The end of the Whitworth Tower?

The Whitworth Tower is part of Loughborough University's Rutherford Hall complex. It was built in around 1959, and is about 29 metres tall, making it Loughborough's third-tallest building (1), sitting behind the 46-metre high war memorial, the Carillon Tower, and the 68-metre tall Brutalist icon of Loughborough that is Towers Hall.)

But two weeks ago, the university submitted a planning application to demolish the Whitworth Tower. Why does the University want to demolish the Whitworth Tower? Well, in the demolition statement in the application, they wrote quite bluntly, "The Whitworth Tower has reached the end of its economic life (2)." They also wrote that the demolition is part of a "phased demolition of a number of residential buildings [e.g. Cayley (Cayley 16 and 17 have already been replaced), Faraday, Royce, Rutherford and eventually Telford and Falkner-Eggington Halls] across the campus [as] part of the University’s carbon reduction initiative, which will in future potentially be replaced with newer, more energy efficient buildings (3)."  So what is Loughborough's third-tallest building could soon be no more.

Would anyone save it? Probably not. Unlike Towers and the Carillon Tower, the Whitworth Tower is not nearly as famous locally as the top two tallest buildings. Also, it is not nearly as architecturally notable as the other two. While Towers and the Carillon Tower both have distinctive architecture, the Whitworth Tower doesn't, and probably could as well have been any old sixties tower block on a council estate.

So now that we understand what's happening, what is going to happen next? Well, the Demolition Plan states that the building will be vacated in the summer of 2023. Then a new energy and data hub will be built to replace the one within the tower. This should be done by early autumn 2023, and the tower will be fully demolished by October 2023. (I presume this will be done using the not-so-exciting claw method rather than anything fancy like explosives.) The area will then be landscaped (4).

Autumn 2023 seems a long way off; after all, they could have chosen to start pulling it down this summer. But in any case, the Whitworth Tower is now living on borrowed time.

References:

(1) Estimate measured from section plans for the proposed energy and data centre proposed to be built behind it to replace the one within the building, documents, planning application P/22/0023/2.

(2,3,4) Demolition statement, documents, P/22/0024/2.