Sir Giles Gilbert Scott: A Liverpool Legacy

As part of the centenary celebrations since its consecration in 1924, the Cathedral will host a series of events honoring the architectural legacy of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and the neo-gothic building that is his legacy to the city of Liverpool.

Join us for a discussion on the design and building of Liverpool Cathedral and how it fits into the context of 20th century Liverpool and the urban environment. The panel of experts considers the challenges of maintaining and caring for this vast building and how the legacy of Gilbert Scott is preserved today. Speakers include Dr Ataa Alsalloum, Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Urban Heritage at the Liverpool School of Architecture, Cathedral Architect Mike Darwell, and Architectural Historian Joseph Sharples. The discussion will be moderated by Dominic Wilkinson, Principal Lecturer in Architecture, Art & Design, Liverpool John Moores University. Tickets include a welcome drink.

This event is in partnership with RIBA North and the Liverpool Architecture Society. Thank you to The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for supporting this event.

Information on our panel of speakers can be found below:

Dr. Ataa Alsalloum is an architect by training and a Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Urban Heritage at the Liverpool School of Architecture (LSA). She has a distinguished academic and professional background, having held key positions at Damascus University and other institutions in Syria from 2011 to 2016. Since joining LSA in 2017, Dr. Alsalloum has focused her expertise on sustainable heritage management, with a particular interest in the intersection of global policy and community engagement.

Mike Darwell has been the cathedral architect at Liverpool since January 2019 and is now in his second 5-year term in the position having been retained by the Dean and Chapter. Mike has been in practice since 1998 and is a chartered architect member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He is listed on the RIBA Conservation Registration as a Specialist Conservation Architect and is included on the on the list of Architects Accredited in Building Conservation (AABC).

Joseph Sharples is the author of the Pevsner Architectural Guide to Liverpool (Yale University Press, 2004). He moved to Liverpool in 1990 to work as an assistant curator at the Walker Art Gallery. Later, as an English Heritage-funded researcher at Liverpool University, he investigated the building activities of the city’s Victorian merchants. He spent a year at the University of Aberdeen, writing about that city for the Buildings of Scotland series of architectural guidebooks, followed by three years at the University of Glasgow, producing an online catalogue of the architecture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. He is currently Curator of Mackintosh Collections and Applied Art at the Hunterian, University of Glasgow, but he remains deeply interested in Liverpool and its buildings.

Dominic Wilkinson is an architect, author, researcher and principal lecturer at LJMU. Working as an architect and academic in the Northwest of England for 35 years, he has been involved in the design of award-winning buildings together with published research and books in the field of architectural history. Monographs on the renowned church architect F X Velarde and exhibitions on the alternative designs for Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral are some examples of his recent research into 20th Century religious buildings. Active in a number of charities Dominic is Secretary of the Hilbre Community Land Trust, a member of Liverpool Modernist Society and past chair of the RIBA North-West region. Originally from ‘the South’ he has made Merseyside his home since coming to Liverpool University as a student in the 1980’s and enjoys nothing more than thwarting fellow southerners’ preconceptions about the city.

Photo credit: © J E Marsh Hoylake

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