The Tricorn The Life and Death of a Sixties Icon - By Celia Clark & Robert Cook

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Love it or hate it – there’s no middle ground in reactions to the Tricorn: the Brutalist, bold, multi-layered and multi-use megastructure built in Portsmouth between 1962 and 1966, and demolished in  2004.  The Tricorn features in histories of architecture.  Its  chunky imagery spawned progeny -  the Lloyds building’s exterior  staircases, the Barbican’s curving upstands  - leading ultimately to  the birth of high-tech.

The Tricorn has been celebrated  - and reviled - in festivals, ballet, music, performance art, videos,  websites, films, virtual fly-throughs, poetry, books, television and radio.   How many other buildings have inspired such an efflorescence?  Despite  its demolition, it still  lives vividly in people’s memories and  dreams. 

Celia Clark and Robert Cook  explore what  makes an architectural icon – and what unmade it.   This book sets  the Tricorn within its architectural context: Brutalism and the 1960s.  The unpopularity of Brutalism and the fact it was a commercial property affected the Tricorn’s fate.  The book draws on two sources not usually combined:  a  collage of documentary material, and the rich seam of people’s descriptions  of life in the building. The Tricorn’s architects: Owen Luder and Rodney Gordon explain the building’s genesis and reflect on its demise.    The 1812 Overture was played at its demolition - a reflection of  the Tricorn’s heroic status in people’s imagination.