History repeating?

Those with long memories may be forgiven a sense of déjà vu when contemplating recent government pronouncements advocating widespread demolition of our post war heritage to meet carbon commitments. We have been here before.

For as long as there has been construction there has been destruction as successive generations look to stamp their mark on a world progressing through technological advancement, each wave allowing new artistic interpretations of the built medium to be explored.

These vagaries of architectural taste are notoriously ephemeral with wild oscillations in appreciation relegating what may be ‘de rigeur’ one year into tomorrow’s eyesore the next. This was true in the 1960s and 70s when pre-war architecture was razed with abandon by short-sighted governments and greedy developers. The Victorians too were past masters at sweeping away the past in the name of progress.

What marks out contemporary destruction for distinction is the rapidity of its occurrence. Where previously a building might reasonably have expected to 100 years or more, today some buildings struggle to limp through a mere 25. Factor in people’s ever-increasing lifespans and extrapolate an exponential rate of technological change into the future and for the first time whole eras of change are being condensed within the observation period of single lifespans. Travel abroad for a decade or so and large tracts of what once was familiar can seem alien.

It is this cycle of remorseless upheaval that the Rubble Club was established to counter, giving voice to mute bricks and mortar with the message that the future need not always come at the expense of the past. In the words of Rubble Club President Isi Metzstein: “Architects are not trying to say a building is good or bad. Buildings should be reused as much as possible, careless knocking down of landmarks illustrates the fragility of their masterworks. I’m a great believer that buildings should be reused as much as possible, the public are entitled to live in a somewhat stable visual environment.”

Our argument is no mere product of sentimentality. In an age of recycling, where homes can have upwards of three separate bins for filtering waste, the absurdity of proceeding to throw away the homes the bins sit within reveals the inherent contradiction at the heart of the demolition is best argument. That debate may be dressed in the fashionable clothes of ‘sustainability’ and the ‘environment’ but the same flawed results lurk beneath, namely short sighted waste of structurally sound properties for the perceived ease of a clean slate and political grand standing. Politicians love their shiny new builds.  

Architect Owen Luder is no stranger to the wreckers ball himself, having outlived many of his own creations; flesh and bone proving longer lasting than steel and concrete. Gateshead’s multi-storey car park was immortalised by Michael Caine in the film Get Carter, while the Tricorn Shopping Centre in Portsmouth was winner of the Rubble Club prize for best demolished building 2009. “Politicians have a wonderful way of saying ‘of course we all know’ and ‘people hate this’ when they have no evidence that is the case,” the architect said.  

Luder speaks from the heart in a bid to change minds as the ‘father of brutalism’ once more becomes embroiled in a battle for the survival of his children. The Dunston Rocket, a sixties Gateshead icon, is earmarked by the local council: “Demolition of the Rocket is municipal vandalism, financially and socially wrong, short sighted and lacking vision and imagination”, Luder scathes.

These arguments are not confined to the esoteric realm of entrenched professional ideology; they are part and parcel of our everyday life. Even for those who would not identify themselves as especially knowledgeable in matters pertaining to our built environments, we are still intrinsically, subliminally shaped by the landscapes of our childhood, our work and our home. Often their qualities are not truly appreciated until the architectural motifs and landmarks which shaped them have passed on. Think of the house you one lived in, the school you once learnt in. These places form an intrinsic part of who you are, telling not just where you come from but bearing the bumps and scrapes that the passage of your history inevitably will bring. Losing a handful of these structures might be considered an accident – to lose an entire era would be criminal.

Worse, mass demolition is itself inherently unsustainable. UK buildings account for 52 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions. The Rubble Club acknowledges that tackling this is essential for any substantial emissions cutbacks to be credible. Yet to simply slash and burn in the view that anything new will be sufficiently improved to offset emissions from new build is at best naïve and at worst misguided.

The true folly of demolition is immediately made apparent from a cursory glance at housing waiting lists and crisis of supply brought about by recession. To erode existing stock at a time of greatest need is irrational, costly and wasteful.

So powerful are these arguments that organisations such as the Carbon Trust are increasingly coming round to the importance of refurbishment, with the Trust’s own calculations showing that 60 percent of our current non-domestic building stock will still be in use by 2050. Existing and planned technologies make adaptation and re-use all the more economical while maintaining a consistency that is beneficial in keeping communities together, ensuring existing residents directly benefit from improvement works, and complementing any adjoining new development in order to uplift the wider area.

It is a baton picked up by a recent audit commission report, Building Better Lives, which accuses local authorities of giving priority to new build housing instead of retaining and renovating their existing stock. As Luder continues: “Demolition, clearance and redevelopment are too often seen as the easier option but taking all factors properly into account in many cases is not the best solution.”

Indeed the commission found that if only five percent of empty homes could be brought back into use, council’s could cut their annual homelessness costs by £0.5bn.

Existing buildings are an asset to the nation, bound within their walls is a great repository of capital, energy and history. Throwing these resources to the wind is counter-intuitive. It expends energy needlessly on demolition and generate tonnes of harmful waste which must be transported for re-use, leaving much more to be dumped elsewhere.

The Rubble Club does not believe in fossilisation of our built environment, our cities are living machines which must evolve to survive and adapt to prosper. But taken to its extremes senseless destruction destroys the essence, the ‘soul’, of what defines particular places and individualises specific spaces.

Lose sight of where we have come from and we lose that aspect of who we are. See not then a building as it is, but as it could be.

To continue the debate and nominate a building for the 2010’s best demolished building, visit: therubbleclub.com