We look forward to our shortlisting, and to seeing most (we hope) of the entrants in Barcelona in November. Times may be tough in many parts of the world, but architecture never stands still for long.

Retrofitting a building tests the extent to which the original was designed on the principle of ‘long life, loose fit, low energy’, that marvellous mantra from the 1970s which looks even more relevant now than it did then. Certain buildings, recently described as suitable for demolition by construction ‘tsar’ Paul Morrell, were designed to last only for as long as it took to extract value from a 25-year commercial lease; they are tight fit because they are extremely difficult to adapt to anything other than their original use; and they waste energy prodigiously because of their systems and insulation standards.

By contrast, more generous buildings (Victorian board schools or Georgian houses for instance) will last for centuries because they are relatively simple to change, either to accommodate the new ways in which the existing use is carried out (ie flexible), or to convert to a completely different use (adaptable). Ideally a building should be both flexible and adaptable. Bad buildings are neither but ubiquitous.

What has thus inhibited the acknowledgement that retrofit will be an increasingly significant element in architectural output is a certain reluctance to abandon the idea that architecture represent the white heat of creative thinking, expressed in form and structure to signify that it is all about NOW. By contrast, retrofitted buildings may have little to indicate that much work has been undertaken, and sometimes none at all. Doesn’t this just mean that engineers have been changing stuff in the pipes?

The reality is that there will always be a demand for brand new buildings, and that there will be many instances in which it makes more sense to demolish and rebuild rather than waste money and resources on improving the unimproveable. Moreover, methodologies are being developed by architects including (as previously discussed in this column) Simon Sturgis, to indicate when retrofit makes more sense, and even the best time to carry it out over the lifecycle of a building.

Would it be fanciful to imagine that future plan/building regulations might require an energy audit prior to permissions being approved in principle? This would certainly contribute to the low-carbon agenda to which the UK government is a fully signed-up player, and it would be in tune with energy performance certificates and other outward and visible signs of inward and invisible environmental grace.

Of course there is one significant category of buildings that is highly unlikely to see mass demolition over the next century: homes. The reason why they will last is that 70 per cent of them are owned by individuals unlikely to be able to afford to rebuild; much of the rest is owned by institutions more interested in maintenance than expensive replacement. So retrofit will be the name of the game, and with more than 25 million homes to aim at, the challenge and opportunity will be considerable.

As for celebrating retrofit (across all building and infrastructure types), the Architects’ Journal and New Civil Engineer have joined forces to launch the Retrofit Awards, details of which will be announced shortly. These awards will properly recognise the increasingly important part that this area of design activity will constitute — in an age of diminishing environmental consumption.

On the whole, architects are reluctant to talk about this. In a moment of typical frankness, Will Alsop confessed, claimed or boasted that his Cardiff Bay visitor Centre was based on his Bic cigarette lighter. At other times the story seemed to change to it being a flattened lavatory roll. It was all part of his attack on the idea that form inevitably and appropriately followed function. ‘Form has nothing to do with function’ he famously declared. Your correspondent translated this into a headline: ‘Form swallows function’, which I still rather like.

It was all a long way from the proper explanations one was supposed to elecit from architects about why their buildings looked the way they did. Few would say because they fancied the colour, or the material, or that their inspiration had come from a flower or a biscuit tin. When Jan Kaplicky produced his beautiful liittle book on inspirations you could almost hear the sucked breath of the more puritan tendency in British architecture,  who didn’t like the idea that a 1960s dress design , flower or a fish, could be an appropriate prompt for the design of a car or, say, a department store in Birmingham.

Of course it’s now ok, if not compulsory, to claim that nature is the source of your design idea, since it proves that you are a green architect in touch with bio-diversity, ecology and the pulse of sustainable lifestyles. But even in respect of nature, there is a still a certain expectation of functional explanation. You’re not supposed to say you just like it.

So when Jean Nouvel goes all Timothy Leary, lets down the guard of modernity and responds to what he feels and experiences, rather than what he thinks and calculates, it is slightly shocking.  Famously, at the his first meeting with client and planners to explain his ideas for One New Change, the mixed-use shopping and office building immediately next to St Paul’s Cathedral, he dropped a model of a stealth bomber aeroplane on the table and told the assembled worthies that this was what it would look like. It was a Bic lighter moment.

