Scotland the Brave
In 2019, Jude Barber (Collective Architecture) and Andy Summers (Architecture Fringe) were invited to co-write a chapter within ‘Scotland the Brave?’ that reflected on Architecture and Design in Scotland since the creation of a devolved Scottish Parliament 20 years ago. The book, edited by Gerry Hassan and Simon Barrow, forms a compact guide to the issues facing Scotland and its people as they look towards an uncertain future politically, constitutionally and in the context of major global upheavals.
Extract from book:
The backstory to the positive design examples, policy and political endorsements is that the majority of buildings that most people interact with - and places they visit - are poorly designed and adversely affect their health. In some instances new buildings are literally harmful and tragic. Horror stories such as Grenfell and the Edinburgh PFI School scandal spark the most obvious attention and rage. Which begs the question ‘Why were these disasters allowed to occur at all?’. Author Darren McGarvey succinctly answers this question in his 2017 book ‘Poverty Safari’,
‘This inferno (Grenfell) was a preventable disaster; a confluence of human error and industrial-scale negligence.’
‘Race to the bottom’ procurement models, aggressive ‘value engineering’ processes and a lack of control over design and quality enable such negligence. These behaviours are at the centre of current public led procurement models - and this has to change.
Another, less dramatic horror story is the slow, nauseating effect of the housebuilder-led suburban model and the damage this is causing to public health, the environment and civic society. This forceful - and thriving - model is characterised by the individualistic dominance of the car, low density development, cookie-cutter design, limited provision of shared, local amenities, a propensity towards gated communities and the lack of any contextual design response - which flies in the face of good policy, sustainable practice and current public health agendas.
