In architectural terms, the listing closes a decades-long argument about postwar Britain and what it chose to build. Previous recommendations to list the centre, which was completed in 1968, were rejected. Sir Denys Lasdun’s Royal National Theatre, built from similar concrete nearby, was listed more than 30 years ago. Unlike Lasdun’s theatre, the Southbank Centre – conceived by a London county council team led by Norman Engleback – divided opinion from the beginning. In 1967, the Daily Mail carried a headline asking “Is this Britain’s ugliest building?”