The Farrell Review

The way in which we shape our physical environment must be taught as early as possible in schools if we are to get across how critical the role of the built environment is to our health and wellbeing – socially, economically, environmentally and culturally. It includes everything from aesthetics and sustainability to “your home, your street, your neighbourhood, your town” where the smallest part, your home and your street, collectively make an enormous contribution to the future of our planet. Architecture, the built environment and an understanding of “place” should be taught through many different subjects including art and design, geography, history and STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) rather than as a subject in its own right. The aim is for young people to develop the widest creativity and problem-solving skills, which are essential for the creative industries, and to develop an understanding of what the built environment professions do.

The best way to include architecture and the built environment in the education system at primary and secondary school level is through teacher training and introducing new content across the curriculum. Online resources should be developed for teachers and also for built environment professionals and students to reach out to schools, as the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) did for the Olympics and the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) does with its Future Planners initiative. Professionals and students could contribute significantly if there were more volunteering to pass on their passion and beliefs to the younger generation at the earliest age and with the greatest intensity. This kind of engagement is incentivised and rewarded through formal accreditation by the RIBA, but there is little take-up and a culture change is needed to encourage more people to get involved. Opportunities for volunteering could be clearly signposted on built environment agencies’ websites.

Every town and city without an architecture and built environment centre should have an “urban room” where the past, present and future of that place can be inspected. Virtually every city in China has one, in Japan they are a mix of display and meeting places, and there are successful examples closer to home like the Cork Vision Centre. These “Place Spaces” should have a physical or virtual model, produced in collaboration with local technical colleges or universities, and they should be funded jointly by the public and private sector, not owned exclusively by one or the other. Urban rooms should be connected to and supported by the regional branches of the PLACE institutions and agencies and could be branded with the name of that place (“Place Space: Sheffield” or “Place Space: Reading”, for example).

By entering into partnerships with local authorities, built environment practices in the private sector could become much more involved in helping to shape villages, towns and cities through education and outreach. This should be about “championing the civic” through volunteering, collaboration and enabling, and not centred primarily on redesigning these places. There needs to be an increased focus on the civic value of well-designed public spaces, streets and amenities and the character and needs of existing communities.

Places would be greatly improved if the people who make decisions about our built environment, such as planning committee members and highway engineers, were empowered by training in design literacy. Newly elected councillors who already receive mandatory training on financial and legal duties should receive placemaking and design training at the same time. In order to achieve this, there needs to be a momentous sea change led by professionals to better inform and educate those who make the all-important decisions. After all, it is in all our interests to ensure that every person responsible for making decisions about the built environment is able to read plans at the very least. Information and communications technology should be used to make the most of people’s time when volunteering to skill up decision makers, and CPD points should be offered by PLACE institutions to incentivise this.

Professional education for architects is based on a model that is fifty years old and must be radically rethought to adapt and prepare much better for the future. Education has to reflect the major shift towards two opposing tendencies – greater specialisation and diversified career paths on the one hand, and a greater need for integrating and joining things up on the other. This should be mirrored in education by a common foundation year, learning about all the built environment professions, followed by alternative pathways. All related courses should prepare for broader decision making, cross-disciplinary understanding and genuine leadership.

The equation between cost of education and subsequent earnings for a career in architecture does not stack up unless the student has independent financial means. This lack of accessibility is unacceptable, and we need architects and design professionals who are able to relate to broader society. Everyone’s house, street and school are designed by somebody, and we need designers and planners to understand the needs of all the diverse communities they are designing for and to be engaging with them more whilst studying. At the same time, we risk becoming primarily an exporter of educational services and losing the next generation of British architects and our world-ranking status which is so valuable to UK plc. To widen accessibility, we need a diverse range of different courses and training routes to be made available including apprenticeships and sandwich courses. The seven-year, three-part, “one size fits all” training is no longer appropriate and risks institutionalising students at a time when we need them to interact better with a rapidly changing world.

