The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
Localism is key to saving high streets, AJ100 lunch hears
A cookie-cutter approach to filling retail units is part of the reason high streets are failing, Preston Benson of community-focused developer Really Local Group told an AJ100 lunch audience
RetroFirst
RetroFirst is an AJ campaign to prioritise retrofit over demolition and rebuild. Hundreds of architecture practices, organisations and individuals have declared their support for our campaign
Anti-demolition amendment to PDR planned
Permitted development rights to demolish many unlisted buildings could end following calls from heritage campaigners
Gove’s M&S Oxford Street decision could be great for cities
Though painted as a damaging act based on resistance to change, Michael Gove’s seismic decision to stop Marks & Spencer demolishing its Oxford Street store is actually a positive move, argues Rab Bennetts
New RIBA president Muyiwa Oki to ‘put pressure’ on government on retrofit
Muyiwa Oki will ‘put pressure’ on government to deliver a national retrofit strategy as RIBA president, the institution’s new boss said today (1 September)
M&S launches High Court appeal against Gove’s Oxford Street refusal
Marks and Spencer has launched a legal bid to overturn Michael Gove’s rejection of its Pilbrow and Partners-designed plan to demolish and redevelop its Oxford Street store
Architecture needs a ‘rinse and repeat’ approach
We should move away from the idea of architecture as a finite product and instead embrace ongoing maintenance for our creations, argues Toko Andrews
Is the M&S Oxford St demolition refusal a climate crisis turning point?
Will Michael Gove’s decision to block the demolition of Marks and Spencer’s Oxford Street store set a hard-and-fast precedent in favour of retention or simply lead to more confusion? Will Hurst, Anna Highfield, Richard Waite and Gino Spocchia investigate
Campaigners make final plea to save Portsmouth News Centre
Heritage campaigners and academics have called for the News Centre, an iconic 1960s modernist building in Portsmouth, to be saved from demolition – although it may already be too late
Piercy & Company gets planning consent to demolish former AJ office
Piercy & Company has won planning permission for a revised proposal to flatten Telephone House in Shoreditch, the former home of the AJ
What Anders Lendager can teach Michael Gove about the circular economy
The government’s headline-grabbing rejection of Pilbrow & Partners’ M&S Oxford Street plan highlights how far off the UK is from producing circular economy projects like those of Danish architect Anders Lendager, argues Peter Murray