Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Minutes of Evidence


Memorandum by Rory Coonan Hon FRIBA, independent design adviser (CAB 36)

1.  SUMMARY

  1.1  CABE's success in the past five years does not provide any guarantee that it will succeed in future. As the pace of public investment quickens, and the number of projects multiplies, CABE may struggle to meet its remit if it does not acquire by statute new reserve powers of "discovery" and "delay".

  1.2  CABE's "front-end" project advisory services conflict with the disinterested role that the body should play in the assessment of designs. These services, including advice on the appointment of architects, should cease.

  1.3  CABE's virtual monopoly of design advice to government departments, public bodies, agencies and local authorities, is unhealthy. A genuine "market" in independent, expert advice would flourish if the body ceased its "front end" services (1.2 above). The benefit of this would be seen in a greater variety of designs submitted for assessment. There would be more choice of styles and in design approaches. It would help dispel the notion that a Modernist design "house style" prevails among the sensibilities of CABE's advisers.

  1.4  With greater clarity about its role, and armed with new powers (1.1 above) to command and concentrate the attention of project leaders, it will be better placed to assert the disinterested authority of its commissioners and staff.

  1.5  The establishment by CABE of an educational charity linked to the body, deserves closer scrutiny, since its status (non-departmental public bodies accountable to ministers do not ordinarily create and run charities) is odd. If this work is important, why is it not part of CABE's core activities? Why has a separate charity been created, and under whose control is it? How, if at all, does it use public money?

2.  INTRODUCTION

  2.1  I am Rory Coonan, and I am an independent design adviser. I was the first Head of Architecture at the Arts Council of Great Britain (1983-95). I was educated at Oxford University and the Royal College of Art. At the Arts Council I drafted the National Lottery design quality guidelines. These were issued with directions under Section 26 of the National Lottery etc Act. They have affected £7 billion of capital investment. For the Secretary of State for national heritage I wrote a report (at her invitation) on the establishment of a National Centre for Architecture. In 1994-97 I devised NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. I am a senior assessor for architectural competitions run by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). This body awarded me an Honorary Fellowship in 2002. I am not an architect.

  2.2   I have advised on the design of myriad public projects, including the South Bank Centre, the Royal Palaces Agency (Tower of London), the Home Office, the Meteorological Office, the Science Museum, the Lord Chancellor's department court service, the Millennium Commission, Westminster City Council (the £60 million Thames footbridges), Sunderland Borough Council, English Partnerships (the government's regeneration agency), the New Deal for Communities programme, and many others. Typically, my role is to establish the framework in which design quality can flourish. This includes advising on the appointment of architects by competition and ensuring that "lay" project managers understand the benefits of good design.

3.  THE ROLE OF CABE

  3.1  The government's 1997 post-election White Paper proposing the creation of CABE included the suggestion that the Arts Council's remit in architecture should be included in the remit for the new body. The Arts Council declined this suggestion. As a result, CABE was created with a distinct "public sector" emphasis on the pragmatic and practical processes by which good design might come about, rather than with a mission to emphasise the ineluctable, aesthetic virtues of memorable architecture. It could of course have done both but in the light of the government's substantial capital investment programme, it was seen as urgent that CABE should prevent disaster as much as it should encourage success. This was a wise approach in the circumstances.

  3.2  However, the pace of public investment has quickened. Happily, more schools, hospitals, prisons are being designed and built than ever before. CABE's initial success, as a new body without reputation, was founded largely upon the personality and influence of its first chairman but this cannot remain the basis for success in future. With more and more projects to consider, and more in the pipe-line, I submit that CABE needs to do fewer things, better. For those things that it does, it needs statutory powers in reserve, since past success is no guarantee of success in future.

  3.3  The most important function of CABE is one that at first sight draws comparison with the Royal Fine Art Commission (RFAC), the body it replaced. This is the function of "design review" or commentary on the merits of design schemes as they develop. However, while the approach of the RFAC was very much de haut en bas (people were "summoned" to appear before it), and while that body had no regional presence in England, CABE's approach has been to comment at an earlier stage of design development. They have also begun to offer advice from a regional perspective. This is all to the good.

