BUILDINGS in the Aztec West business park in Almondsbury are among 16 locations across the country to be listed, receiving protection from change due to their post-modern architecture.

The collection, ranging from Crown Courts in Cornwall, to warehouses in Slough and housing schemes in London’s Docklands, are to receive heritage protection following Historic England’s research into this architectural style and recommendations that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport give these buildings heritage protection.

Post-modern architecture emerged in the 1970s as a critical reaction to modernism, and in Britain, was closely associated with the economic boom of the 1980s.

After a period out of favour, the 2011 exhibition ‘Style and Subversion’ at the V&A marked a revival of interest in Post-Modernism.

The style was an important strand of late 20th century architecture, but Post-Modern buildings can be vulnerable to change and loss which is why the best examples have been selected for listing.

As a pioneering business park with a planned, landscaped campus in its semi-rural location close to the M4, the earliest buildings at Aztec West were designed in the High-Tech style, reflecting the ultra-modern nature of the park.

Of the many buildings in the business park, 210, 220, 240, 250, 260 and 290 Park Avenue will receive a Grade II listing.

The brief required flexible office space for multiple tenants, with architect CZWG’s response a sophisticated post-modern design, based on two intersecting squares with internal courtyards at the centre.

The circular forecourts followed the turning circle of a car, celebrating the mode of transport through which out-of-town developments could thrive, lending the buildings a Hollywood glamour, accentuated by elements of Art Deco design such as the over-scaled building numbers used as canopies over the main doors

The buildings have high, continuous parapets that hide the mono-pitch roofs into the internal courtyards.

Beneath the parapets, double-height windows give a sense of scale and grandeur, and act as Classical columns around the building. The two-storey buildings have banded cladding of red and buff brick.

Completed in 1987-1988, the commission represents a key project by CZWG that combines bold geometries, colours and traditional materials to dynamic effect.

Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, said: “Post-Modern architecture brought fun and colour to our streets. Housing schemes were enlivened with bold façades, a school technology building was decorated with columns designed as screws, a business park injected with glamour.

“These are scarce survivals of a really influential period of British architecture and these buildings deserve the protection that listing gives them.”