A degree of Broader comprehension
I have always struggled to find divisions between things – where many around me have been the opposite. For me, it’s hard to categorise, to put stuff into neat, separate boxes. Indeed, I find the most interest to be in the very neglected overlaps and connections between things. At school, why was geography different from history? Why did I have to choose between arts and science when I did A-levels? The fact is that these are all artificial constructs designed to help us understand the world around us.
By Peter Buchan, Senior Partner, Ryder Architecture
I know we need structure of some sort but for me it was so liberating to enter my school of architecture and to be given a first project to design a container for three eggs - then test it by dropping it from the top of a ladder - a real egg breaker! Similarly when I joined what was then Ryder & Yates I found a group of people - architects, interior designers, structural and services engineers - all working together for the same firm, on the same project and, joy of joys, it was impossible to work out who was from what background. The overlaps, the connections became the very stuff of creative design.
So why do we continue to build the barriers in our education systems? It has been a continuous source of frustration and dismay to me that we operate in an industry, by which I mean the construction industry in its broadest sense, which is so rigorously divided into meaningless silos, and why is it so hard to get the design team together right at the start of a project when they can, together, have the greatest impact?
Interior design can and should inform a building's form. Engineering should be a creative force in determining its fabric and materiality. Instead we too often begin with an architect's Immaculate Conception and subsequently try to make it work - and this is me speaking as an architect! However, the talking shop across architecture education alone has gone on for as long as I can remember, and I find it troubling that we still experience difficulties in promoting crossdisciplinary design, let alone encouraging new breeds of valuable hybrid professionals.
At Ryder Architecture our proposal, which we are developing with industry partners and academics, is for a new kind of 'melting pot' degree, namely a Bachelor of the Built Environment. Many school leavers have no comprehension of the range of disciplines that currently contribute to our built-environment discipline, which is hardly surprising given the UK's complex professional structures. Such a degree will make it rather more comprehensible and raise its status, so attracting even better students and, more importantly, allowing individuals to find the route into the industry and the area of expertise that is right for them.
A better choice of modules will allow for gradual specialism through this first degree. Where appropriate, a Masters can be undertaken while in employment that will lead to chartered status in a chosen profession. This process will naturally provide a range of generalists and specialists, and serve as a breeding ground for better informed, more collaborative professionals, as well as fostering new hybrids. We could conceivably produce the environmental computer scientist or economist to take us close to where it all started, with the architect engineer. Who knows?
