WAF 48b: Lessons from Pharmacists

My daughter-in-law, a pharmacist, was aghast when I explained how the construction industry operates, particularly in the context of ‘Design and Build’ and our lax controls pertaining to specification, quality, monitoring, and control. So, with the publication of the Grenfell Inquiry’s Phase 2 report on 4 September, I thought it useful to view our culture and protocols through the lens of her industry – one that also carries enormous responsibilities in terms of product design, specification and application.

Based in a major teaching hospital and research centre, her team prepare complex medications – not the sort you routinely pick up against your family G.P.’s prescription. Hers is the world of serious therapeutics, often concocted in very small batches particular to the needs of one specific patient: usually within her own hospital, sometimes in other hospitals, occasionally an outpatient. 

Some of Lizzie’s most challenging work is in paediatrics; tiny little mites for whom dosage, content and strength can be a life-or-death issue. But irrespective of the utilisation of a product, or the role of any individual during the various stages of production, the same absolute rigour applies across the entire process. 

It starts with team admission: every task is defined and allocated and only those properly trained, qualified, and registered for that task are admitted. And then only within the remit of that qualification. There are no exceptions to this rule. None. Compare that to our industry with its lack of training and qualification amongst so many of its trades and installation personnel.

Next comes method: every process is pre-defined and planned. Conditions for successful execution are established at the outset and maintained through to completion. No short-cuts are contemplated. No compromises are tolerated. Compare that to our industry….

Throughout all this is control: this is established and maintained with an awesome rigour and to the most exacting of standards. Checking and re-checking is systematic at every stage and sub-stage. Even the checking regimes are checked and re-checked. All with a diligence akin to that of the aviation world. Compare that to our industry…

Finally, accountability: sign-off is always attributable to one person whose responsibility is underpinned by absolute authority. Compare that to our industry…. 

Against her background of professional rigour, you won’t be surprised to learn that my daughter-in-law was shocked – seriously shocked to the point of being speechless – when I explained how today’s British building industry still works. You know the stuff, but let me recount my summary:

Since the abandonment of traditional procurement and the advent of D+ B contracting which is now routine for all but the smallest domestic jobs, architects (together where appropriate with other design consultants) are routinely ‘novated’ and come under the day-to-day direction of construction managers. 

I explained that such ‘managers’ rarely understand the design processes that they are managing, and all too often don’t understand the construction processes either. Yet under them the architect’s authority has been severely undermined, particularly in areas of final material and component selection, and the inspection of work in progress on site. I advised that architects are often not retained during construction, and that even when they are their site inspection visits are routinely restricted in number and scope, whilst their authority to condemn sub-standard work, or report it to the client, is normally barred under the terms of their engagement.

I reported that one ‘client-side’ project manager (a QS by training) once opined early in the delivery phase of one of our projects that ‘the further architects were kept from site the better’. I kid not! 

I expounded on the quality problems by confirming that aside from plumbing and electrics, there is barely any kind of apprenticeship or formal training scheme for builders’ trades. And rarely any qualification, certification, or registration system: as beggars belief, complex installation work (for example the cladding system to a high-rise building) is frequently, indeed usually, carried out by people with no formal training.

But that was the least of it: I then explained the sub-contracting arrangements that extend supply chains causing breaks to both lines of authority and accountability, producing conditions in which those who finally generate the design information for a cladding system, and those who install it, may be both unqualified and unsupervised in their work. 

We can further compare our industry’s culture and training with that of nurses when administering drugs: Gizella, a specialist in paediatrics, told me of her profession’s checklist of ‘the six principal rights’: right drug, right dose, right route (oral/intravenous etc.), right time, right patient, right documentarian. If such a checklist had been applied to the Grenfell Tower over-cladding work, non-code-compliant insulation would not have been installed, the correct cavity barriers would have been installed in all the positions required, and the documentation would have been consistent.

I tried to explain to Lizzie that we do have good D+B firms that take their responsibilities seriously, but that was to no effect. Coming from a highly disciplined, highly structured and highly accountable industry and profession, she had heard enough. Her response should be a wake-up call for us all:

She was astonished that our industry allows, nay promotes, the passing of responsibility ‘down line’ without any proper regard for briefing or day-to-day supervision. She couldn’t believe that people with no proper qualifications or training are allowed to install, fix, cover over and cover up work that has not been seen, checked, and re-checked before being properly signed off by anyone with bona fide understanding of the task in hand, the standards to be met, and the codes to be complied with. 

As reported above, the pharmaceutical industry has got all this pretty well sorted, although Lizzie emphasised that they continue to strive for further improvements. Indeed, we don’t have to look any further than the pharmaceutical industry to find a complete ‘oven ready’ operational system that would be instantly applicable and appropriate our industry.

Under it four key rules would apply:

1) Products, components, and materials would, wherever appropriate (for example, within walling systems) be tested and certified in the combinations in which they are to be used prior to final selection and delivery. 

2) Clear, written instructions regarding assembly and installation of all products, components and materials would be mandatory. Such instructions would have to be strictly complied with and ANY deviation to product, material, or component affecting its composition or installation would have to be pre-approved by the designer and/or manufacturer.

3) ONLY trained, qualified and certified personnel would be allowed to install any product, component, material, or system that has life safety significance. Yes, that would mean that a compartment wall, or a fire door, or a cavity barrier could only be erected or installed by a trained qualified and certified person.

4) All work would be systematically benchmarked at the outset of each construction stage or process to establish base standards and, thereafter, systematically inspected and signed off against that benchmark by a person certified as competent to so inspect before the work is ‘covered up’. 

All sounds obvious, doesn’t it? Sure. So why don’t we do it? 

The reason is simple: there has never been the will within, or any meaningful authority upon our industry. It employs 2.3 million people and has a £281 billion turnover representing 6% of our national economic output, yet it has, for too long, resisted reform.

It must be made to radically transform and then conform to reasonable expectation. Some of the framework for such reform was laid in the reports of Dame Judith Hackitt and Paul Morrell who, at invitation of government reported, respectively, on the Building Regulations and Fire Safey, and on the Construction Product Testing Regime. Now, as of 4 September with the publication of the Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 recommendations, the country and its construction industry have a clear roadmap for change. 

If we adopt just a smidgen of the culture and protocols of the pharmaceutical industry in pursuit of that change, our industry would be transformed beyond expectation.   

E N D

DEZEEN: Grenfell Tower Inquiry – Lessons for architects

The spectacle of so many of the so-named ‘core participants’ seeking, during their evidence, to blame others presented an all too unedifying spectacle during the Grenfell Inquiry proceedings. As far as architects are concerned, the position of Studio E is of particular importance.

