A prizewinning building, once celebrated as Britain’s “best,” will be reduced to rubble if the university that owns it has its way.

The Centenary Building, once the glass-and-concrete triumph of the University of Salford, outside the northern city of Manchester, was the inaugural winner of the Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize in 1996. The prize recognizes the best new building in Britain.

Barely 29 years later, the building has become a white elephant. Its critics say it is too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, and too noisy all year. Its “aging infrastructure means it no longer meets modern standards and requirements,” the University of Salford said in a brief statement, adding that it has “been vacant for a third of its built life.”

But the decision to level it has pitted preservationists against pragmatists. Architecture buffs are rushing to get the Centenary Building listed as a historic site, which could spare it from the wrecking ball.

The university, on the other hand — along with the Salford City Council and a real-estate developer called the English Cities Fund — wants to demolish the building to make way for a $3.2 billion new city district to be known as the Crescent. The school, with more than 26,000 students, and its partners see the project as a key to fostering economic growth in the area.

Opponents of the plan include the Twentieth Century Society, an organization aimed at preserving Britain’s design heritage. “This is a sophisticated piece of modern architecture, with clear opportunities for adaptive reuse,” the society said in a statement, urging the university to reconsider. “It acted as catalyst for previous regeneration in the area, and could do so again.”