Heritage groups try to save decaying modernist studio in Scottish Borders | Heritage

A Heritage and Design Group Coalition, after the owners auctioned, attempted to save one of the most threatening modernist buildings in the UK.

The Late Modernist Studio was built in 1972 for the textile designer Bernat Klein, whose fabrics were worn by Coco Chanel and Jean Shrimpton, in 1972, and was widely accepted as the jewel of architecture at the end of the 20th century.

However, A-Liste Studio, who won architectural awards for his designer Peter Womenley, has been empty for decades and in the violent abandonment in the Scottish buildings In risky record Since 2002.

According to the surprise of the inheritance groups that hoped to buy the property from them, the owners prepared the building for auction through Savills, who auction with an £ 18,000 indicator price.

The list tried to buy a donation collection objection supported by the National Heritage Lottery Fund at the auction on 28 July, forcing them to compete with other bids that could increase the price.

The Scottish National Foundation, the Coalition, which includes the Bernat Klein Foundation, which encourages the work and life of the Scottish historical buildings Trust and the designer, said that he should collect approximately £ 3 million to fully restore the studio.

Now vandalized, shredded glass, rotting wood, crumbled concrete poles and prickly wires along the railings of the raised passage that leads visitors to the building.

Bernat Klein Foundation Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Alison Harley said that they had made negotiations for months of purchasing the studio and that they were disappointed with the decision to auction.

The coalition, which is supported by the Architectural Heritage Fund and the Twentieth Century Community, plans to return the building to its original purpose as a design studio operated by the Foundation and the Public Education Center.

The studio said that the designer and textile visionary visionary Klein, who invented the tweed design again, told the architectural genius about Womenley, a “quite secret story” about the architectural genius that makes their houses.

Men were close friends and collaborators. “They tell the story of the 20th century design and architecture together,” he said.

The two -storey brick, concrete and glass studio sits close to his home in Hight Sunderland, north of Selkirk designed by Klein in the late 1950s, and is both carefully designed in a parking area.

Womersley, who is already a settled and sought -after designer, was partly inspired by the famous modernist House Fallingwater of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pennsylvania on mountain streams.

The studio, which won the Royal Institute of British Architects and is often listed among the best modernist buildings of Scotland, was used to design their fabrics, make their textiles and buy customers.

The buildings in the risk recording notes that “brave horizontal concrete and“ thin -frame vertical glasses ”and“ very thin sculpture is a late modernist building, and showed a monumental sensitivity by giving great importance to sophisticated and details.

Klein, born in Serbian, was one of the few members of the Orthodox Jewish family surviving in Holocaust, studying in Jerusalem during the war. In 1945, he came to England to study weaving textiles at the University of Leeds, in 1952, Galashiels was at the center of the region’s developing textile industry in the town of borders.

Abstract, colorful and often tactile designs, Balenciaga, Dior and Yves Saint Laurent Fashion Houses and furniture companies in London have won customers, including G Plan and the commissions of Heal’s. He was also a color consultant to the environmental department, a branch of the British government.

Hoping to lead the restoration of the building, Scottish Historical buildings, Director of Trust, Dr. Samuel Gallacher said that trying to buy at the auction was “real unknown”. However, it would be an important success to do this.

“Considering the rich heritage of 20th century architecture, most of which are at risk and adapt to our changing climate, this project may be an example of how to save our modernist and savage buildings,” he said.