116 SCHOOL DESIGN


THERE WERE probably a fair few architects rolling their eyes at media pictures of Welsh teachers on a picket line, complaining that it was all the architect’s fault that their pupils were running amok – after all, school design has long been a political hot potato, with architects in the firing line.


When Michael Gove cancelled the ambitious Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme in 2010, he blamed it on ‘massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy’, adding later: ‘We won’t be getting any award-winning architects to design your school, because no one in this room is here to make architects richer.’ When BSF began in 2003, £55bn was allocated to rebuild every secondary school in England, with ‘inspirational buildings and state-of-the-art facilities for pupils and staff to make them feel valued and to encourage new ways of learning’. Some of the finished buildings did indeed live up to the goal – like the colourful, sustainable design for the Michael Tippett School in Lambeth by Marks Barfield Architects or AHMM’s Stirling Prize winner, Burntwood School in Wandsworth. But overall, just 180 schools were built, and a CABE audit of 52 designs deemed half to be ‘poor’ or ‘mediocre’, fuelling a government crackdown on ‘wasteful extravagance’ in educational architecture. New standards from 2010 enforced a 15% reduction in space for communal areas like corridors and canteens, and banned many possibilities for architectural creativity, including a veto on curved or glazed walls.


Te result, today, is an environment


where architects are often brought in at the last moment, to sign off cookie-cutter designs prepared by construction companies, and may have little chance to speak to teachers or pupils, the ultimate end- users. It’s an approach that Richard Cottrell, director at Cottrell & Vermeulen Architecture, which has designed more than 50 schools over 30 years, finds particularly frustrating. ‘Te best way of designing a school, or indeed designing anything, is to work with the end user – the problem with public buildings is that the client is often not the user, and in the case of schools, there’s a deliberate policy to keep users at arms’ length from the design process. Architects are even chaperoned in meetings with schools in case we offer too much!’


Cottrell, whose practice was awarded Building Design Education Architect of the Year three times, feels the changes have been for the worst: ‘Tere weren’t that many landmark buildings in BSF; a few get all the attention. Scrapping the scheme with the


excuse that too much money was wasted on flamboyant buildings was, in my opinion, absolute rubbish. Now, as an architect designing a new school, you are likely to be employed by a building contractor, so design is no longer a priority and it’s all about cost. In the past few years, it’s been harder and harder to design state schools as we’re not involved early enough and it’s not perceived that architects can add any value as we might cost more and spend more.’


RIGHT AND BELOW: KILIAN O’SULLIVAN


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