A SUPPORT group has been set up to help architects through the "trauma" of seeing one of their creations demolished during their own lifetime, it was revealed yesterday.

A SUPPORT group has been set up to help architects through the "trauma" of seeing one of their creations demolished during their own lifetime, it was revealed yesterday.

The Rubble Club aims to draw attention to the number of buildings it believes are being torn down unnecessarily.

Among the first architects to sign up were Reiach and Hall, the designers of the canopy over the Forth Road Bridge toll booths. It was torn down less than a year later when the tolls were scrapped.

Neil Gillespie of Reiach and Hall said: "Less than a year old, the canopy sadly became a very early and easy casualty of politics through tolls being scrapped."

Other members of the club include the designers of the Chungwha factory, built with £10m of taxpayers' money at Eurocentral in Lanarkshire in 1996 before being pulled down within 10 years.

Parts of Notre Dame College of Education in Bearsden, Glasgow, was demolished in 2007 to make way for the new Bearsden Academy, despite being category A listed.

Rubble Club secretary John Glenday said examples such as these were becoming increasingly prevalent, with high-rise flats also being razed across the UK despite the housing shortage.

He said that nine times out of ten there was nothing structurally wrong with the buildings other than that they had gone out of fashion.