Saving buildings is only part of the story
In a new opinion piece for the Architects’ Journal, HNW Director and RIBA-accredited Conservation Architect Lee Davies asks whether the retrofit debate needs to look beyond carbon and physical fabric – and focus more closely on the meaning of place.
The retrofit-first argument has rightly become an important part of architectural thinking. We are increasingly able to quantify the environmental value of retaining and adapting existing buildings – but are we as good at understanding what else we are trying to preserve?
Writing in the Architects’ Journal, HNW Director Lee Davies argues that successful conservation and retrofit must consider more than the building itself. Memory, identity, familiar uses and a building’s relationship with the people and places around it can be just as important as its physical fabric.
Drawing on our work at Brighton’s Grade II*-listed Royal Albion Hotel, Lee considers how buildings accumulate meaning over time, and why architects should perhaps think of themselves not only as designers, but as custodians of place. The Royal Albion is used in the article precisely because its importance to Brighton extends well beyond its listed fabric: it is bound up with people’s memories and the wider cultural life of the city.
Writing in the Architects’ Journal, HNW Director Lee Davies argues that successful conservation and retrofit must consider more than the building itself. Memory, identity, familiar uses and a building’s relationship with the people and places around it can be just as important as its physical fabric.
Drawing on our work at Brighton’s Grade II*-listed Royal Albion Hotel, Lee considers how buildings accumulate meaning over time, and why architects should perhaps think of themselves not only as designers, but as custodians of place. The Royal Albion is used in the article precisely because its importance to Brighton extends well beyond its listed fabric: it is bound up with people’s memories and the wider cultural life of the city.
Originally published in the Architects’ Journal, 19 August 2026.
Read Lee’s article below, or read the original in the Architects’ Journal: AJ Article
The profession has done well to adopt a philosophy of retrofit-first. At the outset of every such project we mustn’t forget what makes this particular place meaningful, argues Lee Davies
The retrofit debate has become remarkably good at answering one question: should this building survive? And, in most cases, the answer is probably going to be ‘yes’, at least from the environmental standpoint.
Thanks to embodied carbon, we can now make an increasingly compelling environmental case for retaining existing buildings. We can quantify the carbon cost of demolition, compare whole-life impacts and demonstrate, with growing confidence, that reusing what already exists is often the most sustainable option.
But in focusing so successfully on whether or not a building should be saved, have we become less clear about what is it we’re actually trying to preserve?
A building can be carefully restored, retain every tonne of embodied carbon and still lose the very qualities that made it matter in the first place. If its role in community life disappears, if the activities that gave it meaning are displaced, or if it becomes disconnected from the place around it, have we really preserved anything beyond its physical fabric?
That is why I believe the debate around retrofit needs to broaden. I was reminded of this while working on the restoration and regeneration of Brighton’s Royal Albion Hotel (pictured), following the devastating fire of 2023. The project is, of course, about restoring and bringing back into use the surviving Grade II*-listed building, while carefully considering how the wider site can evolve.
Ask people why the Royal Albion matters and they are unlikely to begin by talking about its listed status. They will remember weddings, family celebrations, first visits to Brighton, or simply see the hotel as part of the city’s seafront throughout their lives. Its history is also part of the wider cultural memory of Brighton. Oscar Wilde stayed there in 1894, one of many guests and stories woven into the building’s history.
The Royal Albion has accumulated meaning far beyond its architectural fabric. Our role is to help write its next chapter: carefully adapting the surviving building to contemporary needs while ensuring that it can continue to play a meaningful role in the life of the city for decades to come.
The objective is not to recreate the building as a monument to what was lost, but to ensure that its relationship with Brighton can continue to evolve.
The same principle can be seen in some of Britain’s most successful regeneration projects. King’s Cross, for example, succeeded not simply because it retained historic buildings, but because it understood the character, memory and grain of the place. The historic fabric became an anchor for new life rather than a museum piece. The result feels like an evolution of King’s Cross, not a replacement for it.
Increasingly, our profession measures success through quantifiable data: embodied carbon, operational energy, biodiversity gain. These are all essential and should remain central to good design. But some of the most important qualities of successful places resist measurement: belonging, memory, civic identity. These are the very qualities that determine whether people embrace change or feel that something valuable has been lost.
At the outset of every retrofit project, we should ask: What makes this place meaningful? What relationships, routines and memories are we carrying forward?
Architects are often described as designers, but perhaps we should also think of ourselves as custodians of place. Why is this so vital? Because the places that people value will be cared for, adapted and passed on.
We’ve become very good at measuring what we save. We must also remember the meaning of what we’re trying to preserve.
Lee Davies is a director and RIBA-accredited conservation architect at HNW Architects
Thanks to embodied carbon, we can now make an increasingly compelling environmental case for retaining existing buildings. We can quantify the carbon cost of demolition, compare whole-life impacts and demonstrate, with growing confidence, that reusing what already exists is often the most sustainable option.
But in focusing so successfully on whether or not a building should be saved, have we become less clear about what is it we’re actually trying to preserve?
A building can be carefully restored, retain every tonne of embodied carbon and still lose the very qualities that made it matter in the first place. If its role in community life disappears, if the activities that gave it meaning are displaced, or if it becomes disconnected from the place around it, have we really preserved anything beyond its physical fabric?
That is why I believe the debate around retrofit needs to broaden. I was reminded of this while working on the restoration and regeneration of Brighton’s Royal Albion Hotel (pictured), following the devastating fire of 2023. The project is, of course, about restoring and bringing back into use the surviving Grade II*-listed building, while carefully considering how the wider site can evolve.
Ask people why the Royal Albion matters and they are unlikely to begin by talking about its listed status. They will remember weddings, family celebrations, first visits to Brighton, or simply see the hotel as part of the city’s seafront throughout their lives. Its history is also part of the wider cultural memory of Brighton. Oscar Wilde stayed there in 1894, one of many guests and stories woven into the building’s history.
The Royal Albion has accumulated meaning far beyond its architectural fabric. Our role is to help write its next chapter: carefully adapting the surviving building to contemporary needs while ensuring that it can continue to play a meaningful role in the life of the city for decades to come.
The objective is not to recreate the building as a monument to what was lost, but to ensure that its relationship with Brighton can continue to evolve.
The same principle can be seen in some of Britain’s most successful regeneration projects. King’s Cross, for example, succeeded not simply because it retained historic buildings, but because it understood the character, memory and grain of the place. The historic fabric became an anchor for new life rather than a museum piece. The result feels like an evolution of King’s Cross, not a replacement for it.
Increasingly, our profession measures success through quantifiable data: embodied carbon, operational energy, biodiversity gain. These are all essential and should remain central to good design. But some of the most important qualities of successful places resist measurement: belonging, memory, civic identity. These are the very qualities that determine whether people embrace change or feel that something valuable has been lost.
At the outset of every retrofit project, we should ask: What makes this place meaningful? What relationships, routines and memories are we carrying forward?
Architects are often described as designers, but perhaps we should also think of ourselves as custodians of place. Why is this so vital? Because the places that people value will be cared for, adapted and passed on.
We’ve become very good at measuring what we save. We must also remember the meaning of what we’re trying to preserve.
Lee Davies is a director and RIBA-accredited conservation architect at HNW Architects
August 2026