Needless to say there was method in this apparent madness, since those stealth angles were what allowed the substantial building to avoid conflicting with St Paul’s Views. But at a certain level, the architect had obviously fallen for the aesthetic of the military airplane an in an unusual version of technology transfer, adopting the look rather than the technology.

When architects talk openly about sources of inspiration it is often intriguing and impressive, but it doesn’t happen that often; more likely is a perfectly reasonable proposition about materials, colour palettes, contextual design, appropriate scale (or in the case of a tower delightful contrast). The trouble with the functional explanation is that it never seems quite functional enough, as David Dunster might say. Where are the buildings whose appearance is entirely dictated by function?

What about cash-and carry-warehouses, you may ask. Well, just how functional are they? How energy efficient? How well-tempered? How easy to service? Not very, though as you go up the storage design food chain, to those giant cargo buildings at Heathrow, there is a change in quality as well as scale.

There still remains, in any event, the mysterious question of delight. We expect architecture, as opposed to building, to fulfil our expectations for elegance, surprise, beauty, wit. How designers achieve that is a process that is little understood, but which Jean Nouvel, via the inadequate means of language, tried to illuminate. Interestingly, there are hard-headed clients out there who seem ready to respond.

The quotation cited above is from an article in the RIBA Journal of May 1976, and is based on a lecture given at the Architectural Association by Terry Farrell and Nick Grimshaw (they were still in partnership). Sir Terry will be one of the judges on the Retrofit awards, and it is interesting to re-read his thoughts on housing in particular from 35 years ago. How about this for a proposition: ‘Now is the time to ask if we actually need itals any itals new housing in this country. Buildings are a resource which should not be destroyed, even if they are to be replaced by a “masterpiece”. It requires as much design ingenuity to spatially re-organise existing buildings, adding services and equipment, as it does to design new buildings.’ Or Grimshaw on a long-life, loose-fit approach: ‘Today’s enclosures must allow for the ebb and flow of new products and processes. They must also encourage a high level of user manipulation of the interior and exterior of the building. We are against custom-built monuments’.

Among the ideas in their joint lecture which still resonate today are the suggestion that we should develop a  resource log of existing buildings, their life potential and their potential to be adapted for new uses; an exploration of demand for new buildings and how it could be met by changing existing buildings; an examination of live-work space; better management to bring empty buildings into use; research into the true investment existing buildings represent in terms of labour, energy, materials, equipment, finance and maintenance; the true cost of demolition and replacement as opposed to rehabilitation; and the designing-in of future flexibility.

A word of warning looks perceptive from today’s knowledge: ‘Always competing with rehabilitation solutions is the seduction of the Brasilia syndrome – if it’s new it’s good, and the bigger the better. Newcastle should be a lesson for Aberdeen; it’s so easy for provincial places to be unaware of what they possess and to wastefully pursue utopianism.’

For Farrell, the key point can be summed up thus: ‘The job of urbanising this country is virtually completed; like fields broken in for agricultural use, once the land has been cultivated to support the population, it is time to enjoy and manage it as a resource.’ He thus pointed to the advantages which might accrue from intensification of places like the South Bank cultural centre in London, a project on which he was to work ten years later, adding housing and commercial space to create a 24-hour-a-day place rather than a mono-use.

None of these arguments has gone away, and the intensification of use and the adding of density to urban areas is now regarded as a good not simply because of the Richard Rogers Urban Renaissance report, but because of the implications of lower-carbon environments; as Farrell noted, ‘Density in itself is not a good or a bad thing. It is how the experience of high density is handled environmental that is critical.’

Our Retrofit Awards will celebrate the renewal of the existing rather than, as most other awards do, admiring the new. That does not mean that the new is to be denigrated, far from it, since the challenge it presents to designers will reap benefits in the way they think about the former. Rather, it is a way of acknowledging the necessary implications of the environment in which, literally and metaphorically, we now operate. Whether it is creative re-use of an old building, or prolonging the life of a bridge using carbon technology, the informing attitude will be: good husbandry.

What is not often discussed is the wide variation in quality of presentations themselves, irrespective of the merits of the design. And while it is true that it is very difficult to make a poor design look truly convincing, it is even more the case that good buildings and projects can be badly let down by ill-considered texts and boards. I have lost count of the number of times that a building you know from personal experience to be high quality fails to make itself felt in judging meetings because the effort put into presentation is nothing like as sophisticated as the thinking behind the thing itself.

This can be counteracted by the experience of visiting a building, but even that will be enhanced or undermined by the approach the architect takes when showing a judging panel their work, of which more next week.

