair, with rusting reinforcement bars damaging the concrete finish. In 2001 it was voted the most hated building in the UK by Radio 4 listeners. Prince Charles compared it to “a mildewed lump of elephant droppings”.
Though the 400 parking spots the shopping centre afforded were useful, the top level became a popular site for suicides, and the Samaritans installed a sign offering their support. It acquired a reputation for seediness, and one by one the shops moved out of the building until only a casino was left. Virginia Bottomley took the decision not to list the Tricorn Centre in 1995, and in 2004 it was demolished, accompanied by a rendition of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture.
Eros House in Catford (1963) was a low-cost speculative office building that was acclaimed at the time, and Luder later said he felt this to be his most successful building. With the faltering of the economy in the mid-1960s, he opened offices in Harrogate, Newcastle and South Wales in order to win public sector projects. The firm took over Young & Hall, a practice specialising in hospitals, and the move brought them prison and barracks projects. “Not very exciting,” Luder later recalled, “but the fees were certain.”
Work on the architectural and landscape designs of three coal mines in the East Midlands and South Wales kept the practice afloat during the recession of the mid-1970s. They also found work in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Nigeria, where they would collaborate with local practices to reduce overhead costs.
The Southgate Shopping Centre in Bath drew controversy before it was even built, on account of the demolition of several Victorian and Georgian buildings – some bombdamaged – to make way for it. Completed in 1971, the concrete behemoth was much reviled, and in 2007 was torn down to make way for a development, designed in the classical style, deemed more appropriate to the city. Luder accepted the fact that his design no longer served Bath well, though he expressed doubts about the building that replaced it.
The Derwent Tower in Dunston was also completed in 1971, and the 29-storey block of flats soon became known as the “Dunston Rocket” for its unconventional shape, with flying buttresses at its base. Unusually for this type of building, “caisson” type foundations were required because of the poor ground conditions, and the flying buttresses were included to help support the tower. Typically, the building was allowed to fall into disrepair, and the residents were moved out after it was declared unsafe to live in. In 2009 a certificate of immunity from listing was issued to its owner – paving the way for its demolition.
Other Owen Luder Partnership buildings of the time included the Catford Broadway shopping and housing development (1974), the Kingston Shopping Centre, Kingston upon Thames (1976), and Wigham House in Barking (1976).
In 1987 Luder sold out of his practice and set up as a consultant specialising in communication in construction. He served two non-consecutive terms as president of the Royal Institute of British Architects – from 1981 to 1983, then from 1995 to 1997 – bringing budgetary awareness to the institution and expanding services for its members. He made it part of his mission to keep the RIBA from becoming a professional ivory tower, and, in the spirit of the George Latham report, sought to increase communication between it and other professional bodies.
Luder also used his position to attack what he saw as British society’s obsession with history, and argued for an architecture which reflected a contemporary spirit, rather than becoming a pastiche of past styles. He also expressed the view that the planning system had become “increasingly dictatorial”, with well-meaning but unqualified planning officers and committees controlling the design of buildings. He served as the president of the Architects Registration Board from 2002 to 2003.
A regular contributor to architectural journals including Building and Building Design, Luder also published Sports Stadia after Hillsborough (1990) and Keeping out of Trouble (1999, 4th edn 2012), a RIBA Good Practice Guide outlining legal and financial pitfalls for architects. “The biggest threat to architects,” he maintained, “is not acquiring managerial skills to add to our design abilities.”
Owen Luder, who was appointed CBE in 1986, was a shareholder and season-ticket holder of Arsenal FC, and among his other recreations he listed in Who’s Who “live theatre”, “collecting art” and “playing golf badly”.
He married first, in 1951, Rose Dorothy (Doris) Broadstock (marriage dissolved 1988; she died in 2010). They had four daughters and one son, who also predeceased him. He married secondly, in 1989, Jacqueline Ollerton, who died in 2008.