Owen Luder

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Owen Luder, CBE, (born 7 August 1928) is a British architect who designed a number of notable and sometimes controversial buildings in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s. He is a former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Owen Luder's designs included some of the most powerful and raw examples of Brutalist architecture, with massive bare concrete sculptural forms devoid of claddings or decoration - other than their inherent shapes. The British climate, with abundant rain and damp winters, is unkind to such unclad concrete buildings which rapidly become a shabby grey–brown colour and streaked with marks where rainwater has run down the façades. Poor maintenance has often exacerbated these problems.

Some the best known of Owen Luder's buildings are the now-demolished Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth, Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park (which featured in the gangster movie Get Carter) in Gateshead, Catford shopping centre in London, and Derwent Tower in Gateshead.

Despite receiving awards when built, the Tricorn Centre was voted the 3rd ugliest building in Britain and was demolished in 2004 to public rejoicing and protests from an unrepentant Luder. The Trinity Centre car park has also been subject to a number of redevelopment proposals and featured in the Channel 4 series Demolition in 2005.

Luder also designed the conversion of a Victorian fire station into the South London Theatre in 1967.