In this respect, the following denouements from the Inquiry’s Executive Summary to its Phase 2 report published on 4 September make for sober reading for our profession:

Studio E…….took a casual approach to contractual relations. (para 2.74)

……..As architect Studio E was responsible for the design of the external wall and for the choice of the materials used in its construction……..as the client wanted to reduce the cost by using ACM rainscreen panels, it was the responsibility of Studio E to determine whether the use of such material would enable the building to comply with functional requirement B4(1) of the Building Regulations……Studio E therefore bears a very significant degree of responsibility for the disaster. (para 2.79)

These stark conclusions are especially notable in their firm rejection of the evidence of Studio E’s Neil Crawford who, within his written statement and under examination, had claimed that:

……….Studio E was only responsible for checking Harley’s drawings and specifications for “architectural intent”, by which he (Mr Crawford) meant conformity with the preliminary design only. 

In dismissing that assertion, the Inquiry affirmed that:

His (Mr Crawford’s) understanding was inconsistent, however, with the terms of its contract with Rydon, which included seeking to ensure that all designs complied with the relevant statutory requirements. (para 63.39 Vol 4)

This should act as a sharp warning to all architects to look carefully at the conditions contained within their appointments. This is especially the case with larger and more complex jobs that usually adopt Design and Build procurement routes. Add to that the ambiguities that can arise in terms of liability through the common provision of so-called ‘design portions’ by specialist sub-contractors (as so often the case with modern ‘systems’ of construction) and all the ingredients are there for chaos. But be under no illusion; confusion of this kind has long existed across our industry: to our collective shame, the Grenfell Tower fire had, for too long, been a disaster in waiting.

Such mayhem should not exist and must be eradicated without more ado if we are to ensure that we have proper conditions under which we can, as architects, effectively and fully discharge our responsibilities 

So, we should all take this as a mighty, much overdue, ‘wake-up’ call. Some architects have, of course, long been diligent in this respect, but most need to look far more carefully at their appointment documents. We should also insist on sight of the engagement terms of others who might be contributing to design to ensure that any overlaps and ambiguities relating to responsibilities are eradicated. We owe it to ourselves, our clients, our insurers, our profession, and above all, to those who depend on us and our industry for the design and delivery of safe buildings. 

It is simply not good enough for an architect to examine a sub-contractor’s cladding drawings on the basis of checking for compliance with some vague notion of architectural intent (whatever that might mean) when the appointment has called for the production of full RIBA Stage EFG information in old language (RIBA Stages 4 and 5 today). The Grenfell Tower Inquiry determined that this remains the case even where there has been some overlap in the responsibilities of architects with other sub-contractors whose contracts might include ‘specialist sub-contractor design portions’. 

Much of confusion has of course arisen through a misunderstanding of the term ‘design’ and the rapid increase in the use of bespoke contracts that both developers and D+B companies nowadays prefer (in lieu of the various RIBA offerings) for their appointments. Such bespoke forms, all too often hastily cobbled together on a ‘cut and paste’ basis, frequently seek to duplicate the same responsibilities across multiple parties, no doubt in the belief that such ‘belt and braces’ strategies will somehow protect those appointing by spreading risk and accountability as far, and as wide, as possible.

The problem with such strategies is that they can, and usually do, confuse roles and responsibilities in exactly the way that the Inquiry determined had happened around the development of the cladding package during the Grenfell Tower project. There, risks were compounded as the D+B contractor, post accepting the architect under novation, pushed through so-called value engineering changes in pursuit of ill-considered cost cuts. Such late changes following D+B contractors’ appointments are endemic in our industry, creating havoc across the board as rapid redesign and changes to specification is all too often inadequately researched due to lack of time, or fee, or both.  

None of that might, of course, matter to those who partake in such reckless process until something goes wrong. Then, everyone finds themself engulfed in lengthy and complex litigation. When it goes as badly wrong as happened during the over-cladding works for Grenfell Tower, the consequences in terms of suffering and human tragedy are beyond measure.

Muddle around design responsibilities was, of course, not the only issue that contributed to the failings at Grenfell Tower, as the Inquiry’s far-reaching report makes so clear. But it is a discrete issue that needs major and urgent attention across both our profession and our industry. 

As with many areas of practice the structural engineers have had these matters well covered for years and its high time architects followed suit: don’t leave your contracts to others to sort out: get on top of these matters! Ensure that responsibilities are clearly defined, especially between those responsible for design and compliance with building regulations and those responsible for fabrication and manufacture. And if you have, under contract, assumed responsibility, then deliver the goods… 

Above all, don’t accept liability under circumstances where you don’t have the authority to control your work product. As one old sage, known to us all, says: ‘No responsibility without authority’.

E N D

Consequential Questions (the need for truth)

In this view from the UK, Paul Hyett reflects on the world, the US Presidential election and the architect’s duties.

European Movements

The light of western democracy may not yet have dimmed but it is certainly flickering, and the closing quarter of 2024 will have profound impact on its political, social and economic direction for decades. 

Social unease in Europe over recent years has prompted drifts, sometimes even lurches, towards the radical right across the continent. In Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and Italy, nationalist right-wing governments have gained power, whilst intense pressure from the right is also manifest in France, Holland, Belgium and Austria.

Germany, since World War II an exemplar of social democracy, is seeing growing support for the far-right AfD (Alternative for Germany party) which, until recently, was under police surveillance for its extremist views and occasional expression of neo-Nazi sympathies. 

Similarly, pressures from the right have been growing in Estonia, Latvia and Poland, though 2023 saw the latter country break trend and reject its governing right-wing Law and Justice Party. 

Even the UK, normally a bastion of political stability, has seen a rightwards drift across all its mainstream parties with new neo-liberal and reactionary groups emerging to undermine the “social contract” and challenge the hitherto longstanding political status quo.  

The USA Choice, Its Implications, and Antecedents

But as I write, all eyes move back to the USA and November 2024, to a spectacle “the likes of which we have never seen before”, to quote one of its participants. No presidential election in that still great democracy has ever offered such a stark choice and contrast: a self-identifying black woman against a white man; a professionally educated lawyer against a freewheeling businessman; a one-time public prosecutor against a many-times-convicted felon. You just couldn’t write such a script!

The outcome of these struggles will have profound implications for architecture and its duty, not only to serve the public interest, but also in fulfilling its most basic role: the provision of safe shelter. All of which takes me again to Neville Chamberlain of “peace in our time” consequent upon his efforts to broker an accord with Hitler. 

