Exhibition reveals how cathedral was designed

An exhibition offering an insight into how the new Coventry Cathedral was designed after the original medieval building was bombed in the Second World War will open this weekend.

"Towards a New Cathedral" opens on Saturday in the cathedral and will run until 21 September.

It will showcase entries from the 1951 design competition won by the Scottish architect Basil Spence, many of which have not been displayed since they were judged.

More than 200 architects from around the world entered, submitting plans that ranged from traditional to modernist.

The original 14th Century St Michael's Cathedral was destroyed during the Coventry blitz in 1940.

The exhibition has been curated by Harry Foley, a PhD candidate at University College London.

He said the competition represented a turning point in British architecture.

"This became a triumph of modernism, opening the door for other modern designs that would come to define much of Britain's church architecture of the late 1950s and 1960s," he said.

Among the runners-up featured are proposals by architects who would later become influential figures in British architecture, including Colin St John Wilson, who co-designed the British Library, and Donald Hanks McMorran, known for his extension to the Old Bailey.

Another unused entry is a design from Alison and Peter Smithson, who helped define the Brutalist architectural style that rose to prominence in the post-war era.

The exhibition also includes contemporary newspaper reports and photographs.

Although the completed cathedral divided opinion when it opened in 1962, the building is now Grade I listed and regarded as one of the Midlands' architectural landmarks.

Coventry Cathedral archivist Dianne Morris said: "The cathedral is proud to support this exhibition which reveals a forgotten area of the architectural competition: those architects whose designs were not chosen as the winning entry."

"The bishop at the time, Neville Gorton, envisioned a 'people's cathedral' and these designs reflect that."

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