Official taste: Creating Excellent Buildings-a guide for clients.

CREATING EXCELLENT BUILDINGS-A GUIDE FOR CLIENTS

By CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment). 2003. Free on request from CABE, email [e-mail]

CABE is a public agency, successor to the Royal Fine Art Commission. It has less independence than the body it replaced but more ambition and more resources. It is an instrument of government policy, doing good work. Its brief is not to criticize government policy; rather, it is there to improve the quality of national programmes of work funded by public expenditure. Since the advent of the Labour Government in 1997, it has become clear that architectural quality is most at risk through the implementation of the Private Finance Inititative (PFI). So this guide should be seen as a key document in CABE's portfolio.

Creating Excellent Buildings offers a practical set of procedures of how to realize good, usable buildings. Depending on your viewpoint, 'excellence' might seem somewhat optimistic because this would require more than a process. In fact, it would demand a special set of circumstances and a measure of good fortune. No set of rules and principles can promise or guarantee excellence.

However, with this caveat, the book is likely to prove an indispensable reference for incipient and experienced clients to dip into at different stages of a project's progress. In addition to comprehensively covering the four main stages of a project with appropriate check lists, it adequately describes all the potential risks and pitfalls of what is termed 'the adventure of a building project'.

It has seven sections: introduction, preparation, design, construction, usage, references, glossary. It has a ringbound format with illustrations, diagrams and photographs but the latter are black and white and mostly of poor quality. They do not do justice to the text or the fundamental purpose of the guide--aspiration to quality. So the guide conveys the pragmatism and economy of a surveyors' world, influenced by Latham and Egan, and in part presumes familiarity with the language of PFI. But it has the financial tone, feel and prescription that induces mediocrity.

It would be difficult to fault the words of each section, which begin with well chosen quotations, or to question the principles and advice expounded. However, designers may wish to challenge the focus. From the introduction, design is seen as being important but is inevitably assessed in the context of large PFI bids in what feels like a 'tick box culture', where compliance and process will take precedence with targets and benchmarking. The fact that there is so much more at stake in this section is emphasized, but how does a guide explain the overriding importance of making the correct initial selection of designer? How does the project hold onto the inspirational and relevant end of the professional matrix? Less is said about these matters than should be. The choice of architect gets less coverage than the landscape architect and yet one should be dependent on the other.

One can surmise at which audience the guide is most usefully aimed. It would be exemplary for the single one-off building project with an inexperienced client, perhaps even for the large corporate, private enterprise client, but the public sector must surely be its primary target because of the current scale of public sector programmes.

The opening quote by Peter Rogers under the heading 'a guide to success' reveals a major contradiction--a dichotomy the guide almost self-consciously wishes to prompt. 'You must have a client and it does not matter how expert that client is; that client has to be single minded, must be a patron and must not be a substitute or a committee--neither work. He or she has to be the individual in the organisation who has the authority, the vision and the financial muscle to make the project happen.'

Is this possible in the public sector, in a democratic framework where user, manager, administrator and politician all claim to be client? Is this possible in the complex world of divided political and split professional responsibilities at local government level? There has been no evidence of these ideal structures with enlightened, visionary individual leadership being used with the discipline and authority recommended by the guide.

Nor does it explain the overwhelming difficulties of co-ordinating varying sources of public finance that might be available for a project. Clients seeking to exploit these sources will prefer to keep their options open as long as possible and design in this financial context is never a top priority. Little regard is given to the designer in the framework of an ever-changing brief adjusting itself to availability of finance. Trying to achieve the right balance between commercial viability, long-term risk and realizing building and architectural quality with imagination and innovation still remains a chimera. The window of opportunity for the designer in a PFI project is condensed to such an extent that it allows little or nothing for research or even basic investigation.

As a partner and counterweight to English Heritage, CABE has earned itself a reputation and the status to assume the responsibility of publishing such a guide and so must be commended. But is it independent enough, has it the authority and clout to comment on issues that might upset the professions--or for that matter its own paymaster?