Prior to becoming UK Prime Minister Chamberlain had, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, recognised the inter-relationship of housing, health and employment in serving social needs. Whilst he advocated national policies to safeguard public interests in each, he recognised the ongoing adoption of mechanised production in agriculture and industry would lessen demands for labour, skilled and unskilled, within developed economies. More social democrat than conservative, he thus called for government to recognise the need for new ways of financially sustaining and meaningfully occupying the growing proportion of the population for which work, and wages, would simply no longer be available.   

Building on President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts in the aftermath of World War I, the Roosevelt/Cordell policy of promoting developing countries as bona fide trading partners served only to intensify the problems Chamberlain had identified so early. Add population growth within developed countries (the UK and US populations have respectively doubled and tripled since 1930) and we see the complex scenario against which our modern socioeconomic and political systems struggle, only to be found wanting. Too many people, too little work, more wealth than ever before, but hopelessly uneven in its spread across countries, rich and poor, and within societies, developed and developing. 

Divisions

It is this division of wealth and opportunity that generates the angst that underpins the unrest and fuels the political turmoil now so prevalent. In short, in the minds of so many, politics, as hitherto known, is simply not working. Its failures are seen in the high levels of unemployment amongst those whose jobs have “migrated”, leaving families in despair, resigned either to accepting robots at home, or cheap unregulated labour abroad. As Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel wrote in The Tyranny of Merit, it’s not just the right to work and earn that has been ‘stolen’…it’s the right to contribute with dignity that has been eroded, especially amongst those who have traditionally offered their services in the form of skilled and unskilled labour.  

The consequences of all this now find expression in new forms of planning and architecture.  Witness the rapid installations of security fences and gates to our suburban gardens; the new elite “private” housing estates with controlled entry and patrolled grounds; and, ultimately, the emerging gated townships (really no more than “forts”) with their own shops, schools and leisure facilities one of which, located in the USA, is described thus:

“…this area is considered one of the most secure neighborhoods … and is behind a second gate only accessible to residents. 

Security is tight, and the surveillance system features facial recognition technology and license plate readers that can detect suspicious activity or unfamiliar cars entering the property…”

Outside and beyond, along the sidewalks of the once great cities of San Francisco and Detroit, and in the no go areas of Dallas and New York, the “undeserving” poor live and sleep, in ever growing numbers, in their tents and makeshift shelters, seemingly evermore helpless and evermore hopeless. 

Ultimately, only democratic political processes, in wholly recalibrated forms, can offer answers to all this, but that is proving difficult as we drift into this post-truth age where basic trust in politics and politicians is at such a low ebb.

And that is precisely why the rigorous process of consequential questioning is so important. As Tara Setmayer, former Republican Party Communications Director has asked: “Is (this) the kind of country we want?”   

The bottom line is this: In a democracy we can only ultimately succeed through an educated, properly and morally informed electorate making the right decisions. That is why TRUTH matters so much: It is essential to informing the answers to our consequential questioning.

The Architect’s Duties

As architects, our duty is to visualise alternative futures and offer them for informed interrogation. Do we really want the antithesis of Jane Jacob’s sophisticated vision for city life? When all the barricades are finally in place protecting walled and policed havens from the anarchy and violence without, will the protected be able to tolerate the suffering that surrounds them? Will consequential questioning reveal the true character of the built reality that would prevail? Or can we forestall this process and find an alternate fairer way forward in terms of tomorrow’s planning?

And here’s the biggest challenge of all: The need to build sustainably, in particular, to service our buildings in ecologically responsible ways; the need to pursue net zero carbon design solutions at this nanosecond to midnight for avoiding ecological disaster.

Evangelism’s Impact

This is where I turn the focus to the American Evangelicals, for in no other developed country does any religious group have so much influence on the outcomes of elections. Some sources suggest as many as 80% of Evangelicals support the Republican cause, a situation decades in the making (https://www.oah.org/tah/november-5/evangelicalism-and-politics/). Others suggest the influence is markedly less but there is universal agreement that it substantially favours the GOP, and this is why it is both fair and necessary to challenge the evangelical position in the context of the eco-agenda and architecture’s duty to deliver that net zero building programme.

The AIA has facilitated major advances in this area, and prominent architects (Ed Mazria and his various initiatives such as the China Accord and the 2030 Districts Movement, and William McDonough author of Cradle to Cradle to name just two) have offered brilliant thought leadership at the international scale, but any such progress is quickly upended by blind belief in such frightening policies as “Drill, baby, drill”. 

The irony of the Evangelical’s support in this respect is extraordinary.  This is the pro-life party simply failing to press home the consequential questioning so evidently required. All scientific evidence points to disaster if carbon emissions are not severely and rapidly reduced. Architecture cannot function at the simplest level of providing shelter if the host environment is too hostile for survival. 

Consequential questioning has never had such a critical role in our safe survival. 

What kind of world do we want?

Profound Hope

To end on a note of profound hope, let us consider corporate giant Toyota’s latest initiative. Their Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Hiroki Nakajima has just announced their prototype water engine which will run on pure water. It achieves this by using a process of advanced electrolysis to convert water into its constituent parts of hydrogen and oxygen to make chemical energy that produces power to drive the engine with only water vapour emissions. 

(Read about it here: https://youtu.be/FIxT6rK02lk?si=fxS5pQPlqleTmCHd). 

No vested corporate, institutional or theological interests should be allowed to obstruct such progress, and every pressure should be mounted upon political parties to facilitate the rapid development of such initiatives. Consequential questioning dictates there is no other way – not even for the Evangelicals. 

WAF 42 ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ 26/2/24        

The old adage ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is often thought to be an ancient Chinese proverb attributable to that most veritable of philosophers Confucius, but it seems that the phrase is of much more recent origin, and its credit to Confucius not only unfounded but also mischievous. Jack Trout, author of the much-acclaimed book on marketing called ‘In Search of the Obvious’, has suggested that the true translation of the Confucius phrase is ‘A picture is worth a thousand pieces of gold’ which, in English at least, doesn’t quite have the same ring to it!

It is more likely that the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ originated in the USA in the early part of the 20th century, when the expression ‘Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words’ appeared in a 1911 newspaper article discussing journalism and publicity.

Other similar phrases popped up regularly in the 1920’s, but it is probable that the modern use of the term stems from an article in that infamous and widely read trade journal Printers’ Ink, wherein Fred R. Barnard (namesake of the English illustrator, caricaturist and genre painter noted for his work on the novels of Charles Dickens) promoted the use of picture images in advertising with the line ‘One Look is Worth a Thousand Words’. Adverts of the day, as any study of early newspapers will reveal, were as long on persuasive text as they were short on images!

