THE ‘boring’ KX100 phone box was always going to be an unpopular replacement for the iconic red K6 design, which was an example of architectural genius and is an Instagram must have.
But now a campaign has been launched to rescue the maligned 80s replacement boxes by the Twentieth Century Society charity(C20 Society).
Made between 1985 and 1996 the KX100 has often drawn scorn after replacing the iconic K2 and K6 boxes created by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who also turned his hand to the design of Liverpool Cathedral among other British landmarks.
The new phone boxes, despite dividing opinion, came from good stock – they were designed by David Carter Associates, the team behind Le Shuttle trains and the hugely popular Stanley Knife. And now their biggest fans are trying to save them from the scrapheap.
The practicality of the design was clear, they were crisp steel and glass structures that allowed wheelchair access, were cost effective and were easy to clean. The glass didn’t run all the way to the floor allowing air-flow and as a result were less likely to smell of urine, a common complaint that was levelled at their predecessors.
They were built to be vandal proof and fit for the telecommunications age of the 80s, but BT themselves are now removing hundreds of them each year with a ‘mass extinction’ looming.
The C20 Society has admitted that trying to save all of the KX100’s would be ‘neither a credible or a desirable prospect’, but it has handpicked three boxes that it deems should be saved for the nation (and maybe some very odd tourists perhaps?).
These are:
- Scotland: Possible the most picturesque KX100 phone box left , near Maaruig, on the Isle of Harris, is believed to be the last remaining box displaying the respected vintage yellow British Telecom artwork prior to the 1991 ‘Piper’ rebrand.
- Lancashire: The 100,000th phone box to be installed in the UK. The location was specifically chosen as the geographical centre of the UK and its 401 hundreds of islands (as calculated by Ordnance Survey) and was unveiled by explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
BT trumpeted at the time that it was “An important landmark for Great Britain and BT’. - Wales: An eco-friendly version that has a solar panel on top of the box alongside a mini wind turbine.
Campaigns director for the C20 Society, Oli Marshall, said: “C20 Society has been the guardian of Britain’s telephone boxes for 40 years, and we’re now reviving our famous campaign in an attempt to preserve a handful of the underappreciated KX100s – the last in the line of the public payphone.
“It may be viewed as the ‘ugly duckling’ in comparison with the iconic red phone boxes, but with these three kiosks, we’ve identified the very best exemplars across the country that deserve their place in the history books.
“There’s no small irony that it was the arrival of the KX100 model that first spurred the society into action back in 1985. Once the slayer of classic red kiosks that we fought so vigorously to repel, now itself being proposed for heritage protection. What goes around comes around.”