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Labour is kind of working
I was asked by The Times for a mini end of term report/pre election assesment of the governments policies towards the built environment: If it’s the states job to establish policy and sometimes put up cash, However, there is a worry over the quality of the buildings. Many of these are PFI projects that seem to actively exclude good CABE was set up as a quango to act as some kind of balance, promoting It would be great to see more projects drawing on the wealth of design However bad things might be, they’re better than they were. The Tories One of the main problems with healthcare PFI is the timescale. How do you plan for something 8-10 years in advance, considering technology is moving at such a pace? Also, you can bet your bottom dollar that the space standards willl change half way through the scheme. So what do you do as an architecture firm? Try and build in some kind of flexibility? Flexibility means cut corners in other areas. Lastly, as the NHS is the single biggest political toy to win and lose votes over, the government (of whichever party) wants to be able to say "we built x hospitals in teh last 4 years" not "we built a nice looking hospital". It's 'form follows function' down to the Nth degree. You tell a radiologist that having a nice looking building is more important than having the Xray Dept as a critical adjacency to the AED. Plus, you tell the Daily Mail and The Sun how much taxpayers have paid for shadow gaps in the past 4 years and stand back and watch the fire! One of the main problems with healthcare PFI is the timescale. How do you plan for something 8-10 years in advance, considering technology is moving at such a pace? Also, you can bet your bottom dollar that the space standards willl change half way through the scheme. So what do you do as an architecture firm? Try and build in some kind of flexibility? Flexibility means cut corners in other areas. Lastly, as the NHS is the single biggest political toy to win and lose votes over, the government (of whichever party) wants to be able to say "we built x hospitals in teh last 4 years" not "we built a nice looking hospital". It's 'form follows function' down to the Nth degree. You tell a radiologist that having a nice looking building is more important than having the Xray Dept as a critical adjacency to the AED. Plus, you tell the Daily Mail and The Sun how much taxpayers have paid for shadow gaps in the past 4 years and stand back and watch the fire!
I’d say that Labour are doing OK. There are schools and hospitals
getting built, regeneration projects and efforts to address the south
east’s housing crisis.
design, squeezed out by risk control. If you’ve seen the kind of
buildings produced through PFI, you’d think an architects previous
involvement should rule them out on the grounds of embarrassment.
‘good design’ to the various commissioning ministries and bodies.
Unfortunatly it’s been rather toothless. Optimistically, new head John
Sorrell has previously proved adept at convincing the Department for
Education to back some very way out projects.
talent in the UK.
architectural legacy was the surreal transformation of Docklands – which
by the way is my favourite place to hang out and enjoy a moment of
authentic North American alienation. Labour are addressing the right
kind of things. It’s the beaurocratic bit between policy and building
that needs to be addressed.
Posted by sam at February 5, 2005 11:31 AM
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