So from experience, a few things to think about as you prepare or design form-based information, photography and entry boards.

1.      Basics. Read the entry criteria and requirements carefully. You can’t just leave this to a junior marketing person. Then make sure that your entry doesn’t fall at the first hurdle. Example: the British Construction Industry Awards require, among other things, information about the process of construction and how challenges were met and overcome. Sending in an architectural description alone is a waste of time and money.

2.      Imagery. If photographs are required, ensure they are relevant and tell a story about the strengths of the building. Inhabited buildings always look impressive. Arty night shots may be an irritation to judges faced with hundreds of entries, unless it is an essentially night-time building (eg a theatre). A context shot never does any harm. Photography in relation to awards is about information not art. Architectural awards are not photography awards – but the photography should still be high-quality.

3.      Entry board formatting. This is an under-rated area, There are some standard issues requiring thought. For example, if you are submitting two A2 boards, which is quite a common requirement, think about what will give you the best chance of making an impact: landscape side-by-side; landscape stacked; portrait side-by-side; or portrait stacked. Some building types make the choice relatively easy (eg towers), others need thinking about. Another choice is whether to run images across a break in the boards. Do it deliberately not by accident. A third is what you do if you are using two boards from, say, a four-board sequence used for other purposes. My advice: redesign if you want to be taken seriously.

4.      Entry board content. Unstated but generally desirable features include a site plan, indicative or key plans, key sections, context photography or CGIs if it is a project rather than completed building, and of course the key image(s). Plus clear text and captions at a readable size.

5.      Entry board design. Generally speaking, it is best to use one or two key images for dramatic effect and then other images at a contrasting smaller scale, rather than filling boards up with images of similar size. Remember that the more square your image proportions, the more boring they will be.

6.      Text. It is unforgiveable to supply text, either on entry forms or on boards, that has not been spell-checked. This is particularly (but not only) applicable to student award entries. Just as important, the text needs to be comprehensible by a normal person who knows nothing about the scheme. Essential information includes location, client, size, key materials and the core reasons for the design. It is perfectly possible to convey this information concisely on boards, leaving maximum room for images. Captions are a good way of supplementing the main text with additional information.

7.      Drawings. Apart from plans and sections, concept sketches and/or diagrams can be very helpful in indicating how the designer’s mind has worked in addressing the programme. It is useful evidence of architectural thought.

Next week: presentations and visits.

The sad fact is that here, at least, there are two diametrically opposed world-views about property development: either it is a necessary good, or an unnecessary evil. The latter view explains the extensive application of section 106 to pay for everything from public realm improvement in the area affected by development, to entirely unrelated projects within the borough boundary.

The architect and planning consultant, Brian Waters, has sagely commented that planning too often acts as a rationing system, a last bastion of the post-war command economy which made its mark on land use from 1947 onwards, through the Town and Country Planning Act. Rationing means shortage; thus what becomes available becomes more valuable, triggering an irresistible urge to tax it. Why not ease up on the rationing?

In any event, planning authorities are now beginning to realise what happens if development slows or stops. Where are all those planning gain benefits going to come from? On the supply side things are even more uncomfortable. Why take the risk of spending money on submitting a planning application, when the likelihood is that it will be difficult to build anyway?

A good example of where it all goes wrong is in relation to housing. Many overseas investors, while enjoying the benefits of tax-free gains as capital values rise, must be baffled as to why an advanced country such as Britain cannot manage to building enough new homes to satisfy both private and social markets – even though we always used to in past decades.

The truth is that if you load too much of a burden on house-builders they will stop building or build less. London’s last mayor, Ken Livingstone, thought he could fund a social housing programme on the back of private housing development, but all that happened was that starts and completions plummeted.

The thought occurs that given the credit crunch, empty rates, slashed asset values and rental non-movement, it might be time for planning authorities to reverse section 106s, and replace them with  . . . well let’s call them 601s. This would be where the l,ocal planning authority contributes, in cash or in kind, to make development easier, or at least possible. After years of private sector contributions, you reverse the flow: the local authority assembles sites, donates buildings, waives planning charges, and gives properly designed schemes fast-track permissions.

We have become so accustomed to regarding planning as an advanced form of  development control that we have lost sight of its creative potential, to add value in advance, to enable and stimulate rather than regulate and stifle. The best planners have always been natural enablers and encouragers, and it is time to promote this aspect of the system.

