Birmingham Heritage Week and Heritage Open Days - September 2024

Our friends at Save Smallbrook / Brutiful Birmingham and Birmingham Modernist Society have arranged a feast of modernist delights during Birmingham Heritage Week and Heritage Open Days 2024.

Click on the links below for more info and booking details.

The best of John Madin’s architecture around Five Ways: On this walk you will find out about the work of the celebrated Birmingham born and trained modernist architect John Madin. The walk will take in the best of his architecture around Five Way (sadly under threat). 

Sat 7 Sept | 1pm–3pm - info here

Visit a modest 1960s John Madin House: John Madin was commissioned by the Calthorpe Estate in the 1950s to increase the housing density of the area to meet post war housing targets without changing the atmosphere of leafy Edgbaston.

Sat 7 Sept | 1pm-5pm - info here
Sat 14 Sept | 1pm-5pm - info here

Downtown Top Ranking – Revisiting Gibberd’s Corporation Square and The Forum venue: Have you ever been to a gig at Top Rank Ballroom, the Hummingbird, the Academy or Forum Birmingham or wondered what goes on behind closed doors? If so, join us for a behind-the-scenes tour of this legendary Birmingham venue that has played host to the likes of Steel Pulse, Kraftwerk, Nirvana and Slade. 

Sun 8 Sept | 1.30pm-3pm & 3.30pm-5pm - info here

Visit UK's first zero carbon retrofit home, completed in 2009 and winner of RIBA & Civic Trust Awards: The design, by architect John Christophers, enlarges the existing c.1840 2-bed terrace, doubling space on the ground floor and adding a top floor studio with solar roof.

Sunday 08 September | 1pm-6pm - info here

A walking tour of John Madin’s domestic architecture in Edgbaston: In 1957 Madin was commissioned to draw up a Master Plan for the development of the Calthorpe Estate, Edgbaston and to become its Chief Architect. Over the following two decades he grasped this rare opportunity to design and build many housing schemes utilising the rambling gardens of redundant Victorian villas. We will visit several of these schemes on this walk.

Sat 14 Sept | 11am–1pm - info here

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