Picture caption: Soweto Towers bungee-jumping centre. Picture credit: Michael Schofield on Unsplash

As we begin another new year, hopefully looking forward to a better year than the one before, I think we’d all agree it’s important to reflect on the past. To look at how we got to where we are today. It’s how we learn, how we improve, and it anchors us in time and place.

For similar reasons, does it make sense to preserve structures that we might not think are especially aesthetically pleasing?

To keep or not to keep? That is the question surrounding the 45 remaining cooling towers left in the UK. These concrete structures might not be easy on the eye, but they are part of our landscape.

Higher than the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, but with a concrete structure that’s only seven inches thick in parts, these cooling towers often form part of a dramatic skyline, which it would be a shame to lose.

Not so long ago there were 240 concrete cooling towers in the UK, but most have been demolished. With 30 towers having been demolished since 2014, the Twentieth Century Society (C20 Society) expects the final 45 to be gone within the next six years, unless we take action.

Which is why the C20 Society’s campaign is focusing on how we could reuse these “cathedrals of industry” before the window of opportunity to save them closes forever. The society was started in 1979, and has been campaigning to protect buildings and design that characterise twentieth-century Britain ever since.

With the last coal-fired power station having closed in 2024, there is no reason to keep these towers, other than to preserve them for posterity. Often dominating the landscape, these towers capture part of our history and, like the gasholders which are being saved and incorporated into new developments, it does make sense to save at least a few of them.

There are plenty of examples of how these modernist structures could be preserved. In South Africa’s Soweto, two cooling towers show off a giant, community-painted mural, while catering for extreme sports. A narrow bridge between the two towers lets people experience a unique 100m bungee jump, and inside one of the towers visitors can enjoy a freefall jump into safety netting. This is apparently the highest such freefall jump of its kind in the world.

In Germany, a cooling tower painted with a mountain range mural acts as both a climbing wall and part of a ride at amusement park Wunderland Kalkar. And on the outskirts of Brussels at Vilvoorde, an abandoned power station and military base that often attracted illegal raves now hosts a completely legal annual cultural event, the Horst Festival. Sonic and art installations are staged inside the towers.

The hope is that creative uses can be found for some of the UK’s cooling towers, ensuring they can be saved. Preservation is hampered by the fact that, despite campaigns, none of the towers are listed. This makes it harder to ensure their preservation.

While I don’t know if people feel as much affection for cooling towers as they do for gasometers, it would be a shame to lose every single one of them from Britain. They’ve formed part of the landscape for a long time. I have to say that I don’t think I’d be keen to bungee jump from a cooling tower any time soon, but I could be persuaded to visit an art installation.

Meanwhile, if you need any assistance with the structural elements of an upcoming project, please do get in touch.