Re:store - SAVE Britian's Heritage and The Architects' Journal
April 2024
Simon Henley is one of the judges for Re:store, an ideas competition jointly organised by SAVE Britain's Heritage and the Architects’ Journal for the M&S Oxford Street site.
The independent judges are drawing up the shortlist and evaluatng the final line-up of up to six teams.
Simon will be joined by:
- Neal Shashore, head of school and chief executive of the London School of Architecture
- Sanaa Shaikh, architect, educator, and activist with the Architects’ Climate Action Network (ACAN) who founded her own practice, Native Studio
- Basil Demeroutis, managing partner of commercial property investment firm and B Corp FORE Partnership, which is helping to fund the competition
The Re:store competition, which is independent of M&S, seeks to promote debate and ideally create a model for the adaptive re-use of the UK's multitude of attractive but ageing department store buildings.
Simon was the author of an article in the Architects' Journal which argued for the retention of the store and is available to read here.
He argued that "This – entirely unnecessary – erasure of embodied memory, just like the release of so much embodied carbon, is not always easy to articulate but it amounts to a grievous act of public vandalism."
For further information, please see the competition website here.