Birmingham, England’s central library is only 30 years old. It has been controversial – seen either as part of an axis of architectural evil, along with the city’s Rotunda and New Street station, or as a bold brutalist design. Prince Charles described it as “looking like a place where books are incinerated”. Now it is to be torn down for a new library. But some worry that “although fashions of the 1970s have been reassessed and mined for information several times over, buildings of this period are still very little understood; if the library is demolished, Birmingham will lose a great building before its importance has been recognised.”