Some years later another piece by Barnard appeared in a March 1927 issue of Printers’ Ink under the heading ‘One Picture is Worth Ten Thousand Words’, a phrase that he claimed to have been a Chinese Proverb. But Barnard was later quoted as saying that he had only called it a Chinese proverb ‘so that people would take it seriously’. 

That they certainly did, for it was soon thereafter credited to Confucius who would surely have turned in his grave at the thought. Fake news indeed!

Adopting that mantra, I offer below two pictures, worth together a thousand words, against which I pen an extra thousand or so words of comment. 

A building with a brick wall and a brick wall

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A building with a pipe on the side

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The second image above is an enlargement of a part of the first image showing the cheap and nasty rainwater pipes that serve the building they adorn in Bethnal Green. This of course is nothing unusual: similar miserable arrangements can be seen across London, and indeed throughout our entire country, as the processes of modern procurement, be they straight Design and Build or some other sort of Construction Management contracting, deliver upon us the worst in terms of poorly thought through and ill-coordinated detailing. First, they eradicated the craftsman. Next, they came for the designers….!

Design and Build is, as we well know, a misnomer, and the images above betray a complete absence of any design thought or coordination. The stormwater drainpipes, as shown, of course never appeared on any architect’s drawing: such information was no doubt completely absent from the concept information and left for the Trade Contractor responsible for ‘plastic guttering, downpipes, all hoppers, clips, brackets and fixings etc.’ You know the language!

So does any of this matter? After all the building that I illustrate is anyway wholly undistinguished….

The answer is a resounding yes, it does matter because something very precious is steadily being replaced with the banal. Wherever I walk around London, from the districts of Mayfair and Bloomsbury to those of Poplar or Acton, I find that older buildings never fail to delight in terms of the detailing, the craft, the skill, and the care with which they were originally designed and built. Against that, so much of the new disappoints in terms of the construction and the detailing, even when the design concept has merit. And much of that disappointment lies in the increasing absence of attention to design detail, and the absence craft in its execution, that hitherto gave delight. 

As a complete contrast take the Divinity School in Oxford and the drainage details there as evidenced in the pictures below:  

A building with a statue in the front

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A building with windows and a drainpipe

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A black pipe on a stone wall

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                              Divinity School, Oxford by William Orchard – built during 1480’s.

Commodity. Firmness. Delight?

Lest I be mistaken, I am not calling for a return to traditional forms of building and I fully recognise the need for modern, lightweight, components with ever greater strength to weight ratios; better thermal performance; and thinner envelope construction. But I am calling for greater coordination and care in the selection, arrangement and detailing of the components that we do use. Let us never forget that infamous metaphorical line by Mies van der Rohe: 

‘Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together’.

Louis Kahn of course famously suggested to his students that when stuck for inspiration they should have a conversation with their materials, asking ‘What does a brick want to be?’ In his book featuring Kahn’s wonderful Bangladesh National Parliament, William Hall reports such an imagined conversation wherein Kahn asked, ‘What do you want, brick?’.

‘I like an arch’ was the reply to which Kahn allegedly responded ‘Look, I want one too, but arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lintel…what do you think of that brick?’ But the brick remained firm: ‘I like an arch’.

Of course, whether lintel or arch it matters not, because in Kahn’s hands arch or lintel were both beautifully incorporated into the whole. That is the point, as is well illustrated in the images shown below:

A building next to a body of water

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                       Bangladesh National Parliament completed 1982 – Louis Kahn

A close-up of a building

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            Salk Institute for Biological Studies completed 1965 – Louis Kahn 

But it is more than just the detailing and the beauty that is compromised through the crudeness of contractor led design and construction; it is also function and, critically, safety. Post the awful fire at Grenfell Tower back in June 2017 there has been an enormous rash of litigation claims following the investigations of facades to high-rise residential buildings which the government put in train. 

Thick and fast have come the dismayed reports of the findings: missing cavity barriers (both in design and construction) to compartmentation and around openings; combustible insulation extensively incorporated (both in design and construction) in contravention of ADB2 guidance; service extract ducts and flues discharging into cavities and cladding surfaces that breach spread of flame guidance. The list goes on and on; the affected buildings run into their thousands; the costs of remediation into the billions.

Architects are not free of criticism in all this, but one thing is for sure: the transformation in methods of building procurement that has taken place over the last four decades, with the tendency to split the construction process into trade packages, and to transfer substantial parts of the design and specification responsibility to ill-trained construction surveyors, Design and Build contractors, and so-called specialist sub-contractors, has brought with it a terrible price.

If such a process delivers drainage arrangements of the like shown on the outside of my Bethnal Green example, just think what the inside, hidden, construction looks like!

UK Design and Build of course started during the Thatcher era – the first Design and Build contract was published by the JCT in 1981, just two years after she came to office as Prime Minister. Perhaps it is no coincidence that she famously claimed that Oxford’s ‘monumental buildings impress ….by their size rather than their exquisite architecture*’

Maybe she just didn’t see the drainpipes at Divinity College the way I do.

WAF 41: ‘Take a Letter……’ 22 Feb 2024

‘I’ve brought a crate of Christmas Cheer’ said the Murphy’s driver as he struggled through the door bringing three bottles of very fine brandy ‘for Mr Price’. I thanked him and thought no more of it until Cedric, upon returning to the office after a good lunch expressed his extreme displeasure.

After reprimanding me for accepting this delivery Cedric, in customary fashion, instructed his P.A. to ‘Take a letter….

Dear Mr Enright…’ began Cedric, to the clattering rat-a-tat-tat of the machine, ‘It is the policy of this office to refuse gifts of any kind from Clients, Contractors and Suppliers, past, present or future. Kindly arrange collection of the offending delivery at your earliest convenience’.

My goodness, Cedric had a way with words, and my, how things have changed since then both in terms of protocols and the very equipment through which we communicated….back in 1974 our office boasted one of the then state of the art IBM Selectric 1 electric typewriters. 

Distinguished by a sphere covered in the letters of the alphabet, the Selectric’s mechanism replaced the traditional ‘basket’ of individual type bars which, when manually struck, had swung up to strike a ribbon which in turn printed the individual letters upon the page. As well as speed, the ‘golf balls’ could be easily switched allowing multiple changes of font….all state of the art back then.  

