Building Schools for the Future (BSF) is a forward-looking programme designing for a changing education system. We can, however, draw lessons from best practice in school design, rather than trying to conjure up some imaginary future. When Cabe reviews the designs submitted for the BSF programme, we stress the time-honoured design virtues of sound construction and clarity of organisation, as well as the need for good internal environmental conditions.
These are aspects of design that don't change. There is much to be said for some pre-war schools, which were sound, brick constructions with good space standards and wise allocation of space, much more adaptable than some more recently-designed schools.
We do stress clarity and simplicity. We are highly critical of schools with complex plans, lots of nooks and crannies, which are very expensive to build and much harder to adapt in the future.
BSF is about transformational education — pupil-centred education tailored to individual needs. This means you need to ask, how can the teacher allow individuals to work separately or in small groups, as well as coming together in larger groups? It's important to track in the designs how those diff erent groupings can work over a day, over a school year — rather than worrying about what major changes may come in 20 years' time.
Sometimes headteachers ask for an "iconic" building, or a "buzz factor", and what tends to come out is a hi-tech gizmo screwed on to the front of the school, like an amazing diagonal porchway. But this is actually a terrible waste of money, because what really determines how a school looks is the overall planning, the placing of the building on the site. The opportunity for a new vision runs right through the design and is not simply bolted on at the end.
Future-proofi ng, in terms of ICT, is very important. If you embed services in the structure of the building, this becomes redundant if everything goes Wi-Fi. School services need to be accessible, using some of the techniques that have been developed in office buildings to allow that degree of change.
Future-proofi ng is also vital in terms of sustainability. Schools may have to operate in greater extremes of temperature, and cooling can become more of an issue with the heat given off by computers and lights. At Cabe, we are much more interested in the ventilation and orientation of the building than whether it's got a wind generator on the roof.
BSF is a fantastic opportunity to learn from the best school designs of the past as well as from inspirational recent examples. We want to see some calm, clear but fresh new schools coming forward.
Interview by Diana Hinds
Diane Haigh is director of architecture and design review at the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment
