Listed Buildings Cause Injuries

From ITV

In 2000, Lord Lloyd-Webber, who owned sold the Apollo to Nimax in 2005, told The Times: "The Apollo in particular is a shocking place.

"I suggested that both it and the Lyric should be knocked down and replaced by top-quality modern theatres."

The composer and musical theatre impresario complained that his plans for black-box auditorium inside the existing plasterwork had been opposed by English Heritage.

To anyone who knows anyone who's tried to improve a listed building, or bring it into use, this is a familiar story. Someone comes up with a reasonably practical solution to improving a building, one that retains most of the character, and it gets opposed by EH. So, maintenance that would normally happen, like stripping down plaster work and redoing it is less likely to happen, because the costs have been raised.

Listed Buildings

From the BBC

A yellow-roofed warehouse in Swindon that featured in a James Bond film has been given Grade II*-listed status.

The Spectrum building, Renault's former distribution centre, was designed by Lord Norman Foster and opened in 1982.

Featuring yellow steel "umbrella masts", the futuristic single-storey glass-walled building was also used as a backdrop in A View To A Kill in 1984.

Roger Bowdler, from English Heritage, said it was "one of the very finest examples of a hi-tech building".

Famous for his steel and glass designs, Lord Foster created the Gherkin and Millennium Bridge in London, rebuilt Berlin's Reichstag and also Hong Kong Airport.

...

The building saw the last of the car manufacturer's workers move out when Renault closed its operations there in 2001.

Since then, the 25,000 sq m building has housed a car seat manufacturer, a soft indoor play centre and a firm that produces DVDs.

... and a car dealership. Since 2001. Get the message?

One of the things about buildings is that they're often very hard to repurpose. Look at the Olympics - we're burning £100m+ on converting it from an athletics stadium to a football stadium. Sometimes, you can take a building and make it work for something else (like the EMI CD production building in Swindon that is now a car dealership), but it's often quite difficult. Which is why you need people to be able to either take large chunks out of them, or just knock them down and build something new in their place.

And one of the problems with buildings that could be classified as "modern wank" is that they're not only self-indulgent by the people creating and commissioning them, they're also not very practical. Even the early users often find them a bit crap, but repurposing them and maintaining them is even worse because of irregular use of materials and shapes. Once you list them, this is only going to get worse.

So, give it a decade, this will be probably be like so many listed buildings - empty, with the owners praying for a fire to destroy it so they can put something useful in its place.

Pink Listed Building

Bit of trivia, if anyone is interested (via the BBC)...

A couple who painted their 17th Century cottage a vivid shade of pink have been told they must repaint it a less vibrant colour.
Teignbridge District Council denied retrospective planning permission for the listed building in Kennford, Devon, saying any repainting needed consent.
Owner Ann Kennedy argued it had "always been this shade of pink" and their work merely restored the previous hue.

Which might seem sensible

The authority's planning committee turned down the application by 17 votes to three.
The council said consent was needed before any alterations were made to a listed building that were likely to affect its character or appearance.
Councillor Mary Colclough claimed the new colour was "not in keeping with the village".
Her argument was supported by councillor Joan Lambert, who said the cottage "was garish and doesn't fit in to the local area".

Which also might seem sensible.

But actually, what matters is how a building appeared at the time that it was listed. If you've got an old 19th century home and it got pebbledashed in the 1950s and it then got listed in the 1970s, you can't go turning it back into a 19th century building, even though it would look a lot better because the rules say that it's not how the building was originally, but how it was at the time it was listed. That's the building that got preserved.

So, if the building was pink when it was listed, it is irrelevant whether the council thinks it fits in with the current local area, the homeowner not only is allowed to paint it pink, but would actually be breaking planning law if they did something else.

(you'd like to think that councillors would know the law, but frequently, they ignore their officers, only to find that someone appeals and the councillors get bitch-slapped).