  3.4  At the same time, a significant apparatus of "front-end" project advice has been created by CABE. I submit that this apparatus, dependent upon panels of paid advisers, complicates, compromises and probably condemns the good work that CABE could and should do in respect of its "design review" function. This is because CABE both advises on and participates in the "front end" selection of architects and subsequently comments upon the merits of their designs. I submit it cannot do both because in so doing, it loses any claim it may have to be disinterested. Project "sponsors", or the "clients" for buildings, naturally find it attractive to have CABE play both roles, since by binding CABE into the original choices they will find it easier to defend the outcomes. "We did it on advice . . ." they will say, and who shall blame them?

  3.5  CABE should not run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. It should either do one or the other but not both. I submit that CABE's "front-end" project advisory services conflict with the disinterested role that the body should play in the assessment of designs and that these services, including advice on the appointment of architects, should cease.

  3.6   Another effect of these "front-end" services is that it has stifled the creation of a genuine market in independent design advice to public bodies. CABE's virtual monopoly of design advice to government departments, public bodies, agencies and local authorities, is unhealthy.

  3.7  A genuine "market" in independent, expert advice would flourish if the body ceased its "front end" services. The benefit of this would be seen in a greater variety of designs submitted for assessment. There would be more choice of styles and design approaches. It would also help dispel the notion that a Modernist design "house style" prevails among the sensibilities of CABE's advisers, who work to a brief supplied by CABE and who are paid at rates it prescribes.

4.  NEW POWERS FOR CABE

  4.1  If CABE were liberated, in the way I suggest above, from the necessity (as it sees it) to play an active and indeed interventionist role in the setting-up of public sector projects, it would be free (or at least less compromised) to comment upon the merits of design development and design outcomes.

  4.2  This renewed focus on improving designs and encouraging design teams and their "clients" should be accompanied in my opinion by two powers, the better to allow for those occasions in future where, for whatever reason, the sponsors of projects prove uninterested or recalcitrant.

  4.3  The first is the power of "discovery" or the power to see designs, plans, drawings, sketches and concepts. The very existence of this power would mean that it was exercised but seldom. It would concentrate the minds of project "sponsors" or managers who may be inclined to regard CABE in the future as a body which had little to offer, and which they may regard as an impediment to progress.

  4.4  The second is the power of "delay". This is the power to call a halt to a project for, say, six months, while its design is revisited and adjustments made. Such a power would only be exercised in extremis, and would be reserved for significant public projects where CABE had failed (acting reasonably) to make an impact on the client body or project "sponsor". CABE would by statute be indemnified against civil actions arising from such delay and would not be liable, provided it acted reasonably, for any costs that may arise.

  4.5  This power, too, would concentrate minds wonderfully. Together, they would mean that the effectiveness of CABE in future would not depend upon the force of personality of any of its members. They would allow for circumstances which may arise, where failing projects, conceived at significant public expense (such as a large hospital), were of manifestly poor design.

5.  CABE AND EDUCATION

  5.1  CABE has a remit to promote public education but it is not clear, at least to the present writer, why this function is not discharged directly, rather than through a separate charity such as CABE has created. The establishment by CABE of an educational charity linked to the body, surely deserves closer scrutiny (non-departmental public bodies accountable to Parliament do not ordinarily create and run charities).

  5.2  Why has a separate CABE charity been created, and under whose control is it? How, if at all, does it use public money? There is already a "legacy" Royal Fine Art Commission charity: what is the relationship between the two? Why are there two educational charities, created recently at public expense, working to similar remits in architecture?

6.  CONCLUSION

  6.1  In this evidence I have tried to show that there are ways of making CABE more effective, by doing fewer things better and by acquiring the powers to do those things more effectively in future. My observations are based on close experience of the design of public projects and derive from an independent standpoint.





 
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