The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
AJ offices to be flattened and replaced by Piercy & Co new-build
The best tales often sound like April Fool’s stories. In a richly ironic turn of events, the AJ, which has spent the last two years campaigning against the UK’s tide of demolition with our RetroFirst campaign, has now learnt that its own Shoreditch office is set to be flattened.
Given my own history at the AJ, I did wonder whether my intrepid colleague Richard Waite was winding me up when he told me of the Piercy & Company-designed plans for Telephone House, especially when he mentioned that the proposed replacement includes several ‘garden bridges’.
Sadly, the story is all too real, part of a wider trend where the option to reuse and retrofit an existing building is contemplated but ultimately tossed away for reasons of viability. Whether it’s plans by DSDHA, Eric Parry Architects or even the practice co-founded by RIBA President Simon Allford, AHMM, we’ve seen the demolition option win out again and again in recent months whatever the cost in embodied carbon the inevitably larger replacement building represents.
As we know, reliance on steel, concrete and other materials means that construction is a major contributor to the climate crisis. As we are reminded daily at COP26, humanity is on the brink. As these practices understand only too well, they are participating in front-loading substantial carbon emissions in the terrifyingly short window of time we have left to avoid global catastrophe.
Altering the disposable nature of the built environment is far from straightforward. It requires systemic change. It would be unfair to lay too much blame at the feet of architects trying to get paid for their design services, especially when the current VAT regime does nothing to encourage reuse. With its focus on meaningful government reform, our RetroFirst campaign recognises that our entire system of development and construction is skewed towards replacing the old with the new. It does not argue that every building can or should be saved.
The practices concerned, all of whom are signatories of Architects Declare including its specific pledge on upgrading existing buildings, presumably feel they are doing all they can. Perhaps they rightfully point out that there’s a yawning policy vacuum when it comes to net zero construction. Perhaps, each and every time, they crunch the whole-life carbon numbers, argue passionately with the client about why they should really consider that refurbishment option, and strain every sinew to lessen the damage when the answer comes back no.
But they shouldn’t for one moment kid themselves that they are living up to their promises. As Architects Declare’s own leadership has said, too many architects are misusing the word ‘sustainability’. Too many are continuing to follow a path of business as usual. Not a single practice is currently meeting every part of the ‘radical commitment to change’.
Practices doing just enough, most of the time, to follow the pledges of the movement to the letter like clever lawyers are simply not doing enough. It’s a climate emergency and the spirit of the thing is what counts. That and what message their action or lack of action sends to their competitors and their peers.
As Greta Thunberg might have put it, leading architects talk a good game but it’s often just a load of ‘blah, blah, blah’.
“Tossed away”? I doubt that. Rather tough on the architects here Will, there’s hypocrisy surrounding all climate warming warnings and from all sources, particularly from our leaders attending at COP26.
“Architects are pretty much high-class whores. We can turn down projects the way they can turn down some clients, but we’ve both got to say yes to someone if we want to stay in business”. Philip Johnson
There is an argument that architects are just pawns in the game, we don’t make the rules and, in my humble opinion, our lobby groups like the RIBA don’t have any where near as much influence as they think they have. The path of all discussions around this inevitably leads to politics and for very good reason – it is our elected representatives that set the rules, set vat levels, set building regulations, fund renewables etc. at the moment, despite the hot air and bluster nothing is changing very quickly.
Government need to support retro first. Testing environmental whole life carbon of existing verses new build should be robustly analysed well before planning and be demonstrated as part of the formal statutory approval. There is far too much ‘blah, blah, blah’ by clients and consultants. Large practices in particular.
Developers and contractors must do better and be held accountable by government legislation. I’m also rather bored or architects blaming RIBA – a membership organisation is only as good as its members – architects are not seen as part of the process because the education system to practice has decided environmental design is someone else’s job/problem.
Ever get the feeling that an article is built around a closing line that’s just too irresistible? I think most architects know, it’s a wee bit more complicated than that.