Through her contribution to the Post-War Listing Steering Group, Elain Harwood ensured the preservation of 20th-century buildings that could well have been lost or compromised, including the Festival Hall in London and the Byker estate in Newcastle.
At the same time, and behind the scenes, she worked tirelessly to secure the survival of much else besides, including the original campus at the University of York, designed by RMJM (Robert Matthew Johnson Marshall) in 1963-64. “Nowhere else,” said the architectural historian Andrew Saint, “did concentrated thought about what a university ought to be like in a modern democracy come so close to finding integrated physical expression.” Harwood, who oversaw the listing of our buildings at York where I teach, in 2018, was someone who made the difference.
