Building a better Britain

Sir Stuart Lipton, CABE chair 1999 - 2004, on the Building for the Future conference.

If you take public buildings as your yardstick, you might easily become depressed about the state of British architecture. A roll-call of post-war buildings designed to house Government departments and agencies makes far from impressive reading. Marsham Street and St Christopher House in London, Tollgate House in Bristol, St John's House in Bootle: the list is more likely to excite the passions of demolition crews than conservationists. Set against the example of Somerset House, the Houses of Parliament and the great Northern town halls, the contribution of the twentieth century to public architecture leaves much to be desired.

Which makes what happened yesterday at the Church House Conference Centre in Westminster all the more heartening. The Building for the Future conference, held under the auspices of the national architecture champion, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, brought together many of those whose decisions affect the quality of our public buildings. It was a stellar cast headed by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and one of Britain's (and the world's) foremost architects, Lord Foster of Thames Bank. Delegates heard a clear message: that mediocrity in our public buildings will no longer do, that all public buildings need to pass a quality threshold, that lowest cost is no longer the default option for those procuring public buildings.

The conference was not the beginning of a process but the continuation of one that has been going on for several months under CABE's watchful eye. Each major spending department now has a design champion at Ministerial level whose remit is to make sure that public buildings and spaces are well-designed. We are close to having similar champions appointed at a senior level in NHS Trusts.

Important as these changes are, there is no room for complacency and much remains to be done. Decisions that are taken now will affect the appearance of Britain for the next generation and beyond, because architectural mistakes are more easily made than unmade. Government departments and agencies need to think of themselves as architectural patrons. They already do this where prestige is at stake. The new British Embassies in Berlin and Moscow show what can be achieved where the client demands it and good architects are chosen. Many lottery-funded projects also show that the process of procuring public buildings can be successful.

But landmark buildings are only part of the story. What of the multitude of schools, health facilities and court buildings being erected across the country as part of the public sector capital programme now underway? Some are good, others pass muster but most are depressingly mediocre; and by the end of the next Parliament, in constituencies across the land, the shortcomings will start to be obvious to voters. Until we inject design quality at the level of the ordinary building, we cannot be fully satisfied.

The improvements we seek are not, at bottom, about aesthetics. They are about creating a country where public buildings and the spaces around them positively add to the quality of life of the ordinary citizen. We have allowed our public space to degenerate over the last forty years in much the same way as we have allowed architectural standards in public buildings to fall. Ownership of the street is now so fragmented that it can barely be said to exist in any meaningful sense; certainly no-one with design sense is in charge. As a result street clutter, broken paving, endless roadworks, poorly-design telephone kiosks, general debris and advertising hoardings have accumulated to the point where our sense of place is eroded and a trip to any of our great cities is in some way dispiriting.

Is there a causal link between all this and declining standards of public behaviour? If that seems far-fetched, consider the extent to which the built environment affects how people feel and behave. Low-quality environments breed vandalism, crime and ill-health. And anyone who doubts that good buildings add social value should visit the refurbished Holly Street Estate in Hackney, where calls on the GP's services in what was previously a sink estate have fallen by a third since refurbishment. The reason is not gentrification but a population that feels safer, is therefore more active and because of that is healthier both physically and mentally. It is a virtuous circle. The burden on hard-pressed GPs, and ultimately on the public purse, is lifted a little.

Design represents a minute proportion of the lifetime cost of a building - less than 1% - but done well it has a disproportionate impact on how well the building and its surroundings perform. Consider the fact that Frank Gehry's excellent new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao has paid for itself within two years. Courtesy of this one building, once-forgotten Bilbao is now a tourist destination in its own right, with all that this implies for urban regeneration and tax revenues. Or consider the fact that heart patients in wards with a view to the outside world recover on average 24 hours quicker than those in wards without a view. Here again the individual patient benefits, the hospital benefits because beds are freed quicker and the public purse benefits because health service resources are used more efficiently.

In this sense good design adds to the bottom line. It helps deliver exactly what those who hold the purse strings, from health service managers to Treasury mandarins, want from a building: high performance delivered cost-effectively. That is why, as a nation, we must invest in good design: the prize is not only good-looking buildings but better-functioning buildings, leading to hard cash savings over the medium to long term. And that is why it is so significant, and encouraging, that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has stood up to deliver the message that lowest cost for its own sake is yesterday's creed. Quality and best value are the new watchwords.

The goal now is for every public building to represent best value and to add in some way to our rich heritage. The economic and social benefits which flow from good design make it a goal worth striving for. Britain is in the fortunate position of having some of the world's best architects. It is now up to the public sector to use them properly.