Architects to spruce up prefabs after BSF schools axed
Early concept visualisation for wrapping a portable classroom.
Source: Haptic Architects and AU StudioNewham Council hires Haptic and AU Studio
A cash-strapped London council has brought in two architects to spruce up temporary classrooms after its £250 million school rebuilding programme was pulled under government spending cuts.
Newham Council in east London was expecting to rebuild or remodel 20 schools under the previous government’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. But only eight survived Michael Gove’s axe two years ago.
Newham was one of six councils that went to the High Court last year to challenge the education secretary’s decision.
Now it has turned to Haptic Architects and AU Studio for a cut-price alternative, with the pair asked to investigate ways of wrapping existing portable classrooms with new skins made from timber, polycarbonate or even stretched fabric. Green roofs and water harvesting are also being considered, as well as landscaping.
A council spokesman said: “This is an idea which we are looking into at the moment and discussions are at the embryonic stage.”
But local MP Stephen Timms, a former chief secretary to the Treasury, echoed architects’ warnings at the time BSF was scrapped that schools would be forced to make do and mend.
He told BD: “It is tragic that our council is having to resort to this — but all credit to them for the imaginative approach they are taking. It is a disgrace that schools are being compelled to rely on portacabins.”
And shadow schools minister Kevin Brennan said: “It’s sad it’s come to this, that the council have to tart up what should be temporary structures rather than providing world-class facilities for our young people.”
Working on two pilot primary schools, the architects will develop a standard component range that can be adapted for other schools, both primary and secondary, that have been earmarked for improvement work by council bosses.
The project’s budget — less than £100,000 — allowed it to bypass Ojeu and instead Newham commissioned the practices after being impressed by previous work including a competition entry for Olympic kiosks.
Timo Haedrich, a director at Haptic, said: “Young firms like us wouldn’t stand a chance with PQQs so this is great opportunity.”
Cullinan’s “proper building” that never was
Among the projects axed by Gove was the £8.8 million rebuilding of Eleanor Smith School in Plaistow.
Edward Cullinan designed it using a pre-cast concrete system from Laing O’Rourke.
“It wasn’t as cheap as a portacabin but it certainly wasn’t at the expensive end of BSF and they would have ended up with a proper building,” said director Robin Nicholson.
“My question to the government is: We’re the eighth biggest economy in the world. Should we be farting around tarting up decrepit portacabins?”
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19 July 2011 | Updated: 19 July 2011 4:58 pm
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Readers' comments (5)
The reason we’re having to ‘go round tarting up portacabins’ is that the £45 billion BSF programme used up all our school-building money with scant results. In January 2008 Mr Ty Goddard, director of the British Council for School Environments, which represents hundreds of schools, local authorities, architects and building companies, wrote that the stupefyingly burdensome bidding process imposed by BSF was wasting enough taxpayers’ money ‘to fund a new school in every local authority’. On top of wasting colossal sums of money, BSF also produced a generation of badly-designed schools. In July 2008, Cabe found that 87.5% of the BSF designs that it had seen were either ‘mediocre’ or ‘not yet good enough’. In June 2010 the journalist Katharine Quarmby told BD that ‘BSF schools are not, on the whole, adaptable schools. The windows don’t open. The heating and air-conditioning systems are complex. The energy bills are sky-high. As one former headteacher told me, what many teachers want is ‘a nice painted box, with possibly a whiteboard, a window that opens, and not having the roof leaking’. Don’t blame Michael Gove for the current fiasco, blame the creator of the BSF programme - step forward Mr David Miliband MP!
Maritz Vandenberg.
I am not sure who are the tarts- the revamped portacabins or those who continue to use a procurement process that is so expensive. Giving temporary structures a facelift is a temporary and expensive strategy which will condemn our young people to an expensive and second rate environment. Why not do it properly for less money and stop squandering our investment in framework agreements.
framework agreements give those that sit at the top a title to do very little work and put unrealistic expectations on the rest of the team that get paid very little. generally a way to keep the big construction companies happy while all the small companies get shafted one way or another. oh, except the staritects that get paid big bucks to produce examplar schools that dont work, but the rest of us have to achieve with half the budget
"In July 2008, Cabe found that 87.5% of the BSF designs that it had seen were either ‘mediocre’ or ‘not yet good enough’. "
Have ARB been informed?
It would seem the Architects are not displaying the much vaunted and all important criteria for Part 2 graduates, that I as a non-UK graduate would be expected to demonstrate if I wanted to get qualified, so I'm sure that in the interests of consistency and to 'protect the public' they will step in and investigate why standards have slipped?
Re Mr Vandenberg above: don't blame Mr Milliband, blame the architects. I've been in a couple of these schools and they are appalling. Give me the spacious and easy to adapt prefabs I was taught in any day, as long as there is a good teacher inside. When I was doing architecture I transformed several temporary buildings for very little money to a very acceptable standard for happy clients.