18 December 2024
The outcry from the architectural fraternity over the proposed demolition of the inaugural Stirling Prize winner is in truth about more than the fate of a single building.
Recent news concerning Salford University’s ‘Centenary Building’ by architects Hodder + Partners signifies a much wider concern over what we do with ‘buildings of a certain age’ (if it is safe to use that expression).
The three and four-storey building was originally conceived as the School of Electrical Engineering but was adapted mid-design and opened as the Faculty of Art and Design in 1996. It was built for less than £4m which illustrates just how time has marched on; a building of this size and nature would attract a construction budget ten times that today.
Whilst even the suggestion of demolishing this building seems at first unforgiveable (my own reaction), there is a bigger picture to examine here.
The first consideration is a simple commercial one, where there is an inescapable gap between a current building use and its site value. I understand the proposal for the redevelopment of this particular site is to build 900 new homes as a new neighbourhood of Salford. If this brownfield development prevents the concreting over of fields that we witness in places like Cambridge, Winchester and Exeter then perhaps there is good reason – and I can only assume Salford University will benefit royally from this land sale as the site has been described as ‘prime real estate’.
“…the ageing infrastructure no longer meets modern standards and requirements. I am no engineer, but I find this a spurious argument…
Reports suggest the building has been vacant for a third of its life, which is a mystery as much as it is a tragedy. It has to be assumed that potential new uses have been tested over the years and that ideas have been exhausted for the re-purposing of the building, or else the case for demolition is even more flimsy.
The structure and services of any building represent a high percentage of the overall construction cost, so in the case of an existing building at least the structure and their foundations are accounted for, even if the services may require significant upgrade. Refurbishment – or retrofit – is surprisingly costly, and on the understanding that existing buildings cannot easily meet current metrics, standards such as EnerPHit (a certification standard developed by the Passive House Institute) are designed to radically reduce a building’s energy consumption, improve indoor air quality, and create a more comfortable living or working environment without having to achieve the exacting standards of new build.
Whatever the label or acronym, the emphasis is on improving the inherent building fabric rather than simply relying on the introduction of ‘bolt-on’ renewables. Along with bean counting, carbon counting is now a fundamental activity of any responsible design team. Indeed, the inventive re-use of buildings is critical to the net zero ambition, and a whole-life carbon assessment to understand whether re-use is feasible should be a pre-requisite of any proposal for change – let alone demolition.
Building Regulations are nowadays the bare minimum requirement and are constantly being updated, with new sections, or ‘Parts’, being added for energy use as much as health and safety. Approved Document Part O, for example, came into effect in 2022 and is concerned with overheating of residential buildings. About time, you might say, but aspects of Part O have been around for some time within other areas of the regulations; only now does it have its own section.
The conclusion put forward by Salford University is that the “ageing infrastructure (of the Centenary Building) means it no longer meets modern standards and requirements”. I am no engineer, but I find this a spurious argument given the structural frame is less than thirty years old (or thirty years of age as we are now encouraged to express it).
When faced with the recommended demolition of the six-storey 1968 Abercrombie Building in Oxford, Design Engine Architects worked with engineers Ramboll to prove the existing 50 year old concrete frame had at least another 25 years life in it. Moreover, the floor to height heights were generous enough to accommodate new floor and ceiling services, and intelligent façade engineering along with the introduction of a linear atrium has given a tired shell new life as a centre of excellence for Oxford Brookes University.
The internal planning of the Centenary Building was to a degree pioneering in the 90’s, but has since become ubiquitous: two multi-storey linear blocks with an atria or ‘street’ running between them and galleries joining them at various levels. ‘Street life’ becomes an important aspect of the life of such a building; common areas and adjoining offices engaging with the street to animate the building and imbue it with a sense of purpose. Such a model should be adaptable enough to accommodate more than one use over the lifetime of a building – and is often used for education – but a 2018 proposal to convert the Centenary Building into a primary school apparently proved fruitless (pity, as it could have served the 900 new families). One is left wondering what the viability criteria would have been for such an obvious re-use of this particular building, but doubtless finances and politics played their part.
Of course, we are speaking only as building-as-receptacle here; a funny-shaped box to put people and things in. In reality, there are qualitative aspects which are sadly outweighed by commercial pressures, such as user experience and wellbeing. Good buildings help make communities, offer uplifting spaces and promote wellness; and it is true that far too many buildings do the very opposite. I have never been inside the Centenary Building, so I cannot speak from first hand experience, but if its scale and ambiance feels agreeable – and once the reported poor acoustics are sorted out – then those visceral qualities should be acknowledged and added to the argument for retention and re-use as they have currency too. Indeed, the WELL Building Standard was introduced precisely to measure these human perceptions.
We are used to preserving ancient buildings due their memories and associations as much as their place in history, but it seems more recent additions are harder to love. Representatives of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have suggested that there is a case for all Stirling Prize winning buildings to be considered for listing, which protects buildings under the law. I can think of a few winners which don’t deserve this protection, but they do represent a record of our times and in the main the projects are the cream of that year’s crop so the idea is certainly worth consideration. (See ‘Stirling Prize’, Property Chronicle 16 Nov 2018 and ‘On Design Awards’, Property Chronicle 16 Jun 2023).
