SCOTLAND is having to tolerate poor-quality building design in the pursuit of profit, the country's design and planning watchdog claimed yesterday.
Architecture and Design Scotland (A+DS), a government organisation which campaigns for excellence in the built environment, chose St Andrews Day to highlight substandard design in architecture.
Raymond Young, CBE, the body's chairman, speaking as
the its annual review was published, said the nation was too accepting of poor quality and suffered from an "it'll do" attitude, rather than insisting on buildings that reflect Scotland's heritage. He said: "There could be no better day than St Andrew's Day to emphasise that all of Scotland's people deserve the opportunity to live in well-designed places.
"It is frankly unacceptable that we are still seeing developments which meet only the very lowest standards of design quality and where short-term profit is pursued at the expense of long-term community gain.
"We are, though, beginning to see a cultural change where greater self-belief in Scotland means that we will no longer settle for the second-rate."
Mr Young said that work had been done to persuade developers, planners and architects to join the body's vision. He cited the example of the City of Edinburgh Council rejecting plans by Wimpey Homes for more than 300 flats in Leith Walk in 2002, described by the then planning committee as being more suitable for a "Moscow suburb".
But Mr Young cautioned: "We still have an 'it'll do' attitude towards much of what is built. Compared to many northern European nations of comparative size, we 'put up with' a quality of new places that does not match our historic heritage."
Though the review refrained from criticising specific projects, the A+DS did voice "significant concerns" that the majority of new schools were being built under the government's public private partnership and the impact it might have on "design quality".
The report also sets out the body's work on encouraging good design in hospitals, which it claimed had failed to be done in past projects.
Responding to the review, Nick Barley, director of the Lighthouse, Scotland's centre for architecture and design, said we had to "raise the bar for the average residential buildings. The exceptional should be the norm.
"I don't believe it's down to 'it'll do'. It's a combination of housing policy and developers putting profit above all else. They are taking advantage of the current strong demand for housing. which allows them to say 'this is what people want'."
Mr Barley said that the only way to stop the production of substandard design was for public demand and government policy to squeeze developers.
Alan Dunlop, an architect at the award-winning firm gm+ad, said the A+DS needed to be specific in its criticism. "It's impossible to disagree with their wish to improve the quality of architecture, it's what every architect wants," he said.
"But I wish they would nail their colours to the mast and name particular examples of what is bad.
"Their criticisms are so vague. If they want to be taken seriously and respected as a body, then they have to be more definite."
LEADING ADVOCATE FOR IMPROVED DESIGN
ARCHITECTURE and Design Scotland took over from the Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland in 2005.
Established by the then Scottish Executive, it was given a wider remit to advocate the "benefits of good design through enabling, research and communications activities".
Funded directly by the government, it is key in delivering its policies on architecture for Scotland.
It describes its functions as "enabling" - supplying support and advice to companies throughout the development process; "design review" - appraising and evaluating new building proposals; and "research and information" - which it both collects and disseminates on the value of good design.
The body has been criticised in some quarters for being too closely aligned to the Scottish Government to make it an effective advocate for change in national planning policy. The first head of the body, Malcolm Fraser, resigned earlier this year over its silence on PFI school projects. The leading architect said young lives could be "blighted" by poor quality design.
The full article contains 700 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
