Audit finds school designs to be substandard Government’s architectural auditing arm, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), has submitted a detailed review of 40 secondary school designs. The designs were proposed under the £45 billion Building Schools for the Future (BSF) initiative.
CABE’s review was mostly negative; with the architecture watchdog finding that 80 per cent of the designs were “mediocre” at best and “not yet good enough” at worst. CABE had many concerns; among the most noteworthy were the potential for the proposed school designs to create “bullying hotspots” in secluded yards, layouts where noise would become an issue, classrooms with improper lighting or inadequate cooling, and car parks so large that it would give the school the feel “like edge-of-town retail parks.”
CABE’s chief executive, Richard Simmons, squarely places the blame on architects’ inadequate ability to design sustainable schools for the BSF project. “We’ve got architects who don’t know how to design low-energy, high natural light buildings,” said Simmons. Simmons spoke out after the latest round of designs was largely found to be substandard. Last November, when the first round of school design proposals was submitted, 10 out of 11 designs were found to be unfit.
“[Architects] have been used to designing with air conditioning and lots of artificial lighting,” Simmons continued, “simple things like which way buildings face on site to make the best advantage of the sun and natural light aren’t necessarily driving projects. Ultimately it should not be acceptable for public money to be used to procure poorly-designed schools.”
“The design quality of schools reviewed so far has not been high enough. What we need is a minimum threshold which prevents bad schemes from continuing through the system,” said Simmons. “This would provide a very clear signal that good design is a core requirement of Building Schools for the Future, not an optional extra.”
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the British Council for School Environments (BCSE), however, place the blame on the procurement process that the Partnerships for Schools (PFS) used in the design phase. PFS is the quango charged with delivering the BSF initiative.
Sunand Prasad, president of the RIBA, while admitting that the profession is not up to speed on sustainable building design also said that the PFS procurement methods and the “fiscal culture” have caused problems in the design effort. “I think we all have to take some blame, but if you look at instances of good practice – Feilden Clegg Bradley, White Design – they’re coming from architects,” added Prasad.
The RIBA submitted a written report that stated the PFS procurement process was “underwhelming in their scope, and demonstrate an acute paucity of vision.” This view was echoed by Ty Goddard, BCSE chief executive, who said: “Even with the changes we still have a system that wastes money that should be spent on schools, and duplicates efforts from world-class designers and builders.”
PFS claims to have streamlined the procurement process, with standards set by the EU, by reducing the number of private bidders to two from three and has proposed to comprehensively evaluate school construction after they are built and occupied beginning with Wilkinson Eyre’s Brunel Academy in Bristol this October.
PFS altered the design review process to where this is performed by the group itself where formerly this was undertaken by the DCSF, a move that PFS claims has allowed the group and CABE to work as a more cohesive unit.
In mid-July PFS appointed CABE’s interim head of the enabling program, Mairi Johnson, as the director of design. PFS chief executive Tim Byles applauded this move claiming it would result in “the most transformational and inspirational schools possible.”
Consequential of CABE’s review less than a fifth of the latest design proposals were found to be “good” or “excellent.” The report surfaces as the latest setback to the huge effort to rebuild or refurbish every English secondary school by the year 2020. So far, 13 schools have been refurbished or reconstructed, and an additional 22 are due to be open for students in September. When the project is completed it is expected that as many as 3500 schools will have benefitted from the effort.
Schools Minister Jim Knight noted that some recently constructed schools have had glorious reviews. “We have invested record capital funding over the last decade and have already seen over 1100 newly built or rebuilt schools opened, scooping dozens of design prizes, including nine winners at this year’s RIBA awards,” he said.
“Good design is absolutely paramount in creating the best possible learning and teaching facilities. The fact is that CABE itself believes that the changes to the design process will mean that better schools will emerge rapidly in future.”
