How a public phone box proves that if you wait long enough, everything comes in to fashion. In 1985, a storm hit Britain — caused not by climatic conditions, but by the installation of new aluminium and glass phone boxes by the then-newly privatised British Telecom. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s distinctive red K2 and K6 telephone kiosks were being replaced en masse with a new model: the KX100.
It’s not hard to see why people were up in arms. The original designs are true classics, which elegantly combined design flair with functionality. By contrast, the cheaply made aluminium KX100s were never loved.
Until now, at least — and strangely enough, the same organisation that once abhorred these newcomers is now at the heart of efforts to save them: The Twentieth Century Society. BT’s original decision stimulated a successful campaign by the Twentieth Century Society (then called the Thirties Society) to save the older models of kiosk, resulting in the listing of about 3,000 telephone boxes around Britain. Though precious few phone boxes (of either design) still house working telephones, the listed red phone boxes have been creatively repurposed across the country, often as community book swaps or similar.
The KX100s, meanwhile, are disappearing at speed — and with 1980s and 1990s nostalgia in full swing, it’s perhaps unsurprising that people now see the value in trying to save them. The solution for the once-reviled KX100 is essentially identical to the solution for th.