The students will be presenting their final work on this British Council funded project tonight, from 6.30 pm in the old NatWest Bank on Bute Street in Cardiff. From what I’ve seen of the activities, it should be an interesting evening.

I took part in the debate organised by the British Council as part of the project on Monday night in the same venue. It was a good discussion about future scenarios for cities in general and Cardiff in particular. Unfortunately, it did descend into a bit of a slanging match between architects and planners towards the end.

Before that, however, one contributor, a young female student from India who had never been outside her own country before, made us acutely aware of two differences in cultural practices that exist between India and the UK: first, she questioned why we use toilet paper instead of washing; and second, she couldn’t understand why water in plastic bottles isn’t banned. We didn’t probe the first point too deeply in the relative amounts of water used, but there was a loud cheer from the audience to accompany the second.

The overwhelming message from the audience seemed to be that we need to reuse and adapt as many existing buildings as we can rather than tear them down and build afresh. The venue itself offered a good example of a building that could serve multiple new purposes, if only someone would invest some time and care in it.

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