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GOOD ARCHITECTURE,
THE MAKING OF A COHERENT BUILT ENVIRONMENT OF HIGH QUALITY, CAN ONLY BE
REALISED TO THE EXTENT THAT THE PROCUREMENT, DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION PROCESS
IS MANAGED WITH THAT END IN VIEW
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Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh
Benson + Forsyth
The making of buildings, their design and construction, is a complex activity. It is costly, takes time and involves risk. It involves many participants with differing and often conflicting interests; insurers, financiers, developers, clients, consultants, contractors, component and material suppliers and technical specialists. Its processes are regulated and bound by statutory and contractual obligations and take place in a competi-tive market economy.
Those who commission buildings are, most often, not their subsequent users. The interests of those who commission buildings, then, tend to focus on construction as process and building as product. Their interests are largely pragmatic, quantifiable and driven by market values. Their objectives are to obtain accommodation of a specified quality, within an agreed time-scale and for an agreed cost. They wish to maximise value for money and return on investment; to minimise design and construction time; to reduce costs, uncertainty and risk and to eliminate construction defects. These are legitimate objectives and ones that the construction industry must constantly strive to meet.
The interests of users of buildings, on the other hand, and of the communities in which they are set are quite different. Their interests are mostly subjective, qualitative and reflect social and cultural values. Users require buildings that bring improved quality of life, that enhance tasks and activities, that provide a stim-ulating and healthy environment, that encourage and foster social interaction, that are environmentally benign and efficient in operation and that are easily maintained and can adapt over time. Communities require buildings that enrich and enliven communal life, that add to the complexity and variety of the urban fabric, that improve on what they replace or adapt, that are of appropriate scale and that acknowledge and respond to context and tradition. These too are valid aspirations but ones that are only too easily lost or diminished in the com-plexities of the construction process and the imperatives of a market economy.
Traditionally, it has been the role of the architect to reconcile, through the process of design, the economic and practical objectives of those who commission buildings with the social and cultural aspirations of the wider community. It is the particular skill and duty of the architect to both serve and protect the interests of his or her client and to be an advocate of the interests of society. It is a difficult and challenging task. In recent years, new forms of procurement practice and contractual arrangements and new specialist roles in the construction process have emerged. The role of the architect as competent generalist with an overview of the interests of all has increasingly been marginalised.
Good architecture, however, cannot be made by any one participant in the process alone. Good architecture is the product of the creative collaboration of many disciplines. Architects and their professional institution have a key role to play. But all of those involved in the construction process must accept a shared responsibility for the quality of the buildings and the architecture they help create. Quality in building is intrinsic in all decisions that are made in the design, procurement and construction process. Quality is cumulative and can be compromised by any participant at any stage of the process. The pursuit of quality must be inclusive and requires all those involved to subscribe. Good architecture, the making of a coherent built environment of high quality, can only be realised to the extent that the procurement, design and construction process is managed with that end in view.
| We need to assert and re-state the social goals of architecture and good building. We need to consider what obstacles there are in the procurement process to achieving quality. We need to consider whether new forms of procure-ment practice, the increase in specialism and the marginalisation of the compe-tent generalist militate against the creation of good architecture. We need to promote a construction process in which good architecture can flourish and in which the legitimate objectives of those who commission our buildings for us and the aspirations of the wider community they serve can both equally be met. |
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21
The Dean Gallery, Edinburgh
Terry Farrell & Partners |
20 10-26
Pitt Street, Edinburgh
Lee Boyd Partnership |
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