Clickimin features in campaign to get leisure centres listed

THE CLICKIMIN in Lerwick is part of a national campaign to see more leisure centres given listed status.

It is one of three Scottish leisure centres which have been submitted for listing.

It is part of a campaign by the national charity Twentieth Century Society to celebrate the architecture of the leisure centre.

It said leisure centres are “places of community identity and an intensely evocative part of our shared social heritage”.

In Scotland a building must be of ‘special’ architectural or historic interest to be listed. Historic Environment Scotland administers the scheme.

The charity also warned that due to the financial situation, a number of leisure centres across the UK have been forced to close over the last decade.

It said “if we don’t move to protect the most historically important examples now, they may soon disappear altogether”.

The Clickimin, operated by Shetland Recreational Trust, was built in three phrases from the 1980s using funding from oil revenue. The FaulknerBrowns Architects firm was involved in its design.

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It has grown to include a popular swimming pool, a gym, a bowls hall and a squash court, while the centre caters for a host of other uses and hosts large events.

Twentieth Century Society president Cath Slessor said: “With their palm trees, cafes and space frame roofs, leisure centres conjured a welcome escape from perennial British gloom, transporting you to a different, more pleasurable world.

“Designed for exercising, socialising and for seeing and being seen, leisure centres took architecture to new and often bizarre heights of imagination.”