For many years Richard Coleman has been campaigning to prevent ill-conceived projects where just part of a façade is retained in order to hide a new building. There are very often façades of such outstanding composition and craftsmanship which warrant such treatment but in such cases the new interior should be wholly designed to respect it. There are, however, far too many cases where only ordinary, non-listed facades are retained and where the new accommodation behind fails to have any relationship to what is expressed externally. There are many cases where two or more retained facades front a newly created open plan office and, even worse, where retained elevations are stretched upwards to fit to new floor-to-floor levels. Sometimes this is done by using all new stonework! Is this really conservation or a respectful honouring of the heritage? In 1998 Richard Coleman recruited Lord Richard Rogers and Sir Richard McCormac to assist in sponsoring a book called Revise PPG15, launched in 2001, which provided guidance on façade retention. Richard has been appointed by the Deputy Prime Minister to serve on a working group to up-date PPG15.
Revise PPG15 is available on request priced at £20