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‘DfE is one of the largest architecture practices you’ve never heard of’
At the AJ100 Club lunch last week, Wright, chief architect at the DfE, and his colleague Jennifer Singer underlined the size of their team and spoke of his hopes of quadrupling the delivery of school buildings and transforming pupils’ access to nature.
Together with his colleague and fellow architect, head of technical assurance Singer, the duo gave an insight into the important work of the 30-architect team, which is responsible for the design and construction standards for all state schools in England, including developing net zero carbon standards for new school buildings, as well as retrofit strategies for the school estate.
According to Wright, there is more public sector architecture than people realise, pointing out that the DfE spends nearly £2 billion annually on schools and builds approximately 50 new schools a year.Advertisement
‘That’s a lot of architects’ fees and a lot of architects working in the public sector, as well as our team itself,’ he said.
The talk was an opportunity to celebrate the team’s recent 75-year anniversary, with the desire to create good schools for all borne out of what Wright described as the post-war ‘nexus’ of the welfare state and international modernism.
Wright took over the DfE design team in 2017, the year of the Grenfell Tower fire. Another key event, he said, was the Government’s commitment in 2019 to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Keen to bring the work of the team ‘out of the doldrums’, he talked about the importance of studying ‘the whole school ecology’ of what schools are, before considering individual school buildings. He also put in place clear structures and missions for standards and delivery, setting up one of the largest POE programmes in in the UK, which has so far visited over 200 completed schools. Learnings from this evidence feed back into the development cycle to deliver, he said, better standards for new school buildings.
Source:Theo WoodThe Department for Education's Jennifer Singer
Singer talked about the challenges of creating a more sustainable school estate that can support future generations of children up to and beyond 2050. As well as adapting to climate change, mitigating flood risk and meeting net zero, this also means accommodating potential changes in the curriculum and digitalisation in schools.
‘We want to make sure we’re providing an education estate that is inclusive, is equitable and is sustainable in all ways,’ she said.Advertisement
Singer drew attention to the department’s ‘important’ range of technical standards and guidance that inform how public funding is invested in schools, covering standards for space, acoustics, ventilation, thermal comfort, fire safety and much more.
These include the Building Bulletins, which date back to 1949 and have now reached number 104, covering everything from door handles to daylight, and from specialist facilities to different stages of education. Along the way, they tell the story of the post-war school estate as it dealt with the baby boom, the raising of the school leaving age, the growth of system buildings, the energy crisis, estate rationalisation, Building Schools for the Future under New Labour, and more.
Singer also celebrated the contribution of key figures in the design team’s history, including architects David and Mary Medd, and more recently Beech Williamson. Another important figure was Stiratt Johnson-Marshall, who led the way for standardisation and system building in schools as chief architect at the Ministry of Education from 1948-1956 before co-founding RMJM.
This neatly led back to the current work and future aspirations of the team. These were set out by Wright, who identified build and construction quality as a problem.
‘We’re determined to get better-quality buildings. The first step in that is standardisation,’ he said, adding that the benefits of this are ‘pretty clear’.
‘We’re not thinking standardisation means everything’s exactly the same. We’re really concerned with creating really good quality, beautiful spaces for people to learn in. But that doesn't mean you have to redesign every individual element of the building every time we get a new project,’ he said.
The team is developing an education-based grid which can deliver all flexible types of spaces in a school building, and is also looking at what clusters of spaces work well together, and at block replacement. The hope is to be able to deliver not 50 schools a year as it currently does, but 200.
‘It’s not about reducing things down to the common denominator. It’s about trying to improve things and get better outcomes, and get better buildings from a large-scale approach to school design,’ he said.
Asked later about how standardisation could inform retrofit, Wright talked about this in terms of standardising the approach of what needed to be done to post-war buildings and the techniques, rather than standardisation of space.
‘Refurbishment is a whole new world that’s complicated,’ he said.
In response to the net-zero emissions by 2050 target, the DfE design team obtained funding from government innovation agency Innovate UK to develop the GenZero ultra-low carbon concept as part of a new platform for school construction. This led to a prototype timber-framed classroom exhibited at COP 26. This initiative has been developed further, with projects including a UK-timber classroom and sports block by Waugh Thistleton.
In Derby, St Mary’s Catholic Voluntary Academy was the first school built to GenZero net zero carbon specification. This pilot biophilia project also aimed to set new standards for connecting to the natural environment. Wright said that the primacy of nature would come through in all of its infrastructure standards in future, including the importance of biodiversity and green infrastructure in helping to cool buildings, improve air quality and also foster wellbeing.
With all these initiatives, the design team was, he said, ‘an exciting place to work with government’ with lots of exciting projects and lots more to come.
The lunch, held at The Lighterman in London’s King’s Cross, was supported by sponsors MSA Safety and Ceramica Sant-Agostino and hosted by the AJ’s Will Hurst.
