Conservation Values, Climate Change and Modern Architecture

Abstract

The Co-operative Insurance Society (CIS) Tower in Manchester is part of an office and conference facility of 1959–62 considered by Pevsner to be the best commercial office building in Manchester. In 1995 it was listed at Grade II. It has recently seen the completion of a major project to overclad the concrete service tower with the largest vertical array of photovoltaic cells in the UK. The scheme was, at least in part, a response to the failure of the original mosaic cladding, which has now been secured in situ under the new overcladding. The project has been controversial: its proponents have argued in terms of its environmental sustainability and the reversibility of the cladding; its detractors have made the case that the scheme goes beyond the accepted conservation principle of minimum intervention and has claimed exaggerated green credentials. The paper uses the CIS Tower as a case study to explore the relationship between architectural conservation values and those of the climate change agenda.