Starting from the overarching question «What is a good building?» the aim of this project is to locate the practices at work in valuating architecture. From the counting of CO2-equivalents emitted upon a building’s construction or the assessment of its energy efficiency in use, to its exchange on the market or its preservation through municipal policy, valuation occurs at many instances in the provenance of a building and its material composites. Similarly to when practitioners in finance measure the monetary value of a building, the assessment of architectural value is not pointing to something that a building has, since value is not intrinsic. Rather, values are found, assessed, affirmed, categorised, extracted and diffused through ongoing practices of valuation. These practices are what creates value, and therefore a building does not have the same value before and after it has been valued.

A growing awareness of architecture’s complicity in extraction of raw materials and outlet of carbon dioxide is initiating a shift in how existing buildings are valued. This subversive change in the construction industry is pulling the rug out from under the feet of the canonised criteria for preservation. In this upheaval, the disciplines of architecture and planning are adopting contested concepts emanating from the business sector. Words such as ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ are now used as adjectives to describe investments and buildings. However, these terms are hiding underlying and conflicting systems of valuation. This project will attempt to locate the incompatibility between such valuation regimes, and the way in which the division between them is actively maintained.

Buildings from the final decades of the twentieth century form the starting point, since these constructions are too new to be picked up by the radar of preservation authorities, and too old to attract the attention of the market. New valuation practices are therefore most visible when seen through the lens of mundane architecture of the recent past. The project will locate the practices where the values of these buildings are constructed, cemented or broken down, in an attempt to cut closer to the societal choices about what is to be counted, by whom, and with which consequences.

Kim Pløhn graduated as an architect from The Oslo School of Architecture and Design and the Ecole nationale supérieure d'architecture Paris‑Malaquais. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Copenhagen. He has work experience from architectural offices and municipal planning departments in Norway, Denmark and Switzerland.