Free Schools, Unnecessary Design and Aesthetics

My eye was caught this morning by an article in Building Design which quoted renowned education expert, Toby Young, (I believe his “How to lose friends and alienate people” is a standard textbook for all PGCE students) as saying that “design is not necessary.”

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/free-school-pioneer-says-design-not-necessary/5005341.article

While I appreciate that the piece is written in a pretty provocative way (and that the headline didn’t appear to be a direct quote), I found the general gist made me feel profoundly depressed, although initially I wasn’t really able to really articulate why.

Following a frenzied morning of tweeting (thank you, @NemesisRepublic), I think I’ve figured it out.

The last couple of years have been a very tough time for designers across the board, with fee’s being squeezed again and again. As an example my former boss, Don Munro, used to get us to put a time into fee proposals for ‘designing’. This would be the time when we sketched, thought of ideas and just considered the site and project. Increasingly clients started to challenge this. I think this was best summed up by client who said , “I don’t want you to design, I just wasn’t you to draw it up.” As far as I know, Don no longer puts time for ‘designing’ into his fee proposals (but he still designing).

I think this trend has been reflected in much of what has been designed and built recently. Landscape Architecture companies have won work with incredibly low fees, which are only possible by rehashing schemes that they’ve done before – same surfacing, same planting, same furniture, same details and often starling similar arrangements (I’m particularly thinking of some recent public realm schemes). The results are generally mind-numbingly bland and uninteresting. I’m afraid this type of approach is like kryptonite to me. Without wishing to sound like Prince Charles, it’s my fundamental belief that all site design should begin with consideration of context.

Perhaps I’m just being paranoid, but I get the sneaking feeling that there are people in power who do see money spent on professional design advice as unnecessary (yes Michael Gove, I’m thinking of you), and that it can be eliminated. But I think it’s also fair to say that the public perception of designers, and architects in particular, isn’t that great.

I think the problem is that design has become confused with aesthetics in the public consciousness. Like fashion – expensive and frivolous.

But design is also about functionality (for most designers of the built environment I’d say much more so). Time thinking about design, is not just time given to making things look pretty. It’s thinking about how a design will be used – is that space big enough, is that material suitable for this location and how will it be used in the future?

I guess my concern will be that instead of employing architects and landscape architects, there are those who think you can just send some volunteers on a course about how to design stuff, meaning less work for the likes of me. Isn’t this what the Big Society is about?!?

Or maybe I’m being overly concerned. It could be that when the likes of Toby Young say that “design is unnecessary”, what he really means is that they don’t want designs that are too fancy, but that he lacks the understanding of the subject to properly articulate this. Perhaps he could do with some professional advice?

Eulogy to BSF

For those not familiar with the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme, it’s going to be pretty hard to explain the significance of the decision by education minister Michael Gove to scrap the scheme. I’m not sure what the consequences of this policy will be, but you can be pretty sure that it will be very painful and lead to significant job losses in the wider construction industry.

To confuse matters, I would begin by suggesting that many professionals who would have complained pretty bitterly about the BSF process a few months ago, will now be wailing and thumping the ground with anguish, at it’s demise. Me for one.

I’ve been working on BSF projects since 2004 and could write at length about the problems that I have encountered: driven by financial, rather than practical considerations; a process that precludes smaller companies and favours bigger, more expensive consultancies; endless bidding that leads to wasted efforts and squeezes designers on costs; too influenced by facilities management; key design elements are often lost in ‘value engineering’; problems of design and build model; not enough meaningful input from the schools themselves - all to name just a few of my complaints. Finally, there has often been too much emphasis on creating groundbreaking pieces of architecture, rather producing functional schools. It is a profoundly flawed process (Edit: Charles Holland of Fat architects has written a blog post on just this subject, which outlines the issues much better than I have).

However, I would suggest that right now there are a number of compelling reasons why stopping the programme altogether is a bad thing. Firstly, the state of many of our schools is simply shocking. These schools provide miserable accommodation for pupils and teachers and should have been demolished decades ago . Sub-standard facilities demonstrate the worth (or lack of) that our society attributes to those using them. Poor exterior facilities in particular, are way behind the best international schools. In addition to this, the operating and maintenance costs of dilapidated schools, far exceeds the cost of good quality modern facilities.

Secondly, and this is the one currently occupying my thoughts, that the industry has literally nothing else to do now. Since the recession first began to bite a couple of years ago, private sector has slowed to the mearest trickle. While a few companies are able to get by on long running jobs, schools building is pretty much the last area of significant work about now. Many companies (my own included), have put enormous effort into bringing in BSF work.

Finally, there’s no plan for an alternative.

So while it’s been clear that the Conservatives have had intended to do away with BSF, the implementation of this cut has been shockingly brutal. I can’t think of another single decision that will have had a greater impact on the industry than this one. It had been expected by most people that starting at the Autumn spending review, BSF projects would naturally be phased out. No-one seemed to be expecting that they would simply stop. There must be literally hundreds of projects, all but complete and following massive amounts of work from architects, landscape architects, engineers, teachers, governers and pupils, which will now be lost. Given the abundance of figures that have been waved about today, I would really to know the value of work which will have been wasted by today’s cut? I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s billions. I also wonder what the loss of income tax revenue will be from putting whole professions out of work?

I dare say there will be much written about BSF in the coming days and weeks, which will probably look at the issues much more closely than I have. While I can see problems inherant in the BSF programme, it seems to me that it’s demise will have long lasting and profoundly damaging effects on both the education and construction sectors. The sad thing is that whatever replaces BSF probably won’t be much better - it’ll still be a design and build/PFI model. It’s been a long and troubling day, and it will likely be a longer and more troubling week. Right now I should probably be in bed, put my head is buzzing with questions: Where next for schools? Where next for the profession? Where next for me?