You probably recognise this, but if you stumbled across it in a field in the 1950s, you may not have. You may have thought: 'Bit of a ruin, load of old blockwork and render, let's demolish, use as hardcore and build a nice new building here'. More careful cultural and historic assessment would have uncovered its pivotol role in European and global Modernism, and with careful re-positioning in the marketplace, realise the now limitless economic value of this building. I am not suggesting that you will all have an un-loved Corb on your site, but this image does illustrate that our first impressions, and the value the world places on buildings needs very careful assessment before getting the bulldozers in. This week, we did a quick cost check on some of the buildings you were proposing to demolish and uncovered all sorts of cultural and other values embodied in the bricks and mortar. We also found those bricks and mortar could be worth (in one case) £1,800,000 at today's labour rates. Draw What you've got in lots of detail. Analyse it using the following factors (and perhaps others): 1) Material Value can you use the materials on site? (Have a read of Oliver Wainwright's piece on the Stirling Prize winning Everyman Theatre in the Guardain for more on this); 2) Cultural Value; 3) Historic Value; 4) Scope for Change (what's needed to bring it to use, what's going on around it); 5) What could that use be?
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