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The Guardian - UK

National

Stephen Hoare

Wanted: brave ideas and inspiring buildings

Building Schools for the Future (BSF) appears to be suffering from a lack of skilled architects and a plethora of uninspiring designs. With as many as a third of all new schools projects delayed, the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) is worried that not enough architects are coming forward. Helen Taylor, convener of Riba's schools client forum, says: "The bidding process in which contractors retain competing architects may have resulted in a lack of effective engagement."

Meanwhile, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe), is more forthright. Diane Haigh, director of the design review panel for schools, says: "We are seeing very variable quality in schools projects ... I'm not a handwringer but there are too many mediocre schemes being put forward."

So what is going wrong? One reason is to be found in the client contractor relationship. With so many projects to get off the drawing board, local authorities simply lack the expertise to manage the process. At the same time contractors are going for tried-and-tested solutions. They are sticking with architects they know because they want to remain in control.

"At the beginning of the [BSF] process we saw contractors employing the local firm of architects they'd always used," says Haigh. "They were risk-averse. It is a case of 'these guys have done it before. They're a safe bet.' "

Richard Gooden, joint head of architecture at Hampshire county council, arguably England's most experienced schools architecture team, is more sympathetic. "Often [private] architects are involved in quite a degree of risk," he says. "They are work for fees on the understanding that if the contractor they are working for is successful work will come their way. But the quality of work is coloured to some extent."

To date, Cabe has reviewed 136 design proposals for 53 schools in 25 local authorities. It could be argued that as architects and clients get more practice in designing schools things will improve.

According to Taylor, systemic problems are indeed being addressed. Under the government's public private partnership scheme, the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), an open tender is whittled down to two competing bids from rival consortia of contractor and architect. "Part of the problem has been that school projects are all delivered in a slightly different way and involve a steep learning curve. Our solution is Smart PFI," she says.

Cut out the middle man

Under Smart PFI, rather than working for the contractor as part of a design and build team, the architect is assigned to the client. The architect will prepare a design brief and assess which contractor can best meet it. When the winning bid has been accepted, the client's architect is transferred across to the contractor to work on the scheme until the design has been finalised and the building completed.

Taylor, who is also a partner for the design practice Architecture PLB says: "We've been working in this way with Luton, Westminster and Greenwich and we've seen it can pay dividends."

But the question of there being insufficient architecture practices experienced in designing schools remains. So far, schools' architecture has remained in the hands of relatively few practitioners.

Professor Michael Stacey, director of the Institute of Architecture at Nottingham University, says: "There is no shortage of talent. What we lack in the UK is the ability to link architects with the right clients."

Nottingham University is committed to giving all of its young architects the experience of designing a school. Stacey says: "Ninety per cent of our students are working on a schools project for their final-year thesis."

But despite the best intentions of architecture schools, most graduates head for private practices which, until the credit crunch, were heavily involved in lucrative office developments.

While some architecture practices may have regarded schools work as insufficiently profitable, Cabe's Diane Haigh explains that the best new schools are not flamboyant style statements but rather understated and simple. "Good school architecture is about keeping it lean and mean," she says. "These are not big-budget schemes like a flagship office building. They are pared down. Architects have to optimise every square centimetre."

Cabe's big idea is to encourage more architects to come forward and educate local authorities to be design-aware and more adventurous. They should, she says, be prepared to give small, innovative architecture practices a chance.

Cabe is planning to run design-awareness courses for schools and local authorities in the run-up to BSF projects. "Local authorities should be looking for younger practices and socially motivated architects making a name for themselves in other fields such as housing, health centres and even offices," adds Cabe's Haigh. "Designing a good school is about basic principles of good design."