Cambridge faces closure

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 2004 by Peter Blundell Jones

Regardless of holding a long established position as one of few architectural institutions with a truly global presence, Cambridge University's Department of Architecture may soon be closed. In today's university market economy, it would seem that targets, statistics and watchdog analysts are a university's driving force, above and beyond the apparently archaic and peripheral processes of teaching, tutorage and academic exploration.

Despite the course's high regard within the 800 year old institution, receiving more applications per place than any other Cambridge course, a decision will be made later this month on the General Board's recommendation to close the school's surviving undergraduate and research programmes.

The root cause of the recommendation comes from the financial loss caused by the Department's slippage from a grade 5 to a grade 4 in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE); a rating procedure that coldly ranks universities with similar subject areas, where research potential from more vocational Building Sciences and construction courses predictably outbid those from institutions with more traditional architectural programmes. In response to this, Peter Blundell Jones (Professor of Architecture at the University of Sheffield) considers the fact that architecture as university subject is seriously under threat. A website has been set up with information on the future of the Cambridge school where alumni are encouraged to register, at www.scroope.co.uk

That Cambridge intends to ditch its school of architecture after a single point lapse in the RAE seems careless. Far worse is the extraordinary statement emanating from that august institution that architecture is not a worthy university subject. Are there echoes here of the old snobbery between the pure and the applied, or is the ghost of The Two Cultures once again raising its head? Architecture is certainly anomalous in both areas; connecting theory with practice and bridging the gap between science and the humanities. This is bound to produce some strain, but some groups in our society must do it. It also helps generate interdisciplinary connnections. Schools of architecture have provided valuable models of teaching practice precisely through the connection of theoretical debate with the putative practice of the design project.

How can Cambridge think that architecture is not to be taken seriously as a subject? Is it because they find it in The Guardian opposite ballet, watch too many 'Changing Rooms' and 'Grand Designs' or feel provoked by the incoherent babblings of Libeskind? Certainly new media attention promotes a distorted view focused excessively on the creative individual. This makes design seem whimsical, as decorative icing applied to building.

Half a century ago, when Pevsner made his now untenable distinction between a cathedral and a bicycle shed, the word 'architecture' could only be applied to buildings of special ritual or memorial role. Even then mere building could be left to innocent builders catering directly for the needs of their clients. But now all innocence is lost. Every building must pass complex design processes and calculations to satisfy bureaucratic procedures that exclude and alienate users. Yet in layout and organization, in the classification of space and accommodation, they continue decisively to shape our lives. Who is to preside over this technical and bureaucratic process and to defend the user? Not the engineer interested in the most efficient structure, or the services engineer in pursuit of perfect plumbing. Not the construction manager who wants efficient site operation or the quantity surveyor striving for economy. Someone must stand in the middle to balance these conflicting forces, and the architect is the only one trained to do so. The real job is still that referred to in the metaphor of a minister as the 'architect' of a policy: the instigator, organizer, begetter of the idea. Such people are needed to be well informed, and to understand what is at stake.

Understanding what architecture is and how it works has been led over a long period precisely by the best funded and intellectually most active university schools. They have provided a necessary lead for less fortunate institutions struggling against much tougher odds--those 'vocational' schools that Cambridge's new philistines consider to be architecture's proper place. The closing of the Cambridge school will amputate not a peripheral limb but the head. If it takes place it will damage both architecture as a subject and as a profession in this country [and abroad], and will demonstrate a shameless disregard for the future of the built environment.