In the UK, anyone can provide architectural services as long as they do not call themselves an architect. No other built environment professions have their title protected, relying rather on their Chartered status and code of professional ethics. The protection of title for architects while there is no protection of the function of architectural design is misguided. It has led to confusion in the public perception of the roles of the RIBA and the Architects Registration Board (ARB) and a subsequent split of responsibility for standards in architectural education which is counterproductive. The upcoming review of the ARB by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is to be welcomed. The review should consider the implications of removing protection of title and the value of statutory protection for architects and consumers, and we would encourage as many people as possible to feed into this process. For as long as protection of title is retained, the Architects Act should be amended to make the RIBA the Registration Body with appropriate supervisory powers to ensure protection of the interests of consumers and non-member architects and to act as the Competent Authority under EU rules. There is much evidence that other countries, and other professions, do not suffer from combining registration with membership of a professional institution, and we will submit evidence for DCLG to consider as part of their review.

We must be more proactive when planning the future shape and form of our villages, towns and cities and the government, institutions and professions should lead a revolution to make this happen. We need a radical step change in collective expectations and actions to improve standards within the everyday built environment. Our planning system has become too reactive and relies on development control, which forces local authority planners to spend their time firefighting rather than thinking creatively about the future shape and form of villages, towns and cities. Everything is open to negotiation for every planning application and, as a result, huge amounts of time and resources are spent on issues that could have been predetermined by a collective vision shaped in collaboration with local communities, neighbourhood forums and PLACE Review Panels. Proactive planning would free up valuable time for local authority planners to develop masterplans and design codes which are supported by local communities, whilst reinvigorating the planning profession and its public perception.

So who is doing the visionary thinking in this country and how is it being resourced? There are good examples of proactive planning happening in areas like Brent, Croydon, Birmingham and Manchester, and this is very often down to strong leadership and the right skills within local authorities. With strong leadership, proactive planning can be done at many different levels by local enterprise partnerships, city authorities, local authorities and neighbourhood forums without adding layers of policies. We should look to other countries like France, Sweden, Denmark and the US (particularly New York) where guidance is given on the shape and form of the built environment in advance, often with the help of private-sector professionals, and it is not limited to land use. This would place less pressure on dwindling resources within planning departments, give more certainty from the outset to developers and creating better-quality places for us all. The lack of proactive planning has a major impact on the housing crisis, too, as in a democratic society such as ours, the only way of persuading those already housed of the benefits of more housing is by presenting a credible vision of the future. Our lack of proactive planning has also been exposed by the recent floods where prevention through adaptation, as they do in countries like Holland, would have been far more effective than control through mitigation. One outcome of the flooding crisis was the clamour for “more planning” in communities and a culture previously hostile to the very nature of planning. We are realising that freedom and planning are not opposed and that more proactive planning would indeed liberate us.

Design Reviews, where professionals join Panels to review projects and help create better outcomes and better places, should become part of our everyday culture. Places are shaped by many different forces and we have responded by developing a number of different specialisms. For that reason, we should usher in a new era of PLACE Review (Planning, Landscape, Architecture, Conservation and Engineering). By replacing Design Review Panels with PLACE Review Panels, we can ensure that all aspects of the built environment are given equal consideration. We should use information and communications technology to make better use of time for PLACE Review Panels and spread the benefits more widely. At the same time, the culture of these reviews must change and become more collaborative and less judgemental. Issues of taste and style should be much more open, tolerant and diverse given that it is not “either/or” any more between the historical and the modern, and the style wars are a thing of the past.