….But I digress. I thought nothing more of this occurrence as we broke for Christmas, and indeed the matter had been long forgotten when, late in March, I heard a knock at the door followed by that same melodic Irish voice: ‘I’ve come to collect those bottles of Christmas Cheer’ said the driver with a wry smile. The contents of all three bottles had of course been long ago consumed so I was dispatched with some urgency to the Soho Wine Store in Percy Street to buy replacements, albeit at retail price.

I have many times used this story as an indication of the basic standards and integrity that are indispensable to trust. It goes to the heart of the very notion of professionalism and the importance of recognising its essential characteristics. A much-abused word today ‘profession’ is defined when ‘googled’ as ‘doing something as a paid job rather than as a hobby e.g. professional athletes, a professional golfer’. This is an appalling misrepresentation of the true meaning of this important word. 

What I learned through Cedric is that being a ‘professional’ involves the delivery of skill and knowledge that a client usually doesn’t have which, although for a fee, is provided with the client’s interest at the fore.

It is for precisely this reason that care and caution in relation to any gifts or inducements that might compromise the independence and appropriateness of our service is of such critical importance. Examples of the importance of this principle abound: you rely on the integrity of your dentist at check-up time: when told a filling is needed you trust the advice. This is of course why your doctor should never accept gifts from a drug company, for it is surely unthinkable that your prescription, in quantity or character, should be influenced by favour.

And its why we should all be pleased that, albeit late in the day, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) at long last, after a long period of mounting pressure and criticism, finally agreed back in 2016 to set up a code of practice in which its member companies would be obliged to disclose payments made to doctors and pharmacists. Back then, pharmaceutical companies were paying healthcare professionals a stonking £40 million per year in ‘gifts’.

I have never been offered any form of inducement to specify a product, or to recommend any particular construction company or sub-contractor and, although I occasionally hear of disciplinary action against architects in respect of such matters, my suspicion (and sincere hope) is that such failings are rare within our profession. Indeed, it is perhaps something of a surprise we must trawl way back to the days of Pontefract architect John Poulsen to find any really significant scale of corruption: he was jailed in 1973 at the Leeds County Court in a case that brought down the then Home Secretary Reginald Maudling.

All this I pondered when I received notification in early January that a bottle of wine had been delivered as a Christmas gift to me at the registered address of our company. On the recommended list of the Sunday Times Wine Club as well as the BBC Good Food Wine Club, this circa £18 Cabilié 2022 comes from one of the 100-year-old vineyards that Hervé Sabardeil recently purchased way up on a sparse, steeply terraced slope that forms part of the Agly Valley just north of the Spanish border. Little has changed there since Ceasar, probably sampling wine from the same vines, raced through the region en route to Spain some 2000 years earlier.

A map of france with a red area

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The gift had been sent by a company of consultant engineers who I initially had no recollection of having ever heard of. But a little searching on their website, courtesy of technologies somewhat more advanced than Cedric’s IBM Selectric, reveals that they were involved with one of my past projects, completed some ten years ago.

Pondering upon whether I should accept this gift reminded me of President Nixon’s famous half-hour TV presentation back on 23 September 1952 in which he tried to answer charges regarding his alleged abuse of political expense funds.

Perhaps its most memorable part was when he stared into the camera, paused for a lengthy period, and then defiantly stated that he was going to keep one gift ‘no matter what happened’: 

‘……One other thing I probably should tell you because if we don’t they’ll probably be saying this about me too, we did get something—a gift—after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?

It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he’d sent all the way from Texas. Black and white spotted. And our little girl—Tricia, the 6-year-old—named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.’ 

The ever-gullible American electorate of course bought his calculated and sentimental drivel, lock stock and barrel, enabling him to run as President Eisenhauer’s deputy and of course gain office as the Vice President. The rest is history…right through to Watergate some twenty years later. 

……Leopards and spots?

Chequers died in 1964 and is buried at Long Island’s Bide-A-Wee Pet Cemetery but the dog’s legacy rolls on: in 1999 the Nixon speech was placed sixth on a list of 100 Twentieth Century US speeches in terms of social and political impact and rhetorical artistry! Most of that kudos came courtesy of Chequers. Indeed, the USA celebrates ‘National Dogs in Politics Day’ on 23 September each year and the resident White House dog under each president holds the title: ‘First Dog of the United States (FDOTUS). You couldn’t make it up!So, I am going to keep my bottle of wine as well, and much look forward to enjoying its richness and the lovely velvety feel that the French call ‘gouleyant’. But Cedric’s story serves as a timeless reminder to us all of the importance, in terms of professional conduct, of restraint in these matters.

Potential implications upon Stadia Design of playing a single 60-minute game without a half-time interval, on a ‘stop – start’ basis.

It is understood that there is growing interest in an experiment to alter the format of a traditional football game, i.e. 90 minutes split equally into two 45-minute halves with a 15-minute half-time interval to a single, 60-minute game without an interval, but played on the basis that when there is a break in play, i.e. as a result of foul or a substitution that the clock is stopped, similar to other sports, i.e. American Football and Basketball. It appears that early experiments have shown that the duration of a football game played on this basis, results similarly in an approximate 90-minute game.

The potential implications upon stadia design as a result of the simple omission of the half-time interval within the sport of football could be enormous, and it is an experiment that has all stadia owners, operators and designers studying with keen interest.

For example, the extent of the provision of food and beverage services and the length of concourse concessions and numbers of points of sale, together with male and female toilet facilities, are designed specifically to cope with an exact number of spectators, nominally 50% of the terrace spectator population using either or both of the facilities over the course of the ‘half-time window’, considered as being 20 minutes in duration to cater for those spectators that choose to leave their seats 5 minutes prior to half-time in order to avoid the anticipated rush’. In its most simple terms, no half-time interval leads potentially to no rush and a completely different ‘science’ to be applied to design of stadia concourse provision.

An anticipated reduction in the intensity of use of both the concessions and the W.C. facilities as a result of the omission of the half-time interval, would obviously lead to a reduction of the provision required and, therefore, greater flexibility in stadia concourse design and a greater depth and breadth of concession food and beverage offer for example.