#dfe #one #largest #architecture #practices
‘DfE is one of the largest architecture practices you’ve never heard of’
At the AJ100 Club lunch last week, Wright, chief architect at the DfE, and his colleague Jennifer Singer underlined the size of their team and spoke of his hopes of quadrupling the delivery of school buildings and transforming pupils’ access to nature.
Together with his colleague and fellow architect, head of technical assurance Singer, the duo gave an insight into the important work of the 30-architect team, which is responsible for the design and construction standards for all state schools in England, including developing net zero carbon standards for new school buildings, as well as retrofit strategies for the school estate.
According to Wright, there is more public sector architecture than people realise, pointing out that the DfE spends nearly £2 billion annually on schools and builds approximately 50 new schools a year.Advertisement
‘That’s a lot of architects’ fees and a lot of architects working in the public sector, as well as our team itself,’ he said.
The talk was an opportunity to celebrate the team’s recent 75-year anniversary, with the desire to create good schools for all borne out of what Wright described as the post-war ‘nexus’ of the welfare state and international modernism.
Wright took over the DfE design team in 2017, the year of the Grenfell Tower fire. Another key event, he said, was the Government’s commitment in 2019 to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Keen to bring the work of the team ‘out of the doldrums’, he talked about the importance of studying ‘the whole school ecology’ of what schools are, before considering individual school buildings. He also put in place clear structures and missions for standards and delivery, setting up one of the largest POE programmes in in the UK, which has so far visited over 200 completed schools. Learnings from this evidence feed back into the development cycle to deliver, he said, better standards for new school buildings.
Source:Theo WoodThe Department for Education's Jennifer Singer
Singer talked about the challenges of creating a more sustainable school estate that can support future generations of children up to and beyond 2050. As well as adapting to climate change, mitigating flood risk and meeting net zero, this also means accommodating potential changes in the curriculum and digitalisation in schools.
‘We want to make sure we’re providing an education estate that is inclusive, is equitable and is sustainable in all ways,’ she said.Advertisement
Singer drew attention to the department’s ‘important’ range of technical standards and guidance that inform how public funding is invested in schools, covering standards for space, acoustics, ventilation, thermal comfort, fire safety and much more.
These include the Building Bulletins, which date back to 1949 and have now reached number 104, covering everything from door handles to daylight, and from specialist facilities to different stages of education. Along the way, they tell the story of the post-war school estate as it dealt with the baby boom, the raising of the school leaving age, the growth of system buildings, the energy crisis, estate rationalisation, Building Schools for the Future under New Labour, and more.
Singer also celebrated the contribution of key figures in the design team’s history, including architects David and Mary Medd, and more recently Beech Williamson. Another important figure was Stiratt Johnson-Marshall, who led the way for standardisation and system building in schools as chief architect at the Ministry of Education from 1948-1956 before co-founding RMJM.
This neatly led back to the current work and future aspirations of the team. These were set out by Wright, who identified build and construction quality as a problem.
‘We’re determined to get better-quality buildings. The first step in that is standardisation,’ he said, adding that the benefits of this are ‘pretty clear’.
‘We’re not thinking standardisation means everything’s exactly the same. We’re really concerned with creating really good quality, beautiful spaces for people to learn in. But that doesn't mean you have to redesign every individual element of the building every time we get a new project,’ he said.
The team is developing an education-based grid which can deliver all flexible types of spaces in a school building, and is also looking at what clusters of spaces work well together, and at block replacement. The hope is to be able to deliver not 50 schools a year as it currently does, but 200.
‘It’s not about reducing things down to the common denominator. It’s about trying to improve things and get better outcomes, and get better buildings from a large-scale approach to school design,’ he said.
Asked later about how standardisation could inform retrofit, Wright talked about this in terms of standardising the approach of what needed to be done to post-war buildings and the techniques, rather than standardisation of space.
‘Refurbishment is a whole new world that’s complicated,’ he said.
In response to the net-zero emissions by 2050 target, the DfE design team obtained funding from government innovation agency Innovate UK to develop the GenZero ultra-low carbon concept as part of a new platform for school construction. This led to a prototype timber-framed classroom exhibited at COP 26. This initiative has been developed further, with projects including a UK-timber classroom and sports block by Waugh Thistleton.
In Derby, St Mary’s Catholic Voluntary Academy was the first school built to GenZero net zero carbon specification. This pilot biophilia project also aimed to set new standards for connecting to the natural environment. Wright said that the primacy of nature would come through in all of its infrastructure standards in future, including the importance of biodiversity and green infrastructure in helping to cool buildings, improve air quality and also foster wellbeing.
With all these initiatives, the design team was, he said, ‘an exciting place to work with government’ with lots of exciting projects and lots more to come.
The lunch, held at The Lighterman in London’s King’s Cross, was supported by sponsors MSA Safety and Ceramica Sant-Agostino and hosted by the AJ’s Will Hurst.
#dfe #one #largest #architecture #practices
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