At the present time, Design Reviews tend to be triggered by new planning applications, the majority of which are made by the private sector. Every public body should have access to an independent PLACE Review Panel, with their results published online, and they should operate at a more strategic level. PLACE Reviews should be radically extended to what is already there, including existing high streets, hospitals and housing estates. Unlike many other parts of the world, we live in a country where 80% of the buildings we will have in the year 2050 are already built, so let’s collectively re-imagine their future. There are examples of good placemaking with effective partnerships between public, private and third sectors. The Homes and Communities Agency “Place Spotlight” identifies case studies from around the country and helpfully sets out eight components of great places. Places will only become great if there is civic leadership, whether it’s from politicians, community groups or built environment professionals. It is individuals that make the difference, not policies, and we need more leaders to step forward who truly care about their built environment.

We must recognise the many skills of a private sector hugely experienced here and overseas in planning projects of all scales and all types from infrastructure to housing. The culture of development control often paints the private sector as not being in the public interest, but London’s Great Estates were laid out and still are managed with stewardship that is world renowned. In recent times, developers have opened up docks and riverbanks and built new places like Brindleyplace in Birmingham, Manchester’s Spinningfields district and London’s King’s Cross. It’s not “either/or” any more for the public and private sectors, and we must strive to get the best of both, working together, as one can’t act without the other.

The greatest failure of focusing on development control is the quality of the public realm, and we must strengthen the critical contribution of landscape, urban design and public art in making great places. Appropriate funding for landscape and public art should be demanded from developers by local authorities requiring wider contextual plans and financial commitments. Public health can be enormously improved by investing in cycling infrastructure and creating human-scale, pedestrian-friendly spaces. We should look to examples nationally and internationally of high-quality public realm and share the lessons learned, as the RTPI and the Academy of Urbanism do with their awards programmes. There should be reviews of highway regulations and specifications and more focus on design literacy for highway professionals. Some of the worst design impacts over the past fifty years have been from road schemes, with over-engineered junctions and intrusive signage ignoring the context of streets where public life is played out.

All government decision-making panels for major infrastructure reviews should have design and planning professionals represented. Infrastructure crucially and permanently shapes places, and transport projects must have planners and designers involved from the outset. All government-funded infrastructure projects, whether adapting or building new, must have a masterplan and should instigate early and ongoing PLACE Review. The “design envelope” for the built environment should be agreed in advance, particularly for the public realm affected by new or changed infrastructure.

Whilst not covered by the terms of reference for this Review, the way government procures the built environment was a major issue throughout the consultation. The public have a right to better design quality and the procurement system must ensure their taxes are spent in the best possible way. There are good examples where procurement has worked well, like the Olympics, but these are the exception and should be studied and applied more consistently. Government should show leadership by promoting the value of design quality as an important criterion when procuring buildings. Housing standards are also not included in the terms of reference for this Review, and we welcome the aims and objectives of the Housing Standards Review.

Leadership should come from within the industry, and built environment professionals could connect much more to everyday places and in a more meaningful way. This could begin with industry leaders engaging and empowering the public through education and outreach and contributing more to the debate. We should learn from other creative industries like music, fashion, art and film where there is less separation between the everyday and the elite. Built environment professionals have much to gain from increased public interest in the big issues such as the public realm, sustainability and retrofitting and helping to bring about the culture change that is needed.

The separation of traditional vs modern does not exist for this generation in the same way it did throughout the 20th century. Our culture has slowly but radically shifted to one now that understands and sees the potential in what is already there, the value of place, identity and sustainability, and the recognition of this most importantly leads to a completely different mindset. It’s not “either/or” any more, and we must address what this means going forwards. Our institutions, which are already working more closely together, should be even more aligned so that English Heritage and Cabe at the Design Council speak with one voice, whilst retaining their own identities. Working together on PLACE Reviews to express a single viewpoint would represent the successful reconciliation of heritage and modernity in this country. We must finish what the heritage debate started over thirty years ago, now there is widespread recognition that preserving the old is no longer at odds with designing the new.