At MIPIM last year, there was an excellent stand, outlining the way the London Borough of Croydon had worked with contractor John Laing to generating activity and value in the borough, by creasting a  joint venture where public assets could be used to underwrite financing of big new development. Croydon’s pursuit of innovation represents the sort of silver lining you need in the cloud of recession affecting the property industry. If cash exists but is difficult to access, the task is to find the key to the lock. 

At the other end are the so-called sceptics. Like their opposite numbers, they are beset with paranoia, in this case about a global plot to waste trillions of dollars on measures that undermine individual freedom, bringing state control into every aspect of human endeavour. Sceptical scientists are obviously right. Climate-change believers are evil.

Stuck in the middle are those who have looked as best they can at what is happening to our ice caps, to CO2 emissions and population growth and are extremely concerned at what they see. On the other hand they want scientists to be asked tough questions about their theories as to what is happening. They are not very interested in demonising minority opinions.

It is in the zone of constructive scepticism that good science is likely to flourish, since it is here that research will be tested free of preconception. In this zone there is no need to hide inconvenient truths of any description, whether they appear to support or detract from the general consensus about the extent to which climate change is man-made.

And it is in this zone that policies to combat (or more likely adapt to) climate change can be rationally assessed. Thus we avoid predictions about the likely efficiency of alternative energy technologies being based on anything other than what we know, not what we would like to be the case.

Many years ago I co-chaired a British Council for Offices conference where the keynote speaker was a former director of the UK Meteorological Office, Sir John Houghton. His lucid and unflashy analysis of what was happening to global temperatures was enough to convince me (and everyone in the room) that something disturbing was happening. Since that time I have been more interested in what we do about our new condition than about the undoubted fact that the earth has experienced extremely variable weather conditions over the millennia. We, after all, are dealing with today and tomorrow, not yesteryear.

In this sense, it wouldn’t matter whether climate change was the result of sunspots, the man in the moon, flatulent cows or, as seems likely, a surfeit of CO2. Our chances of doing anything other than mitigate are remote. That is not, of course, an argument for doing nothing, as the Dutch have shown for many centuries. Dam building rather than hand wringing has an awful lot to recommend it.

For architects, the key questions will continue to be how buildings are powered, and how excess heat can be used to good effect. This will be particularly true of existing building stock; much unglamorous work will need to be done, but it will be vital and a necessary part of a strategy too often presented as a battle over travelling by plane, or indeed travelling at all. As far as energy production is concerned, I remain convinced that nuclear power needs to be part (not all) of the solution for the foreseeable future. The UK gave up a world-leading position in this area, preferring to burn coal and North Sea gas. The irony of the UK now importing electricity generated by nuclear power in France, while we agonize about replacing redundant nuclear plant, would be funny if it were not so embarrassing.

Of course if all our energy were generated from ‘virtuous’ carbon-free sources, then we could presumably run the air-conditioning all day and every day without feeling too guilty. For many at Copenhagen, the question of climate guilt looms large. Those two ends of the spectrum are a Manichean version of everyday weather forecasters. For the rest of us, we are likely to depend on relatively old-fashioned engineering to keep us warm and dry, while scientists refine their propositions as to where we go from here, and how we should try to get there.

All this has resulted in a feeling of ruthlessness, where you no longer have a clear idea who is responsible for what on your patch: police, fire and health authorities often have boundaries none of which fit exactly with that of other services. Electoral areas, always subject to some revision, now have overlays of European red lines. Regional authorities come and go, as do their fields of responsibility. (The New Localism of all the political parties is a dim-witted attempt to deal with this loss of identity, which will result in further paralysis of the planning and development system.)

When it comes to the idea of a country or ‘nation’ we are all over the place. According to the Rugby Football Union, England is a nation. But according the EU (and the RIBA for that matter) England is only just about a region, unlike Scotland and Wales, which are ‘nations’. The shaven-head fascists of the British National Party lay claim to the whole country but what does this mean when the Scots and Welsh have their own nationalist parties? What it means is that they are laying claim to England.

Until, quite recently, I only thought about being English in relation to sporting events, tending to describe myself as British for official purposes, and a Londoner for mental mapping. I think this began to change when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown started going on about being patriotic, even as they completed the process of splitting off Wales and Scotland. They even had a ‘Minister for Patriotism’, a political nonentity called Michael Wills, who seemed to spend quite a lot of time in Brussels.