The greater flexibility may well, however, lead to what many spectators would consider as the inconvenience of spectators more regularly leaving and returning to their seats and the ‘imposition’ of having to stand to allow spectators to pass along narrow seat rows to the stadia gangways and vomitories.  The solutions, perhaps a complete re-think of the minimum acceptable terrace depths required to say 1100mm that readily allow spectators to pass along the seating rows or more radically, the introduction of ‘in-seat’ hospitality service. To the spectator with a more traditional view on the duration and make up of a football game as two 45 minute halves with a 15-minute half-time period, the experiment may seem alarming, but to those spectators with less traditional fan experience expectations, whom understand the potential theatre of say, the recently introduced experiments with the ability for the game referee to refer decisions to a video referee, a 5th game official, stopping a game as such a ……………. and perhaps being permitted may seem enormously appealing

230919 WAF 38: Goldfinger speaking…

I had an Erno Goldfinger experience to round off this summer. Not like the occasion when, telephoning his office, he was answered by a young architect imitating his Hungarian accent: ‘Goldfinger speaking’. The great man allegedly replied ‘This is Goldfinger and you’re fired!’.  Nor the occasion (as reported by John Grindrod in his brilliant book Concretopia) when the short-fused maestro sacked someone sitting in his reception who wasn’t even employed by him. 

Mine was an experience more akin to the two months Erno and his long-suffering wife spent living in east London, on the 24th floor of Balfron Tower, their balcony overlooking the Thames above the north exit to the Blackwall Tunnel. That is just about the point, as the incoming high tide began to ebb, that the big cargo ships and liners were gently manoeuvred by skilled helmsmen and their tugs into the locks that served the West India Docks.

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Erno and Ursula on their balcony in Balfron Tower in 1968

Erno and Ursula had moved into the tower from Willow Road in Hampstead. (Their next-door neighbour was Ian Fleming who had adopted Erno’s surname for the lead villain in his 1959 book, Goldfinger. The film of the same name, the third in the 007 series, followed in 1964. By the time the architect moved temporarily into the tower in 1968, the Goldfinger name was already legendary.)

Erno told the Guardian in February 1968: ‘I want to experience at first hand the size of the rooms, the amenities provided, the time it takes to obtain a lift, the amount of wind whistling around the tower, and any problems that might arise from my designs, so I can correct them in the future.’ The following year he declared that ‘All architects should live in a home they designed.’

The reason for living in one of my own projects was far less laudable: my wife and I were asked to house-sit and look after our grandchildren for a week while their parents travelled overseas. I had designed alterations and a substantial extension to their two-storey home in north London, recently completed.

An interesting experience.  Nothing in the way of visits during construction, post-occupancy snagging, a client’s invitation to a house-warming party, or even a thank-you dinner, can match the reality of actually living in a home you designed for someone else. Especially when you do it with a young family still in residence.

Yes, the morning sun does penetrate as deeply into the plan as I had expected; the shadows on the (of course white) walls are indeed as sharp as I had hoped for; visual privacy from neighbours has been adequately secured despite the large expanse of new fenestration and bi-fold doors; the place does remain mercifully cool in this hottest of summers courtesy of cross ventilation; the kitchen works fine and the planning offers plenty of freedom and variety for the kids (five- and three-year-olds and an 18-month baby) in terms of play-areas and quiet corners. And then that important question: is there enough storage space for the plethora of kids’ toys, so that the swift transformation can be achieved post-bedtime? Happily, it all seems to work just fine.

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The Type 1 Cornish Unit

My son and daughter-in-law had purchased a Type 1 Cornish Unit, one of 30,000 prefabricated homes, made largely of pre-cast reinforced concrete planks, between 1946 and 1960. Their property was the end unit within a terrace of four and because their site was unusually large, we were able to create an extension that almost doubled the ground-floor living area. But it was the geometry of the available space that produced the real challenge, and greatest opportunity, as can be seen from the before-and-after plans below.

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Ground Floor Plan before alteration

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Ground Floor Plan after alteration

Most of us in the western world grow up in orthogonal spaces, but the spaces we have created through this expansion areis intentionally non-orthogonal. in response to the shape of the site. This is also notable within the section of the new living room, which has a mono-pitch roof and sloping ceiling. I am curious to know how this unusual ordering of space will impact on grandchildren as they develop. 

For example, will their creative play – so important in learning – be influenced by the angular geometries? Will their sensory responses to space be heightened? Will they be more demanding – or more tolerant – of the unusual in place-making and design?

How space impacts mood, behaviour and performance was my main reason for choosing Canterbury School of Architecture as my initial place of study: the course included a module on architectural psychology. Under that programme, I was fascinated to learn ways in which people are emotionally and psychologically affected by their environments, not only by the furniture arrangements, but also by room sizes and shapes, inter-relationships, décor and colour. (All this would prove to be especially useful when, years later, I was commissioned to design the Treatment Centre for Victims of Torture.)

As a child, my contextual experience was totally different from that of today’s primary school children. Our Victorian school was a grim, forbidding place: high window-sills offered some daylight yet no views out. Our desks were placed in traditionally regimented rows, one behind the other. The teacher’s desk was set on an intimidating raised platform. By contrast, our grandchildren share large working tables with other pupils in a classroom with low windows, all offering views to the playground. The teacher’s table is located centrally. 

Does my experience make me more receptive to hierarchical management structures? Will theirs accelerate development of teamwork skills?

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Traditional classroom set-up (source: Architectural Psychology,                                  RIBA Publications 1970)                                                 

Also notable in living in this house is the generosity of the urban planning and the commitment to landscaped public space across the estate – regular grassed areas, plenty of tree-planting and even beds of roses still maintained by the local council. And of course, in this town planned at the dawn of the modern motor age, comes a local parade of shops, local school and local pub. We can walk everywhere in terms of basic needs. All of which is great for the kids.

Talking of house-warming parties, back in 1978 Liz Goldfinger, a gracious, generous, and kind past-client, invited me to the celebration following completion of my alterations to her four-storey Victorian terraced house, in a quiet side road in Islington. 

In the corner of the main lounge sat an elderly man, hands resting on a walking stick, bow tie slightly crooked. This was Liz’s father, Erno, whose response when introduced to me still rings in my ears: ‘So you are the young man who thinks he is an architect’.

Wonderful! 

231019 WAF 39

The milkman was once an essential service available to all households but by 1995 doorstep delivery had declined to just 45% of the retail milk market. Today it is a mere 3%, and still falling.

Our milk came from Bartonsham Dairies located alongside the east bank of the river Wye, just south of Hereford. As a child I well remember the Friesian cows, interspersed with a few Jerseys grazing those pastures, all part of the alluvial flood plain that, through its annual flooding, supported grasses so rich in nutrients. 

We of course loved the Jersey cows with their gentle nature and light brown colouring, but commercial realities had already led to a strong preference amongst dairy farmers for the ‘Black and Whites’ as descended from the cattle of Friesland in north Holland and the Schleswig Holstein herds of northern Germany. 

Friesians are now the dominant breed in industrial farming worldwide, partly because of their robust health but mainly because of the comparatively high milk yields: 17.6 kgs against 11.7 average per day for Jerseys. Against that, Jersey milk is 15% richer in protein and calcium and contains considerably higher concentrations of the essential vitamin B12….and it tastes better! 