When advising on the settings of listed buildings as part of the statutory planning process, English Heritage should consult with PLACE Review Panels. With this new and broader definition of heritage as a sustainable and shared resource, the advice given to decision makers should be cross-disciplinary when considering the context of protected buildings. The process through which buildings are listed should be made less academic and more open, transparent and democratic. The value of our building stock is no longer just historical or architectural, it makes a major contribution to our collective memory and we should all have a say in what is listed, using information and communications technology.

What we build today will be our future heritage. It must be a sustainable and resilient resource that stands the test of time, as much of our past heritage has proven to be. “Long life, loose fit, low energy” should be the guiding principle when designing our future built heritage. For “long life”, a minimum life expectancy of 60 years is not unreasonable for new buildings, particularly housing, and architects, developers and planning policy should expect this. For “loose fit”, the planning system should have greater flexibility for use classes; and for “low energy”, carbon emissions should be considered over whole lifespans of buildings. Our existing places and buildings have a critical role to play in the sustainability of our towns and cities, and we must think similarly long term when designing our future heritage.

Our existing buildings are a valuable resource, and retrofitting should lead the carbon emissions and climate change agenda. Government should legislate to address the disproportionate VAT on retrofit and redistribute it to new build if necessary. Recent research from the Cut the VAT coalition has demonstrated that while there might be a short-term impact in VAT terms, it would provide much greater fiscal stimulus overall by increasing demand and boosting the construction industry through supply chains and increasing workforce. Architecture schools should include refurbishment and low-carbon retrofitting of old buildings in their curriculum and conservation and heritage issues in course content. This is an emerging and high-value market, and these skills are increasingly sought after, so they should be developed early and then with Continuing Professional Development (CPD) whilst in practice.

This is the century of city making on a scale never seen before. Global urbanisation is such that an amount of development equivalent to a city the size of Birmingham will be built approximately every week to accommodate the growing urban population, and we must position ourselves to capitalise on this extraordinary building boom. We are world leaders in sustainable city making and we should do more to promote our built environment professions globally, particularly as most of the dramatic growth and change taking place in the 21st century will be focused on the urban environment. Many things flow from the relationships that are formed as a result of high-profile built environment projects and competitions, including the “soft power” and influence that comes from international engagement at the highest level. Ministers should provide official endorsements for built environment professionals working on high-profile projects overseas and recognise the soft power it brings. Relationships are formed with chief executives and city leaders, and our government and Ministers should support these efforts more.

Building design should be recognised by government as closely connected to manufacturing in order to acknowledge the export value to UK plc. It is more than just a transactional service like finance or insurance as it leads to engineering, construction and “making things” in the same way as product design. In the same spirit of connectedness as new and old in the heritage debate, design and construction are not “either/or” any more. The government’s UK Trade & Investment department (UKTI) should restructure the way it supports the built environment professions so they are not separated into creative industries and construction. UKTI could organise a “Global Built Environment Forum” with representatives from the PLACE institutions and built environment agencies to jointly identify markets, sectors and themes.

PLACE institutions and built environment agencies should greatly intensify the promotion of their successful methods to overseas counterparts who could benefit from their long-established expertise and experience. We also have much to learn from other countries who are leading on sustainable city making. A new era of professional, intellectual and cultural exchange between cities is emerging and our world-renowned institutions and agencies should be at the forefront of this, whilst recognising we have much to learn from others.

We should celebrate the very significant success of built environment design in this country and secure London’s role as the global capital of architecture for the long term whilst spreading the benefits to other cities. An International Festival of Architecture, led by the sector and supported by Ministers and the Mayor, would showcase the UK’s built environment professions to an international audience in the same way the Olympics drew attention to our sporting achievements. Leading international architects, academics, policy makers and city leaders could be invited for a two- to three-day forum with a programme of discussions and debates, tours and workshops. This could be set in the wider context of sustainable city making, underpinning quality of life and enabling predicted growth to happen in a more sustainable and people-focused way. Other UK cities could replicate this with their own festivals celebrating urban life and built environment design.

