What is a Grand Grade?
Grand Bequest calculates the suitability, or ‘Grand Grade,’ that can be used to sort projects by viability and strengthens objective communication, supports decision-making, and promotes resource allocation to the most ideal projects for conservation taking into account aspects such as cultural significance, social benefit, financial sustainability and adaptability. Each category has, in turn, helped to create the overall Grand Grade which signifies how viable a potential project could be (the higher the Grand Grade the more feasible the building is to conserve). Click on the icons below to learn more about the different criteria that contribute to the Grand Grade.
Cultural Significance
Social Benefit
Financial Sustainability
Adaptability
Grand Grading example: Royal Hotel (Former), 2 Main Street Slamannan
Royal hotel (former), Slamannan
Cultural Significance
Adaptability
Social Benefit
Financial sustainability
Royal Hotel (Former) is currently Grand Bequest's highest-scoring building at risk with an overall Grand Grade of 87.3. Such feasibility is mainly due to the building's unlisted status, which, in turn, reduces both its financial risk and planning restrictions allowing for successful adaptive reuse. Once appropriately restored, the Royal Hotel (Former) would have a significant on the local community both due to its prominent position within the townscape and subsequent regeneration it could produce.
Grand Grades
Data that saves
vacant buildings
Highest grand graded buildings
We believe at Grand Bequest that these buildings are currently the most ideal potential conservation projects in Scotland.
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Cultural Significance
Cultural Significance is defined by the BURRA Charter as the aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, present, or future generations embodied in the place itself, its fabric, setting, use, associations, meanings, records, related places and related objects. In other words, it represents a site’s value to the local community in an overarching, all-encompassing way. Such significance can change over time or as new information comes available which makes it a challenging, subjective, and as a result an important criterion. It is one of the defining reasons why saving any historical site from destruction is important to a community. However, due to its subjective nature, cultural significance can have such different meanings and interpretations to different people.
For the purpose of creating a Grand Grade, the following is cultural significance has been taken into account: the building's statutory listing, if it is in a conservation area, date of construction and original architect if known.
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Grand Bequest calculates the suitability, or ‘Grand Grade,’ that can be used to sort projects by viability and strengthens objective communication, supports decision-making, and promotes resource allocation to the most ideal projects for conservation taking into account aspects such as cultural significance, social benefit, financial sustainability and adaptability. Each category has, in turn, helped to create the overall Grand Grade which signifies how viable a potential project could be (the higher the Grand Grade the more feasible the building is to conserve). Click on the icons below to learn more about the different criteria that contribute to the Grand Grade.
Social Benefit
Built Environment Forum Scotland defines the criterion of social benefit as the site’s ability to provide wider societal benefits, such as increased wellbeing, loneliness prevention, inclusivity, etc. And define social value as the site’s link to a community’s sense of identity, belonging, and attachment to a place. As a result, through Grand Grades, Grand Bequest has identified the place-making elements of each building and how different structures within a community come together to form a unique place for people to work, live, and play throughout their lives. It also embodies the importance of sites selected for conservation to contribute to contemporary communities needs for benefits and allows the research to give weight to site conservation projects that offer communities the most benefits appropriate priority.
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In particular aspects such as how long the building has remained vacant, its current state, location and size of the corresponding community have been taken into account when formulating the overall Grand Grade of each building.
Financial Sustainability
No site conservation is likely to be ideal if it is not able to have sufficient funds to meet all its resource and financial obligations in the long-term. Economic sustainability for a site exemplifies the practice of a site’s long-term growth not negatively impacting social, environmental, and cultural aspects of the community. Simply, financial sustainability means the site can eventually support itself without running at a deficit or needing continuous subsidy.
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This has led to Grand Bequest evaluating aspects such as current ownership and condition which help to reduce financial strain whilst undertaking conservation and restoration of a historic building.
Adaptability
Adaptability criterion represents the impact of the reuse on the built fabric remaining as well as the environmental impact of the site’s conservation and any future modifications that may be necessary to allow the site to maintain relevance as needs and uses change. Adaption is defined by the Burra Charter as the changing of a place to suit the existing use or, more likely, the proposed use(s). So, broadly, the criterion created by Grand Bequest also represents the flexibility the site has to support multiple uses for community functions and the ability of a site to adjust to different uses as needed with as minimal irreversible damage to the original fabric as possible.
As a result, the following was considered in relation to adaptability: the building's current condition, listing, position within/ out of a conservation area and potential industry adaptive reuse of the building would successfully cater to.
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Criteria Interdependence