Gold, silver or red foil capped bottles which were delivered to our side door (tradesman to the side!) by 7 a.m. each morning, all against the night-time ritual of leaving ‘empties’, well rinsed and clean, on the doorstep for collection. I will never forget the chinking of bottles in their crates, the whirring of the electric battery-powered milk-floats as they stopped and started in the street outside, and of course the routine of Friday evenings when the milkman would call, leather money bag over his shoulder, collecting cash for the week’s deliveries.

Those milk floats, often to be seen ‘struggling’ back to the farm at walking pace with batteries deplete, were invented by Philip V Pocock who created SPEL Products, a company now dedicated to the manufacture of a wide range of products including GRP cladding panels – but that is another story… 

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The point of all this is that I had, as a child, a clear understanding of where our milk came from: I often visited the farm when sent by bicycle to buy another ‘pint of gold top’ or some cream; and I walked the fields where the cows grazed and canoed the river adjoining the farm; I even knew the milkman. Likewise, the baker, the butcher and a host of other local service providers. Even where I did not know the producer, I was aware that much of our food – meat products, fruit, vegetables, and of course cider – were all sourced locally by our shopkeepers.

But those days, the ‘50s turning ‘60s, saw the closing of the era of (predominantly) local supply: indeed, during my grandparents’ lives, food had travelled an average of just eight miles before arrival on the table. Today, within the UK, the average food item travels 1,837 miles to get from farm to plate – it’s 1,500 miles in the USA, 1,864 in Canada and a staggering 43,496 miles per dish in Melbourne Australia!  If you want to stretch that further in the UK buy a MacDonald’s Big Mac for which the combined ingredients will have clocked some 8,000 miles en route to you.

And ‘waste’ is just as bad: everything that ‘emanated’ from the house of my uncle and aunt just outside Hereford ended up in the soil: they had an earth closet which was dug out regularly, the contents being dispersed across the garden as fertiliser; other rubbish was burned periodically, and nothing was wasted. The plastic and polystyrene packing and wrappings of today would have been rejected out of hand as they had no way to safely dispose of such dangerously toxic and carcinogenic materials…….

But it is not the issues of sustainability that I address here. Rather I wish to focus on the astonishing transformations to the fabric, rituals and ‘choreography’ of our cities and city-life that have taken place in the recent decades consequent upon the revolution in retail supplies and delivery. 

My first proper job was as a van driver employed by the local town grocer delivering orders around Hereford and to remote locations in and around the villages across the county, right up into the Welsh borders. That world came to a crashing end with the arrival into town of the supermarket chains. Buying patterns of generations were upended, seemingly overnight, as these new stores with their underground or closely adjoining carparks attracted shoppers to a single supply source: bread, meat, fish, fruit, indeed all groceries and the rest under one roof, transactions at one till. Rapidly all the local specialist food suppliers within the city centre were forced to close, their offerings (irrespective of the quality of product or service) too expensive and too inconvenient. 

This, of course, coincided with the shift to full time working for most women, so late opening and single point sourcing of supplies with convenient parking became agents for such change, and I get that, but gone for ever were the sights of locally trapped rabbits and pheasants, and the pungent smell of fish, in the stalls that had for centuries adorned the town’s historic and lively Butter Market. And gone forever was a way of life for traders and those who serviced and supplied them, for customers, and indeed for the entire city.

As with smaller towns across the country, Hereford was thus left with an abundance of clothes shops and other retailers but even there, as with food, ‘local’ was lost: the likes of Burtons, Dorothy Perkins, Stead and Simpson for clothes and shoes; Smiths and Menzies for magazines, Boots pharmacy and so on: these were the national retailers whose names and brands became the familiar backdrop to our provincial ‘high streets’. They now called all the shots, and they called them with little or no sympathy for local interests or tradition.

So, with their arrival came the rapid de-populating of town centres, for gone were the local retailers and with them the tradition of living (or at east letting out rooms) ‘over the shop’. The national brands would yield no space for access to upper floors (100% shop front being the mantra), and they would countenance no messy residential letting operations or problems with washing machines leaking from flats over into their retail outlets.

So, over the decades, those lovely provincial shopping streets with their three and four storey Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian buildings, hitherto occupied across all floors, became (save for some commercial lettings to small professional businesses) largely unoccupied save for the ground floor retail. You only had to look in winter months at the darkened upper floors in places as far afield as Canterbury, Tewksbury, or Blackburn for the evidence. Terry Farrell’s ingenious work for the Comyn Ching development in Covent Garden proffered an alternative to such waste, but alas, national retailers cared nothing for the towns that they exploited. 

So fast forward to today and the crisis in retail and I can see nothing but more seismic changes to come: Ocado – you now see their vans everywhere – are fast set to render the Supermarkets of Tesco et al completely redundant in another twist to the story of food distribution. (What is it about the British and grocery trades? Founded in 2000 in a single room in London this is now a £2.5 billion operation with major expansion into Europe, Canada, and the Far-East). 

Headquartered in Hatfield, they have no shops…simply warehouses such as their huge unit at Andover, full of high-speed ‘bots’ which ‘whizz’ about ‘picking’ products for customers’ orders from atop a 3D grid of crates packed with items. A 50-item order is completed in minutes, then bagged ready for transport. These videos and the photo below give a taste of tomorrow… today.

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Put simply, why would you contemplate the grim chore of pushing a trolley round a store, loading up the Weetabix and trooping home by car, when you have Ocado delivering to your home at pre-agreed times against an on-line order. 

And then there is the future of delivery by air not road: tomorrow’s tomorrow looks more like the world of Dan Dare comics with drones flashing about the skies, ‘dropping’ parcels to our garden pads! Fantasy? No…. it’s already in train with Amazon: 

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Take a look at this video for the story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67132527.

What does this mean for the Basildons and the Barnsleys, the Peterboroughs and the Prestons of the UK? Quite simply this: Good News! With the demise of the dreadful supermarkets and national retailers we can now completely rethink the meaning of town. Remember Cedric Price’s adage: 

  • Medieval towns were like boiled eggs – citizens slept safely inside the gated walls and worked in the surrounding fields by day.
  • Industrial towns were like fried eggs….we worked in the centre by day and left to sleep in the suburbs.
  • Modern cities are more like scrambled eggs with the spread of work and residence well intermixed.

We now face a new era of great transition where we can turn our cities into the utopia that they really should offer….places of culture in its widest sense where we live in homes which are supplied with all our essential needs by robots. 

