Oxford Conference Blog
Sir Andrew Derbyshire - Some thoughts from the Past
When I was a student at the AA over half a century ago a group of us wrote, designed and published a magazine called PLAN on behalf of the Architectural Students’ Association. PLAN No 6 of 1949 looked at the relationship between building, architecture and education and included fourteen points for the reform of architectural education.
These included proposals for students to work “ as labourers on building sites ” and “ in factories…studying machine processes and techniques on the spot ” plus “workshops in the school for the experimental study of materials and techniques.” This echoed our enthusiasm for real architectural practices based in the school like the one led by Douglas Jones at Birmingham.
We also called for “Joint programmes with students of other faculties such as medicine, economics, sociology, engineering and the natural sciences ” and “collaboration with students of painting, sculpture and the other arts from the beginning of design programmes.”
We said that design programmes should have “sites and clients to which the student had access.” This was of course a reaction to the artificiality of the Beaux Arts tradition embodied in the standing joke of a programme for “A monastery on a rocky promontory”. A related demand was for “Technical courses based on and continually referring to fundamental human needs.”
We cheekily demanded “ Group working on design subjects, joint working between students of different years in the five-year course, substitution of formal lectures by free discussion where possible and control of the school curriculum by joint student-staff committees ” – the last of which was operating, perhaps uniquely, at the AA at that time and reflected the fact that the Association had initially been started by disaffected articled pupils who paid their premiums but were treated as office boys.
We realised that we were a better off at the AA in terms of the content and didactics of the course than were our fellow students at the general run of architectural schools, and felt that we were speaking on their behalf against the rigid curricula of the Beaux Arts tradition which canonised the precepts of classical architecture and treated the modern movement with scorn.
We were also concerned about the isolation of the architectural student from the real world of human needs and the practical skills of building and engineering. Many of us who had been involved in the recent war understood that management skills were essential to getting anything difficult done and should also be an essential part of the curriculum. My own experience as a scientist working for the navy had also left me devoted to the principle of feedback and the free exchange of experience and I couldn’t wait, having at last achieved my boyhood ambition to be an architect, to introduce the discipline of scientific method to the building industry.
I acknowledge in retrospect that our rather priggish certainty was derived partly from our shared belief in the anarchistic ideals of the self-regulating society – our heroes were people like Patrick Geddes, Martin Buber and Herbert Read – but mainly from the impatience we felt that the world was facing the horror of the third, and potentially last, atomic world war but seemed unable to do anything about it – paralysed like a rabbit by the blinding light of a brand new problem of indescribable immensity.
So when I was pressed to attend the Oxford Conference of 1958 I had mixed feelings. I was deeply committed to the Sheffield City Architects’ office by then and the aim to restrict architectural education to the universities looked to me like fiddling while Rome burnt. However I admitted that life had to go on and while the architectural profession as a collective, never mind its individual members, was helpless in the face of a potential cosmic disaster the least it could do was to put its own house in order. For one thing it would obviously be good to improve and widen the intellectual basis of architecture and I thought that the university milieu would be able to do this and at the same time provide a fertile ground for the development of multi-disciplinary studies.
On the other hand – there is always a “but” – I was worried that architectural students would lose touch with the “horny handed sons of toil” at the vocationally oriented polytechnics and colleges of building and become even more isolated from the practicalities of construction.
However the organisers of the 1958 Conference eventually had their way and eventually nearly all architectural schools have been embedded in universities. Has this been a good or a bad thing? Do any of our aims of the 1950s seem relevant to the students and teachers of today; what indeed has become of them during the intervening years and what new ones do we need to embrace to face the future with confidence?
I very much hope that your conference will be able to find some answers. Meanwhile here’s my twopenn’orth, for what they’re worth. First I have to deplore the failure to establish architectural practices within the schools. George Grenfell Baines had a go at Sheffield some years ago but was defeated, as I understand it, by small-minded local practitioners who complained that he was stealing their livelihoods.
More important, however, is the virtual absence of multi-skilled education without which effective multi-disciplinary practice is impossible. Over ten years ago I spent some time under the auspices of the Construction Industry Council, and with the help of a government grant, looking at the obstacles and recommending action to overcome them. The result was a report called Crossing Boundaries, published in April 1993, on the state of commonality in education and training for the construction professions.
It ended up with over thirty recommendations for action divided between the three bodies most appropriate to take the lead, namely the professional institutions, the HEIs and the Construction Industry Council. It was warmly welcomed by all concerned, and as far as I know absolutely nothing has happened.
Why?
I think the reason is to be found in the vested interests of the professional institutions. They are obliged, for economic reasons as much as any, to draw a tight boundary around their membership and resolutely defend any dilution of their closed shop by migrants from other professions. This means that, as far as education is concerned, each professional qualification is regarded as sacrosanct by the institution concerned and this is locked in place by the corresponding departmental structure of the universities which inhibits any attempt to cross boundaries. In this respect the work of the 1958 Conference has been a disaster.
Why is this important?
In the 1950s we were facing the catastrophe of the third world war, but it was only a possibility. On the contrary the catastrophe the world faces today is a certainty and unless we can, in the short time available, modify the consequences of climate change the results don’t bear thinking about. Improving the sustainability of the built environment is an essential part of this modification and the construction industry must equip itself to play a leading part. This will demand an unprecedented degree of creativity and joint working on the part of the skills involved but this is prevented by the faulty communications and lack of mutual trust that bedevil the relationships of architects, engineers, builders and planners. Multi-disciplinary education is the only effective answer and I hope your conference can find ways to make the necessary changes of heart and undo the damage of 1958.
