The foreword by Michael Gove to the Policy Exchange’s new report on ‘How a New School of Architecture can Revitalise Britain’s Built Environment’ backs its call for a new school of architecture and urban design.
image: for illustration – Open Government Licence v3.0
… tradition of great architecture continues to flourish….the places around it do not…
The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP writes:
Why is architectural education a national issue? Architecture in this country has a long and proud history of autonomous professional accreditation without government oversight, the first architecture university degrees were not conferred until 1902, over 800 years after the role of the master mason, the medieval forbears of the modern architect, was first established.
Moreover, this historic tradition has helped produce some of the greatest architects not just in Britain’s history but in global history and the works of towering figures like Sir Christopher Wren, Sir John Soane and Sir Edwin Lutyens helped to create, influence and inspire places and people around the world.
Even today British architecture remains a coveted national brand with internationally renowned figures like Norman Foster and the late Zaha Hadid and Richard Rogers playing key roles in the development of late modern architecture and exporting British buildings and design to an eager worldwide audience, fuelling our soft power status abroad.
But while the tradition of great architecture continues to flourish, all too frequently in Britain the places around it do not. How often have we seen what would otherwise be good housing developments let down by poor landscaping or indifferent or insipid urban character? How many town centres in our great cities are still gridlocked by arterial highways that sever them from the suburban communities they are meant to both serve and represent?
How many public spaces are poorly designed, managed and maintained with the vibrancy their attendant public realm has the innate potential to offer duly squandered and suppressed? And how many of our high streets – once the vibrant commercial arteries of our shopkeeper nation but now at the mercy of seismic shifts in retail patterns and digital technology – do not fully utilise the manifest opportunities their physical infrastructure offers for alternative cultural, leisure and recreational experiences? Places must be at the heart of levelling up but if places themselves have no heart and soul, then levelling up too will falter.
Of course there are a whole variety of reasons why places might underperform and these will invariably encompass socio-economic, environmental, demographic, historic and yes political issues. But it is also more than likely that the physical design of these places, with the architectural and urban conditions that this design has bequeathed, will be absolutely critical to their success or failure.
So if we accept that places are integral to levelling up and design is integral to places, then what can we identify as being central to design?
Talent and creativity yes but what other intervention can nurture that talent, bolster creativity and dispense skills? The answer, as a I am well aware from my own tenure as Secretary of State for Education, is an unmistakably clear one: education.
It is for all these reasons that I am pleased to see this paper contribute so productively to the debate on how we improve our homes and communities. We must do all we can to ensure a new generation of built environment professionals are armed with the best skills and techniques possible to enable them to go out and build beautiful, sustainable places in which people and communities can thrive.
It is important too to not only protect our heritage and improve our shared urban landscape but also to help address the housing crisis. Much of the opposition to new housing developments is often grounded in a fear that the quality of the new buildings and places created will be deficient and therefore detrimental to existing neighbourhoods and properties. If a general improvement in the standard of design reassures the general public that this will in fact not be the case, then they may be less likely to oppose it.
I am further encouraged by the robust multi-disciplinary and multi- vocational approach this paper proposes. Public realm is a product of many ingredients and as well as architecture this includes, amongst other things, town planning, urban design, transport, engineering, landscaping, public art, heritage conservation and commercial development. By bringing all these disciplines together in a spirt of collaborative unanimity, many of the latent hierarchical and institutional impediments that traditionally afflict both the teaching and practice of urban renewal strategies could be erased.
And finally, the placemaking skills gap was identified by the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission’s landmark report, Living With Beauty as a key obstacle to the attainment of the higher quality urban environment we all strive for. In seeking to plug this gap, the report proposed various reforms to professional education and the establishment of “new pathways” by which alternative professional accreditation outcomes could be secured.
There is no silver bullet to solve the housing crisis, nor to transform British towns and cities overnight or instantaneously deliver a workforce imbued with the skills to make that transformation possible. But it is important we continue to sow the seeds from which future rewards can be reaped and those rewards hold the promise of turning our homes, towns, cities and communities into vibrant, beautiful places in which we can be genuinely proud. Rome was not built in a day. But it would never have been built at all if those who dedicated their lives and careers to its creation did not first know how to build it.
BBC writes:
Opposition to new housing developments could be curbed if there was more focus on the ‘heart and soul’ of areas, Michael Gove has suggested.
The levelling up, housing and communities secretary said too many planning applications were ‘indifferent’ or ‘”insipid”.
Mr Gove made the comments in the foreword to a report by the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange.
He is backing its call for a new school of architecture and urban design…..
Policy Exchange writes:
This paper proposes that the UK government encourages, promotes or establishes a new school of architecture and urban design dedicated to placemaking. The School of Place would seek to ensure that architects, planners and built environment professionals have access to the best theories, principles and most importantly practices that will enable them to consistently deliver liveable, successful and sustainable places that embody the very highest standards of architectural and urban design.
Such a step would be part of a wider government strategy to meet a number of critical political objectives. Promoting a wider understanding of placemaking was one of the key recommendations of the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission’s Living With Beauty report, the political evolution of Policy Exchange’s Building Beautiful programme which calls for the reinstatement of beauty in our urban landscapes….
