Why are we designing factory schools? | Sarah Wigglesworth | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Why are we designing factory schools?

Michael Gove's rejection of decent architecture shows he knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing

Sarah Wigglesworth - guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 February 2011 12.34 GMT

Michael Gove insists he won't be making architects richer. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

At the recent free schools conference, Michael Gove said: "We won't be getting Richard Rogers to design your school. We won't be getting any 'award-winning architects' to design it, because no one … is here to make architects richer." The Con-Dems don't mind bankers getting richer, but demonise architects as freeloaders. They say the government supports localism, yet head teachers have been encouraged to choose standardised school designs. Once again, localism is exposed as a meaningless term that allows the Tories to attack Labour's record and pick on an easily vilified group.

 

Design is often thought of as a commodity produced only by a celebrity designer. In fact, it touches every aspect of our lives. Just like good management systems, good design helps processes run more smoothly and encourages participation and engagement by shaping space, light and sensations. Good architecture creates buildings that are loved by their occupants, simple to use and economical to run and maintain. In schools, pupils feel valued, more alert and more willing to learn. Staff feel energised, inspired and respected. The run-down Hackney Downs School used to be a sink school. Its replacement, Richard Rogers' Mossbourne Academy, is now home to astonishing results in terms of educational achievement and pupil behaviour. That's no coincidence.

 

Sadly, the government doesn't seem to regard the built environment as affecting our wellbeing. It is well documented that people who live in substandard housing suffer more illness and die earlier than the privileged. People recover faster in well-designed hospitals, tourists flock to attractive places and City firms' sleek, well-designed offices function more efficiently and attract talent to the Square Mile. If these are factsare true, then how can schools defy this obvious logic?

 

Having attended elite schools with superb facilities, our free school advocates seem unable to accept that school buildings have any effect on those that teach and learn in them. With little experience of state schools and scant knowledge of how buildings are actually produced, they are hasty in their judgments of the architect's role.

In the architect-free Con-Dem future, we can use catalogue designs to build cheap, under-sized state schools occupied on a rotational basis. People will care less about quality and more about profit margins and "shareholder value". But the factory schools of the future will have little regard for the appropriateness of the design to the school's educational aspirations – why should they? We are told that this is the teachers' responsibility. But the question remains: why would a teacher want to teach in such an environment? What message does it send to our kids? Both would soon know their place: they don't matter. How can this possibly aid learning?

In pursuing the current policy we could easily see another generation of disastrous school buildings destined to be rebuilt in 20 years' time. Professional expertise helps, and Gove should be seeking good design in any form, especially now that people are free to set up their own schools with no prior knowledge of how to do it.

There is nothing inherently more expensive about good design: buildings are complex and need experts to design them, and design fees are a tiny proportion of construction budgets. Building Schools for the Future was poor value for money not because architects' fees were high, but because of wasteful, cumbersome and bureaucratic procedures. It did create work for architects, but they are only the most visible part of a raft of consultants, contractors and managers. The focus should be on cutting that bureaucracy and focusing on what brings real value and innovation – an equation that has architectural design at its centre.

In the hands of talented architects and good clients, design can make places more pleasant to be in, improve absenteeism and ill-health and most importantly, make communities proud. These things are hard to quantify, but Gove, the zealot of localist ideology seeking a soft target to blame, counts the cost of everything yet understands the value of nothing. He should remember that design is at the heart of the problems he attempts to address.