02 October 2024 
Martin Higgs, AUDE Communications and Campaigns Manager
Revisiting a vital theme
AUDE last addressed the issue of legacy buildings in a 2008 report, so it is high time that we return to a subject that matters more and more. In managing our carbon obligations and in operating within tight financial constraints, the estates teams of today need more flexibility and creativity than ever before in getting the most possible from every building and every campus space. With capital spend in the overall Higher Education estate a clear £1bn down on its pre-pandemic levels, every university is looking to get the most from its older buildings.
These can be the places that give each campus its unique character, and some will hold the historical story of the university whether the institution has Victorian or even medieval roots. But increasingly when we think of ‘legacy’ we may mean buildings of the immediate post-war period. Whatever the era we can be faced with a patchwork campus of buildings created using all kinds of technologies, including largely obsolete ones that don’t match up easily with the expectations of our staff and students today. As we focus our efforts towards 21st century pedagogies, digitisation, and the decarbonisation of our campuses, we can face legacy obstacles even in the shape of buildings of which we are immensely proud. Buildings of the last 30 years are now starting to be listed: this picture is a moving one. In the new AUDE Legacy Buildings Guide, published today, we look at these and related issues. We are grateful to Arup for their support in creating the new guide, as well as to the many AUDE members that had a helpful hand in its development.
We hope you’ll be able to join our online session on 6 November at 10am which will introduce you to the document and help you to start thinking about the value it will add to your planning.
Accessing the guide is via a straightforward download using the link above. We hope you’ll add this to the growing list of useful AUDE tools and publications in your office, which also includes the recent AUDE Guide to Decarbonisation.
