Empathy

Preparing a lecture for Edinburgh University’s Update in Architectural Management Course forced me to reflect on what we mean by the word ‘client’.  And also, what that word means to an Architect - I use a capital letter because the audience were all students about to sit their final professional examinations after at least seven years of study and experience.

 

And for me their critical lesson needs to be the importance of empathy.  We need to see clients as representing people like us, not as representatives of the other.  

By assuming that they share our own drives and foibles, we can begin to identify with each other, and perhaps cease to be divided by a common professional language and simply be united by a common humanity.

 

Descriptions of the briefing and design process tend to use a shorthand of what makes all of the participants different – the unique skill each brings to the project.   I have heard an economist actually say – “as an economist I think this, however, as a human being  . . “

 

What we mean by ‘client’ is someone who is first and foremost another human being.

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Les Miserables

Airdrie Academy’s school production this year  was Les Miserables.

So, I guess that’s the benchmark then for ambition and aspiration. This is the equivalent of asking design students to have a go at architectural productions based on Gaudi’s Cathedral in Barcelona, The Sagrada Familia.

It takes courage to make that decision.  “Right, this year we’re going to do Les Miserables.” 

It also takes belief in what can be achieved and trust in those around you. And of course it helps a lot that the new facilities are there to accommodate your ambitions.  Because that is the true nature of an accommodation schedule – a description of facilities to accommodate ambition.

 

Next time we say ‘fit for purpose’ remember Airdrie Academy and Les Miserables. 

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Concrete Poetry

25 years ago I worked for the Department of Education and Science (DES), and with the Scottish Education Department (SED) and the Programme on Educational Building (PEB) at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Most of these acronyms have been updated and relaunched with different initials.

It is easy to reel them off with a sense of irony, but there is real force in these abbreviations when they are allied to significant values. Shorthand is powerful when it is used to convey complex messages – a kind of concrete poetry of policy.

But there can also be an unearned familiarity which convinces us that we know what something means when all we really know is how to abbreviate it.

CfE is not the same as Curriculum for Excellence. SFT is not the same as the Scottish Futures Trust. By saying the words we remind ourselves what they are about.

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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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Celebrating Design

The British Council for School Environments has shortlisted two Scottish schools in its ‘Inspiring Design for Schools’ category for 2009: Hazelwood School, Glasgow and Dalry Primary School, North Ayrshire. The BCSE identifies these schools as ‘a gold standard reference point’.

What does this mean? It means that Scotland is designing some great schools – by anybody’s standards. It means that the bar has already been raised for all of us: that we have internationally important buildings on our own doorstep. It means we should not be embarrassed to celebrate great architecture . . even when it’s our own.

The BCSE are conducting a ‘Great Enquiry’ about what makes great schools. What we do and how we do it is always a matter for debate. What is already clear however is the answer to the question who makes great schools. The only possible answer for all of us engaged in school design must be . . . we do.

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