Conservation
There has always been a human instinct to protect cultural memory or not to change too fast. Increasingly the embodied energy in existing buildings has helped tip the balance in their defence.
It is important to balance the value of conservation with a real understanding of what it is that we are trying to conserve. Is it a building design or a building use, a cultural construct or the relationship between institution and its community?
There is no point conserving a public building slavishly for it to be divided up into private flats, no longer available for the community.
Hawkins\Brown has developed an expertise in representing or transforming some of the iconic and visionary designs of the late sixties - Park Hill in Sheffield; Pimilco School; Robin Hood Gardens and the Brunswick Centre in London. The projects that will carry these buildings into the 21st century have taken the spirit of adventure, revolution and experimentation and interpreted this for the present rather than the past.
Contact: Roger Hawkins
