Criticising the proposed destruction of the elegant Odeon West End cinema in Leicester Square, Rowan Moore makes the point that planning decisions should respect the great importance of "the ways that peoples' lives, their memories and attachments, tend to go along with existing fabric."
This isn't to complain that all change is bad or that all old buildings should be preserved for all time. But it is to assert that history and sentiment matter a great deal. I have my own small connection with the Odeon West End. A replacement cinema is promised, but I still don't want to see the old one go.
The conviction that old buildings can have a value other than the sort "unlocked" by smashing them up is shared by the famous architect Sir Terry Farrell. At least, it was in 1986 when he said in a BBC documentary:
One should conserve all buildings that still have a value, whether it's a human value because people love it or remember it, or remember people who lived there, or actually like the appearance of it. I also include a value in resource terms, that it may actually be more economic to keep buildings than to pull them down and rebuild them.
The then plain old un-knighted Terry was describing (from 16 mins in) the principles informing his design of the TV AM studios in Camden Town, which resulted in a previously uncelebrated industrial structure on the Grand Union canal being converted and revived.
More recently, Sir Terry has become a member of Boris Johnson's design advisory group. And before that he produced the masterplan for the Earls Court project, the huge Johnson-backed "regeneration" scheme which proposes, among other unpleasant things, the complete destruction of the historic Earls Court exhibition centre and its replacement with a pseudo "village" containing not one affordable home.
Is the original 1930s Earls Court building not one that has a human value? Is it not one that people love, remember and have enjoyed visiting for decades? Does its distinctive art deco presence not continue to draw many thousands from around the world, give the area its unique identity and fuel its economy? Does it not deserve to be conserved? Isn't it funny how things change?