The biggest issue we are facing is climate change. Whilst not everyone agrees on the cause, virtually everyone agrees that demand for precious resources, pollution, urbanisation and population growth on an unprecedented scale require us to skill up and recalibrate our thinking. The future has to be a sustainable one and the built environment professions are central to this. Government and the industry must show leadership on the sustainability agenda and the critical proactive planning that is required as a result of climate change. Sustainable design should be incentivised and the right kind of leadership at city level should be championed. It is not just environmental forces at work that we should be better prepared for. Massively increased interest from countries with more disposable income and freedom of movement will have significant implications for investment, tourism, heritage and education here in the UK.

The value of our cultural heritage for tourism, one of the fastest-growing sectors, cannot be underestimated. Our built environment assets are world renowned. London is one of the most visited cities in the world, and the world’s first industrial revolution took place in the North of England. Government and institutions should maximise the significant economic benefits of our heritage by opening up even more of our heritage assets to the public and preparing for massively increased tourism from the world’s emerging economic powers. Great work is already being done by the heritage sector and Visit Britain, but the future impact of globalisation will create a step change in demand from overseas visitors beyond any current predictions or expectations. We must ensure that our towns and cities are accessible and legible to prepare for huge visitor numbers from many different parts of the world.

The value of good design is recognised inconsistently within government and this needs to change, as design and creative planning are increasingly central to our economic wellbeing and to the future sustainability of our towns and cities. Government should demonstrate its commitment to the value of good design by making strong public statements and exploring policy measures which are supportive of long-term value as well as initial capital cost when procuring buildings. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the Construction Industry Council and PLACE institutions should work together to establish industry standards for defining, measuring and valuing the quality of architecture and place, informing a new method of property valuation that is fit for purpose.

Business and finance should be taught as standard within architecture schools so it becomes a more integral part of what architects do, helping them to compete in a global marketplace. At the same time, the value of good design should be taught in business schools to educate future clients and decision makers.

The built environment has seen enormous flux within government over the years, moving between many different departments often with little added gain. For this reason, and in recognition of the energetic engagement of everyone involved with this independent Review, policies should be developed which are enabled by government but led independently by the industry. The focus of these policies should begin with the core “places” of villages, towns and cities. Very often political boundaries which are electorally defined do not coincide with place boundaries which are geographically defined. The stewardship, long-term planning and identity of real places should be a fundamental part of built environment policies. The future lies in empowering cities and localities, with central government increasingly taking on an enabling role.

These policies should be developed and monitored by a newly formed PLACE Leadership Council (PLC), following the emerging model of the Construction Leadership Council. There should be an equal balance of private-sector representation from the built environment professions and public- sector representation from the Chief PLACE Advisers and Ministers from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). Central government should recognise that cities and metropolitan regions are proving to be a successful scale for proactive planning. The built environment is complex and we must recognise this through a combination of “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches, enabling different networks and places, each with their own challenges, to function properly.

The government has a Chief Medical Officer, a Chief Veterinary Officer, a Chief Procurement Officer, a Chief Technology Officer, a Chief Operating Officer, and every Department has its own Chief Scientific Adviser. For the built environment there is a Chief Planner and a Chief Construction Adviser, so there is scope for a Chief Architect to ensure that the built environment professions are better represented. These advisers should sit on the PLACE Leadership Council together with representatives of the private sector.

Government should adopt a range of policies within and for each of the departments that have the built environment within their portfolio. These policies should be consistent when addressing the big issues like procurement, sustainability, accessibility, information and communications technology, maintenance and stewardship and the public realm.

The newly formed PLACE Leadership Council should advise and help co-ordinate policies and programmes across government in order to support the delivery of better places. The Chief PLACE Advisers should monitor and co-ordinate the activities of these departments. Government can take the lead by setting high standards and bringing about the major cultural change that is needed to make proactive planning and high-quality design a normal and accepted part of our society.