A Sense of Awe

I stood on a school site in Orkney and thought – place matters. In truth the actual words I thought were much more forthright. When landscape, history, culture, skyscape, the sea, architecture . . all come together, you know in your bones that the design of the place on which you stand can be profoundly important.

Likewise, I visited Madras College in Fife – a significant place in the history of educational thought. The older part of the school dates from the early 19th Century and, once again, you know when you enter it that this place matters – the values of its story are written in the stones of its well proportioned facades.

Design seems difficult because it is. When we are inspired by a place we need to acknowledge it with more than polite professional words – and sometimes with a sense of awe at the responsibility we have in reshaping the world we live in.

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Looking Good

‘Design makes something look good but it’s engineering that makes it work’ says Richard Carter from London in his letter to The Guardian (Friday 8 May 2009). This would be news to engineers from Thomas Telford to Santiago Calatrava and to architects from Robert Adam to Frank Gehry.

This cuts to the core of why, to most people, the very mention of Design can seem like an extravagance. The only way to change this misconception is to meet the challenge head on; by designing our collective hearts out, in a way which makes a real impact on people’s lives by giving them beautiful places that work well.

Design is a way of looking at life with the belief that things can be made better by the way in which you shape the physical environment. I’m an architect, and I’m not embarrassed if a building looks good, and neither are engineers.

It’s not a choice, Richard Carter from London, that’s what real Design is all about.

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A Good Start

The Lighthouse project Senses of Place showed what can be sparked by really talking to pupils and letting them inspire talented designers who know how to really listen.  

Working with those same designers, A+DS has explored what some of those initial ideas might mean when held up to the shadowed light of architectural pragmatism.  The results are inspiring.  They range from toolkits to help learners reclaim their Cities, to creating learning spaces which aren’t afraid to take the exhortations of Curriculum for Excellence at their face value. They show how we may not always know the destination of design but we do know where it starts – with the people whose lives are spent  within our creations.

The poet Kenneth White talks of the need to ‘give yourself room for a real beginning’.  Where we start determines where we finish – so start well.

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