But what does the idea of being English imply? And is there such a thing as ‘English architecture’? This thought was prompted by three end-of-year books, each of which has characteristics which I think of as being English. The first is Paul Barker’s ‘Freedoms of Suburbia’ (Frances Lincoln), which deals with that peculiarly English phenomenon, based as it is on a big idea (commuter rail infrastructure imposed on the countryside) and a myriad small ones, that is to say the houses and gardens so admired by Rasmussen in his ‘London, the Unique City’, now apparently out of print.

The second is ‘Custom and Innovation’ (Black Dog), a practice monograph about Colqhoun & Miller/John Miller and Partners, with good essays by Deyan Sudjic, Robert Maxwell, Nicholas Serota and Kenneth Frampton. The English characteristics displayed in the work are those of modesty, restraint, ingenuity and a sensitivity to context and landscape. The work is extremely good but never shows off.

Finally another practice monograph, this time about Procter Matthews Architects. ‘Pattern Place Purpose’ (Black Dog) is a first class piece of design and production, and one gets the feeling that this has been a real labour of love for the practice, which has been described as being English in their approach. Thoughtful essays by Peter Blundell Jones, Jeremy Till and Matthew Wells contribute to the overall quality of the book, but the most interesting piece is by Alan Powers, probably the most perceptive critic of English Modernism and its inheritors.

His analysis of what it is that might constitute an English architecture could equally be applied to the essay itself: modest, restrained, but with flashes of wit and insight, and an enjoyment of moments in occasional work by Procter and Matthews where they look as though they are designing the architectural equivalent of a party.

If you’re looking for a good architectural book for Christmas this is it – whatever your region or nation.

There is then the issue of what constitutes building. Does it imply architecture alone, or would engineering and infrastructure projects be included? Still, these points can make for lively discussion, and since no vote was planned at the end of dinner, nit-picking debating points were kept to a minimum.

Broadly speaking two points of view emerged. One was that even though a city may become famous as a result of a particular development, building or engineering project, such things could only arise from the context created by the city itself. Imposition from above could produce an object, but that could not change the future of the city on its own.

The other view suggested that the generation of significant projects could indeed turn the future of a city, partly because its could change external perceptions of it, partly because it could change the psychological characteristics, if one can put it that way, of the city and its citizens.

One example given on the night was the Eiffel Tower, whose defiant modernity was in stark contrast to medieval Paris and the Haussmann city plan. One might have added that the Piano and Rogers Pompidou Centre had a similar impact, having aroused as much controversy and indeed hostility as M Eiffel’s grand project.

Another example (not mentioned on the night) would be Sydney Opera House. There was little in the city’s DNA to suggest that it would become home to one of the wonders of the modern world; however, the determination of political leaders to make a statement about the cultural aspirations of this young city/country, plus lottery funding, resulted in the iconic architectural result which has been the city’s key landmark ever since. The successful Sydney Olympics bid benefited hugely from the worldwide recognition of that ‘scrum-of-nuns’ logo.

Talking of the Olympics, one cannot deny the impact they had on Barcelona, which re-invented itself for the occasion from dusty provincial backwater to a world city of architecture and design; there are high hopes that the London Games of 2012 will trigger further revitalisation of the east side of London, balancing the damage done to it as a century-long consequence of the industrial revolution.

In both Barcelona and London, infrastructure investment, which will last for at least a century after the Games, has been critical to the future development of the city. If one looks to precedent as to the importance of engineering works, one needs to look no further than the embanking of the Thames in central London in the 1860s, by the great engineer Joseph Bazalgette. His transformation of an open sewer to the Thames we know today was prompted by smell (the ‘Great Stink’), and fear of cholera. The embanking changed London forever, not for the first time as a result of health concerns rather than aesthetic planning.

There was a political consequence of Bazalgette’s work too: the client body which commissioned him, the Metropolitan Board of Works, eventually transformed into the London County Council, the democratic authority which governed London from 1889 to 1963, before expanding to become the Greater London Council (now the Greater London Authority).

Architecture, engineering and planning are integral to the life of any city, and their absence, for example on the fringes of cities in developing countries where the flight from the land is sometimes creating insuperable problems for city authorities, simply shows that the host city has not prepared itself for what we now know to be inevitable.

In 1950, twice as many people lived on the land as inhabited cities. Crossover has just taken place, and by 2050, the land/city population proportions will have reversed. Planners, architects and politicians had better understand the consequences for the built environment – or city destinies will only involve dealing with chaos.