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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