Bastion House & Museum Of London – Mass Support For Retrofitting & Opposition To Demolition
The Barbican Quarter Action (BQA) marketing campaign assembly towards the demolition of London Wall West on Tuesday 17 January 2023 proved an enormous success, with St Giles church in Cripplegate crammed with a whole bunch of supporters. Below we’ll merely quote from the BQA mail out concerning the occasion despatched on 18 January. Prior to that only a observe on a small element of this very nicely organised and far wanted marketing campaign.
The BQA had already produced badges in help of their anti-demolition marketing campaign and it’s nice to see there at the moment are banners too. However new to us on the assembly had been the Bastion House and Museum of London postcards with BQA on-line hyperlinks. It was a pointy transfer to offer free marketing campaign postcards the month non-barcoded stamps exit of use. Sending the playing cards to a couple mates is clearly an effective way to get the phrase out and deploy stamps which may in any other case be wasted if not used inside the subsequent couple of weeks. While a really small factor, this sort of contact and timing exhibits how on the ball the BQA marketing campaign is.
And after all there was good comply with up on Twitter, as nicely with this, the BQA’s 18 January 2023 e-mail.
The Twentieth Century Society locations Bastion House and the Museum of London on their Buildings At Risk checklist in one other blow to the City’s plans
At a packed assembly in St Giles’s Church final evening, Coco Whittaker, Senior Caseworker on the Twentieth Century Society, introduced that Bastion House and the Museum of London are being recognised as one of many ten most threatened twentieth century buildings within the UK and are being positioned on their Buildings at Risk checklist.
This is a extremely important second and one other blow to the City’s plans to create an inappropriate new workplace growth at London Wall West. The Twentieth Century Society confirmed that it’ll marketing campaign for Bastion House and Museum of London to be recognized as Designated Heritage Assets that benefit safety.
The City was granted a Certificate of Immunity from Listing till August 2024 within the context of the Centre for Music scheme. Clearly the City’s present plans for LWW have little or no cultural or heritage benefit, however the immunity from itemizing nonetheless stands. Demolition can subsequently, in precept, happen anytime earlier than August 2024, whether or not below permitted growth rights or following the granting of planning permission by the City’s personal Planning and Transportation Committee. But all our energies are focussed on stopping the seemingly relentless cycle of demolition and new construct.
The Twentieth Century Society’s important announcement is a transparent warning to the City that their plans will probably be rigorously scrutinised at nationwide stage and main objections will proceed to be made out of a variety of skilled sources.
At the identical assembly, famend architect Ian Chalk gave invaluable perception into the rising pattern to refit and refurbish present buildings, utilizing the profitable re-purposing of the brutalist model Camden Town Hall extension (which was additionally on the Twentieth Century Buildings at Risk Register) as a case examine. It was clear from how the developer approached this undertaking and what was achieved, that the City has by no means significantly investigated with due diligence the potential to refit and re-purpose Bastion House and the Museum of London.
The demolition of Bastion House and the MoL will launch 45,000 tons of C02 into the ambiance – an enormous and fully avoidable contribution to the local weather disaster and one which immediately flies within the face of the City’s web zero coverage for the Square Mile.
Videos of the shows by the Twentieth Century Society and Ian Chalk will probably be out there on the BQA web site within the coming days.
Revised proposals from the City for the LWW scheme are anticipated within the subsequent two months and BQA will after all hold everybody conscious of any information or developments and can proceed to do every little thing doable to make the City cease and re-think their ill-conceived plans.