When the Stirling prize was launched nearly 30 years ago, the Royal Institute of British Architects wanted to create an award that would match the high level of media attention that the Turner prize for art and the Booker prize for fiction then attracted. It could hardly have expected that its first winner would still be causing controversy a generation later.
There are two arguments for keeping the University of Salford’s Centenary Building.
One is ecological: that demolition would squander the energy, resources, materials and carbon costs that went into building it.
The other is architectural and historical – that, as recognised by the award of the first Stirling prize in 1996, it was a significant building of its time. Similar arguments apply to the handsome 1915 Adelphi building that stands next to it, also due for demolition.
Neither of these arguments are absolute. If a building is truly beyond repair and adaptation, there’s little real environmental benefit in keeping it. And the views of an awards jury nearly 30 years ago are not absolute proof of a building’s worth for all the ages.
But the university doesn’t offer much detail to support its claims that it’s impossible to update the building’s infrastructure, which it says “no longer meets modern standards and requirements”. Nor does it provide much evidence that “careful consideration has been given to the history of the building with multiple options explored”.
The site of the Centenary Building is a small and peripheral part of the colossal £2.5bn 240-acre Crescent Salford regeneration project that the university is undertaking with its partners, the English Cities Fund and Salford city council. There’s empty space around and near it.
It’s hard to believe that the project depends on crushing this building. Demolition would not, as one news story claimed, “make way for 900 homes”: it would be an impossible miracle of density to fit so many on this spot.
Institutions like the university and city of Salford should set the highest standards in sustainability, which they are proud to announce in relation to such things as its biodiversity and green infrastructure. These good intentions should extend to minimising demolition.
The Centenary Building is a work of care, thought and style, of which at least some of its alumni speak with affection – “great building, halcyon days”, wrote one to its architect, Stephen Hodder. Another described it as “wonderful”.
It is a moment of ambition and distinctiveness in what might otherwise be an ocean of building blandness. It should not be casually thrown in the bin.
