Dunelm House

We are celebrating the success of a hard fought four-year battle to gain listing protection for Dunelm House, Durham’s magnificent Brutalist student union building which stands on the banks of the River Wear.

The campaign group, Save Dunelm House, was formed in December 2016 following an application by Durham University for Immunity from Listing for the building. It comprised of architects, historians, academics and students from Durham and beyond and had been actively organising events; a petition, crowdfunder, conference and design charrette to both raise awareness of the campaign and challenge the technical, economic and strategic reasons cited by Durham University as cause for demolition.

Claire Harper led a Linked Research project in 2018-2019 [re]defining Dunelm House which was an ethnographic study into the decision making and agencies involved in architectural conservation. The study set out to chart the activities of the ongoing campaign to save Dunelm House, Durham University's Student Union buildling, from the threat of demolition. 

Designed in 1967-69 by Richard Raines of Architects Co-Partnership, Dunelm House is regarded by many as an exemplar of post-war university architecture. The study therefore questioned how experts' viewpoints are articulated by the strategies and tactics deployed within the campaign. The five-level concrete building responds cleverly and dramatically to a very difficult site in the Wear Gorge, and as a counterpart and compliment to Sir Ove Arup’s adjacent Grade I-listed Kingsgate Bridge and the beautiful cathedral on the other side.  Arup acted as structural engineer and architectural advisor and is famously featured in a bust on one of the outside walls.