Michael Sharp

This month the “Education Specification forum” was of great interest to me particularly in view of the procedures of the Victorian (Australian) Education Department where another level of bureaucracy has been introduced by outsourcing the role of “project facilitators.” The facilitator’s initial task is to help the schools write the” Ed Spec,” prior to the appointment of the prime consultant, the architect.

Having spent my whole career in education, a teacher, school council president, government facilities officer, and for the past fourteen years a private architect specializing in education, I fear the day when the architect is no longer involved in the formation of the Ed Spec. I believe educational design, as all design, should evolve out of the direct relationship between the client and the architect, in particular the user-client’s unique aspirations and reactions to ideas and images as they evolve. The effective written brief is often only two or three pages comprising areas, functions and relationships; the real brief—the unwritten brief, is the thoughts and feelings that have emerged from this critical relationship.

Our State system is very centralized and controlled. Capital works projects are determined after master planning highlights discrepancies against a Standard Facilities Space Schedule. A project brief and budget based on set rates is established and frozen at the Detail Design stage after the prime consultant argues for additional special costs related to site issues, not educational issues. The user client—the school—has some room to maneuver within the standards, that is to implement their Ed Spec, but all changes if approved must be within the set budget. The Ed spec is imposed on the Standard Brief and budget, not the reverse. The architectural brief should emerge for the Ed Spec. The brief is seldom initiated from educational philosophies, practices or aspiration.

Department briefs and approved educational specifications currently dictate the number, type, size and often the relationship of spaces. Practically all primary school classrooms designed within the last twenty years are substantially the same as were the” LTC”, platoon type classrooms build in the previous twenty years. One room, one teacher, now for 25 children rather than 55. The opportunity to open up the spaces has been reduced to one operable wall between four rooms. Understandably architectural merit and awards are chosen as Prakash Nair suggests on the design of the entry and the curved wall rather than the educational quality or the function of the spaces.

The simile of a greyhound race comes to mind; the direction, length and pace of the race is set; all you do is follow the lure and the fastest wins. If this is the case, facility planning has gone to the dogs.

Nevertheless having written the above, and having played all the above roles I understand the need for Governments and the funding client to keep the lid, so to speak, on the whole process. After all it is our taxes at work, and the fundamental of state education, “equity”, I believe is a desirable social goal. Twenty years ago before effective central controls were established and enforced individual schools did have more influence on school design, the results were often disastrous. Many of the badly designed buildings I must blame my own profession for failing to understand the essence of state education and pursuing firstly architectural solutions not educational solutions.

So here lies the rub—the dilemma of state education—the age-old question of constraints and freedom. How do we balance equity or resources to achieve the predictability of outcomes as students fight for the same tertiary places yet encourage solutions better-suited to all students? How can we best marry the constraints imposed by the bureaucracy with the needs of the individual school?

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