Despite massive investment by Labour, a legacy of fine educational design has not been created
The Riba (Royal Institute of British Architects) awards for buildings "that have high architectural standards", announced last week, are a glimpse into a golden age of public building that never quite was. The most striking thing about the winners is that 17 were educational buildings, in among the more usual art galleries and private houses. This reflects the previous government's immense investment in the physical fabric of schools, which the new government plans to cut back.
So there are likely to be fewer school buildings up for awards, and a brief flourishing of educational design may already be over. But another question is why, given the vastness of spending until recently, the list of awards is not completely dominated by its products.
Under their Building Schools for the Future programme, the Labour government set out to rebuild or refurbish every secondary school in the country. This could have led to a legacy like that of the London School Board in the late 19th century, which populated the capital with handsome, well-built, well-lit structures, or the Hertfordshire schools of the 1940s and 1950s, which in the midst of austerity set standards for others to follow. Or the beautiful schools that a single Tory council, Hampshire, created in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Instead the list shows a relative handful of projects, most of them struggling against the odds to achieve beauty and quality. One is Clapham Manor primary school by de Rijke Marsh Morgan – a practice which long ago proved, with a south London comprehensive, that it could build transforming education spaces within tight constraints. It should have been flooded with work, yet this is only its second completed school.
The culprits are the ways the Labour government chose to get buildings built: the private finance initiative and its spawn. These bundled up several schools at once into vast packages, to be delivered by vast contracting companies. Fees for lawyers, accountants and management consultants were high; fees for architects and budgets for anything above the basic minimum were small. The ability of teachers, governors and parents to say what they wanted was limited. Similar processes were applied to hospitals and health buildings, which despite equally massive investment don't figure prominently on the Riba list.
The 102 Riba award winners – 93 from the UK and nine from the EU – will be whittled down to a shortlist for the Stirling prize for the building of the year. The likely winners will be museums such as David Chipperfield's Neues Museum in Berlin or Zaha Hadid's MAXXI in Rome. It's difficult to claim that any of the schools on the list represent better architecture.
If there it is a silver lining it is that the Claggeron government might end Labour's bulk-buying policies. Vince Cable has in the past poured scorn on PFI and the Tories have not rushed to defend it. It is conceivable – just – that the new era of reduced quantity might also be one of increased quality.