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Good architecture brings benefits to people both as individuals and as communities. These benefits are both practical and cultural and have value both for our present and our future. Good, well designed buildings enhance and enrich their occupant's activities and lives and promote their well-being and health; they make a positive contribution to the urban fabric or rural landscape; they sustain and protect the environment and minimise the impact of man's activities; and they provide an opportunity for sound investment. Indifferent buildings, on the other hand, frustrate and inhibit their occupant's activities and impoverish their lives; they adversely affect their occupants' health and demean the spirit; they cut across the existing grain and pattern of cities and dispoil the rural landscape; they pollute the environment and consume non-renewable resources; and they are costly to operate, repair and maintain. Poor quality building is a waste of money, energy and material resources. But above all, because they occupy land and shape our activities and environment for a considerable time, poor quality buildings waste opportunity. As a nation, we need good building; we cannot afford poor building. We need the social, cultural, environmental and economic benefits that good architecture and good building design can bring.
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE
GOOD BUILDING DESIGN AND GOOD ARCHITECTURE AFFIRM SOCIAL VALUES AND BRING COHERENCE AND ORDER TO OUR BUILT ENVIRONMENTS FOR THE BENEFIT OF US ALL
Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
Benson + Forsyth
The essential purpose of all buildings is to provide for the many and changing needs of society. Such needs may be for homes that are decent, secure and affordable; for schools, colleges and universities that provide an opportunity for good education; for hospitals that give access to good healthcare for all; for offices and factories that provide opportunity for employment; for leisure and sports facilities that allow for relaxation and exercise; for theatres, galleries and museums that provide a setting for the visual and performing arts; and for civic buildings that provide for government, ritual and ceremony. Our primary expectation for all our buildings is that they should be practical and efficient. They should be adequate for their purpose and suitably planned. They should provide a healthy environ-ment and provide warmth, light and shade. They should be free from defects, robust and easy to maintain. They should be flexible and accessible to all. These are the requirements and benefits of good building.But architecture is more than good building. Architecture seeks to find solutions to the practical and functional problems of building that affirm and reflect timeless human values and to do so in ways which are pleasing, elegant and give delight. Architecture is about ideas and ideals given shape in built form.
Architecture seeks to provide environ-ments in which people can live and work more enjoyably and efficiently and which encourage social and working communities to flourish. Through good, imaginative design we can provide housing that meets the many needs of family life, which creates opportunities for encounter and social interaction and which strengthens community life. We can provide places of education that support good teaching, encourage concentration and are good places to study and learn. We can make places of work which make even the simplest task a pleasant experience and which encourage us to imagine new ways of carrying out and managing our activities. We can make health buildings that give re-assurance and dignity to those who are ill and provide a comfortable and comforting environment in which to recover from sickness. We can make cultural buildings that celebrate the richness of our arts and culture and allows us to experience and understand life more fully. And we can make civic buildings that provide a focus for, and are potent symbols of, our collective aspirations.
Buildings and the built environments they shape, provide a framework which subtly confines, organises and colours all our lives for better or for worse. For many, their built environment often does not meet even the simplest of their needs; the need for a decent home, for access to local amenities and open space, for a pleasant and stimula-ting place to work, for opportunities for leisure, and for fresh air and a quiet, clean and safe environment. Our ability to meet these needs, to meet our social objectives for an inclusive society that provides opportunity for all, largely depends on the quality of the built environments we make. And good building design is a fundamental and key determinant of that quality. Good building design and good architecture affirm social values and bring coherence and order to our built environments for the benefit of us all.
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