Courage

An eye surgeon, or to give him his full title ‘Consultant Opthalmic Surgeon’, talked to me recently about how impressed he was by the courage of parents who handed over their babies into his care for dangerous operations. An unimaginable situation for most of us.

 

It highlighted for me the emotional commitment underlying phrases such as “exercising due care" or “in loco parentis”.  Every day parents bring to the school gates that which they value most and deliver them into our trust. It takes courage to do this, on both sides of the fence.

 

Victoria Wood was once asked about the ‘dangers’ in doing stand up comedy.  She replied that the worst that could happen was 20 minutes of feeling a wee bit uncomfortable.  Next time we are frightened of the consequences of putting our eyes above the parapet in the pursuit of good design we should put the courage required in perspective. 

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Foolish Certainties

I am amazed by those who are certain about the future  . . about other people’s motivations, about the way the world works . . . and therefore know what’s best for everyone, everywhere, forever.  Experience has taught me to be wary of such certainty, for the simple reason that we can all be wrong and we can all make poor decisions.  Judgement is defined as the ability to make considered decisions or form sensible opinions and is always open to human error.

 

So in an uncertain world how do we go about making considered decisions and forming sensible opinions.  The starting point is having the humility to accept that we may be wrong, and to ensure that when we are wrong the consequences are acceptable.

 

Some people call this risk management, or scenario testing, or investment appraisal.  All of these are fundamentally about ensuring that the decisions we take are the right decisions, even when they are wrong. Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in America, only invests in companies that can be run by fools – because one day they will be.   We owe it to ourselves to design buildings that outlive, outlast, and outperform foolish certainties.

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The Whole Story

Raymond Carver was one of the world’s great short story writers.  He inhabited small moments in a way which captured the whole story of a relationship or a situation.  The small pieces were not only a part of life – they represented the whole of life.  The same could be said of a painter like Vermeer who said everything he wanted to say about the society of his time in a timeless image of a domestic moment.

 

Schools are not only part of a bigger picture – they are themselves a representation of the whole picture.  The way we design our schools speaks volumes about how we view children and how they connect with the rest of our community.  So, we need to know what we are trying to say.

 

Indeed, a good question to ask of any design is – does it convey the message I want to convey.  This is not spin, it is the reality of buildings.  Design speaks whether we want it to or not.  Our challenge is to make it say what we want it to say.  

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Beyond the Page

To paraphrase John Donne, ‘no site is an island, entire of itself’. 

I once worked with urban and landscape designers who approached every site as if its sphere of influence was set 1 kilometre beyond the site boundary.  At the simplest level this meant that their drawings always included the wider context.  

As designers we need to be reminded to go beyond the page when we draw schools: if the school is at the heart of the community, then where is the community?  The work of the Scottish Renaissance Towns Initiative shows the power of breaking free from the site plan to engage with the wider community and explore and create more meaningful places to live.

 

Part of this exploration is a better understanding of the physical grain of our towns.  Our places are complex if you acknowledge their connections, and messy to describe in professional prose.  But these are the places in which we spend our complex, messy lives.

 

‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee’ seems more than enough justification to ask difficult questions about what our school designs mean to the communities beyond the page. 

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Frequently asked questions

Participation seems like a good idea to most people – but general support is almost always tempered by specific reservations.  These reservations usually find expression in three frequently asked questions.

 

Isn’t there a danger of raising unrealistic expectations?  Yes there is, if you ask people what solutions they want built rather than what needs they want satisified.  Participation is an engagement process which firstly informs the brief – it is not a substitute for design.

 

Why should experienced professionals listen to inexperienced amateurs?  Because it’s their building.  Because they will have to live their lives in what the profesionals create.  Because they are the world class experts about their own lives.  And, because the alternative – don’t try to understand or engage with the people who will use your design – is a surreal standpoint.

 

Don’t people only really know what they want after its provided? Henry Ford is often quoted here as saying that if he had asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses not automobiles.  No, Henry, you miss the point.  They would have said that they wanted to travel faster and more easily.

 

These days participation is not an option, and in my experience it can be a revelation.  Better briefs, better insights, better outcomes.  Any questions?

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