'Blade Runner' building named UK's brutalist best

A tower block in Bradford likened to a structure from sci-fi movie Blade Runner has been named as the best brutalist building in the country.

Built in the 1970s, High Point, the former headquarters of the Huddersfield and Bradford Building Society, was recently converted into 87 flats as part of a £12m regeneration scheme.

National newspaper The Telegraph named the building top of its brutalist list - ahead of the Barbican, in London, Bristol's Clifton Cathedral and Preston bus station.

Si Cunningham, who chairs Bradford Civic Society, said it remained one of the city's "most divisive buildings" and was "symbolic of Bradford's confidence and prosperity".

The monolithic building was designed by the John Brunton Partnership and completed in 1972.

Built at a time when IRA terrorist attacks were a constant threat, High Point was built to be bomb-proof.

It became vacant in the 90s and was seen as an example of Bradford's decline, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

After standing empty for 25 years, it was renovated and is now fully occupied.

Referring to High Point as the cream of the brutalist crop, the Telegraph said: "Looming over the Yorkshire 'milltropolis' of Bradford, this building looks completely out of place, like something from Blade Runner, and yet in a weird way it also blends in with the buttery Victorian edifices below built on wool money."

The newspaper said the building "came at a time when Yorkshire's regional finance industry was thriving, but when that failed it too fell into disrepair".

It added: "Like its home city it is now on the up again – restored and reused, this time as flats. It's a sage lesson in how to repurpose rather than demolish brutalist beasts."

Cunningham said: "High Point has attracted a lot of new fans in recent years, and it's nice to see it enjoying a new lease of life as apartments."

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