Completed in 2003 at a cost of £60 million, the Selfridges Building in Birmingham remains one of my favourite modern buildings.
Forming part of the Bullring Shopping Centre and housing Selfridges Department Store, the building was designed by architecture firm Future Systems and features a steel framework with sprayed concrete facade.
The year after opening, the building scooped up awards galore including the RIBA Award for Architecture, the Civic Trust Award and the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, Retail Innovation.
The building stands four storeys high, and is covered in a seamlessly curved outer skin decorated with 15,000 spun aluminium discs. It looks ace!
Described as ‘a computer-age geological outcrop, as distinctive and eye-catching as the white cliffs of Dover,’ the strikingly futuristic lines form a stark contrast with the more traditional architecture of Britain’s second largest city.
Selfridges with the Edwardian canopies of the equally magnificent Birmingham Moor Street station in the foreground.
See more Birmingham photos here
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