Incredible………And in terms of architecture and planning: nothing but opportunity as we completely re-think citizenship and the fabric within which it is hosted.

30718 WAF 37: Designing to order…

So, here’s a complex and controversial set of issues:

Presenting recently for the American news channel MSNBC, Johnathan Capehart described a recent decision by Republican appointed Justices in the Supreme Court of America that found in favour of a web-site designer who had refused a commission from a same-sex couple. The Court decided that forcing acceptance of such a commission ‘would violate (the designer’s) First Amendment Rights’ because she would be required to draft a wedding programme which would contain commentary that conflicted with her religious beliefs.  

Following the ‘six in favour / three against’ ruling, one of the dissenting judges, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, issued the following statement:

‘Today is a sad day in the American constitutional law and in the lives of LGBT people. The Supreme Court of the United States declares that a particular kind of business, though open to the public, has a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class. The Court does so for the first time in its history.

By issuing this new license to discriminate in a case brought by a company that seeks to deny same-sex couples the full and equal enjoyment of its services, the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second class status.’

You can read an account of the case on https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/supreme-court-rules-designer-make-wedding-websites-gay-100539807 where the ruling is reported to have found in favour of one Lorie Smith, affirming that she can refuse to design websites for same-sex weddings despite a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender, and other characteristics.

The report goes on to suggest that artists, photographers, videographers, and writers are among those who can equally refuse to offer what the Court called ‘expressive services’ if doing so would run contrary to their beliefs.

In contrast to her opinion, and in support of the ruling, Sotomayor’s fellow Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the First Amendment ‘envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands’ adding that the Court has long held that ‘the opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished liberties and part of what keeps our Republic strong.’

Whilst the instincts of most of the readers of this column will likely be much in sympathy with the views of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, some may consider that the Gorsuch view that a ‘ruling against Smith would allow the government to force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others whose services involve speech to speak what they do not believe on pain of penalty’ to be a matter of concern.

For example, such an instance could involve a gay website designer being forced to design websites for an organization that advocates against same-sex marriage. Such advocacy, however distasteful to, no doubt, most of our population is, after all, legal both in the USA and the UK. On that basis it would seem logical that the denial of web-site services would, as in the case of Lorie Smith, also be illegal. Would that be acceptable to all those who would have Lorie Smith prosecuted?

Gorsuch expressed further concerns in this respect as follows: ‘Countless other creative professionals, too, could be forced to choose between remaining silent, producing speech that violates their beliefs, or speaking their minds and incurring sanctions for doing so.’

Which brings me to reflect on architects and their rights, or otherwise, to refuse commissions on the grounds of personal belief. For example, I remember many years ago a well-respected London firm being pilloried in the Architects’ Journal because its design for a prison in the Middle East contained a gallows. This begs the question as to whether members of its design team should have been entitled to refuse to participate in such a project on ethical or religious grounds without fear of putting their jobs at risk?

Likewise, should a Muslim architect in the UK be entitled to refuse a commission to design an extension to a Christian Church on religious grounds? Or should an atheist be entitled to refuse a commission to design a chapel on purely non-religious grounds? Similarly, should an anti-abortionist architect be entitled to refuse a commission to design an abortion clinic, or a pro-abortion architect a headquarter fit-out for an anti-abortion pressure group? Perhaps even more controversial, should an architect be free to refuse a commission to design a surgery for ‘non-medically required’ circumcision of male children, a practice which is common within both Jewish and Muslim communities, and lawful in the UK if there is consent from both parents? 

Our world is becoming daily more complex in these matters, and many issues are being tested in open forum when in earlier times commissions that were not palatable to a particular architect might, perhaps, have been politely declined on the basis that the firm was simply ‘too busy’. But in these times of ever greater transparency, and dare I suggest it, ever greater intolerance, such conflicts are becoming more common and very much more public. Indeed, it is no stretch of the imagination to contemplate an architect being faced with the same conundrum as that which led Michael Black and John Morgan, back in March 2010, to bring a civil case against Susanne Wilkinson who, you may recall, refused on religious grounds to provide accommodation at her home, from which she offered bed and breakfast services, despite having accepted a reservation and received a deposit. She lost.

Of course, some may argue that whilst refusing to grant a night’s accommodation to a gay couple in a guest house, however small, can be readily likened to the reprehensible conduct of a publican refusing to serve a person of colour in a bar, it is quite different to accepting (or rejecting) an invitation to provide service as an architect – or as any other type of designer (for example: a web designer…). Others would surely disagree…

Wisdom might of course suggest that a gay couple would anyway be better not to employ an architect who, on religious or moral grounds, felt unable to design their house, but if legal precedent is to be consistently applied, then in line with the Black/Morgan v Wilkinson case, refusing such a commission for such reasons would surely be deemed illegal. But is it right that an architect in this position should be deemed guilty of a criminal act? Most would surely find such a reason for refusal both bizarre and unacceptable, but amongst them there will be those who see little sense in forcing an architect to undertake such work against penalty of prosecution. After all punishment, whether by way of fine or imprisonment, is unlikely to change the mindset of the offender, which is where the problem lies.

Against those conundrums remember that the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act of 2013 specifically excludes marriages within the Church of England which is allowed to continue to apply the biblical definition of marriage as set out in Canon Law as being ‘in its nature a union permanent and lifelong, for better or for worse, till death them do part, of one man with one woman, to the exclusion of all others on either side….Likewise, mosques and synagogues, and indeed any other ‘religious place(s)’ are so protected from any obligation to conduct same sex marriages on their premises. 

Then there is the common practice of refusing women free movement. I well remember attending Zaha’s funeral at the Regent’s Park Mosque, and hearing the loud and vain protestations of some of the architectural profession’s most eminent women as they were refused access to the ‘musallah’ (principal hall). Protest they might but to no avail: their entry was firmly denied as rightly, or wrongly, their menfolk (bar the occasional mild protest) acquiesced to the rigid segregation of sexes that Frederick Gibberd’s plan had anticipated. (Yes, he, the same protestant architect that gifted Liverpool its Roman Catholic Cathedral!)

Arguments around these sorts of issues will surely continue to escalate, both in their frequency and intensity, but it seems to me that there is a hidden danger in all this that those who insist quite rightly on promoting freedom may, in securing it, unwittingly be establishing what many might consider to be unfair restrictions on the liberty of others. 

Some may advocate common sense and tolerance as we go forward but, either way, we can surely expect increasing tensions and plenty of highly controversial rulings as the Courts are forced to engage in such matters.