School projects in UK fail to lure young architects

Take for instance you are occupied with an important project and have to submit it by the next day’s morning. But only at the late night you find out that in your desk the marker (it’s highly important and has to be used) is strangely absent. What may happen? The market is closed and you have no other way except to stop the work. You will castigate yourself in the depths of despair. These types of incidents are tragic but they do happen. Well, almost same instances are repeated in the length and breadth of UK. How?

Lots of new schools projects are being delayed and the concerned authorities are losing patience. Reason? The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) is suffering from an unparalleled crisis. What is the nature of the crisis? It is the dearth of skilled architects along with a superfluity of uninspiring designs. What’s more this inordinate situation is delaying not less than a third of all new schools projects and making the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) apprehensive. The main concern is that qualified architects along with innovative designs are not coming to the fore. Speaking on this Helen Taylor, convener of Riba’s schools client forum, states: “The bidding process in which contractors retain competing architects may have resulted in a lack of effective engagement.”

Now is this a recent phenomenon? The experts and observers believe that this surfaced some time back but has attained the direful situation or reached the extremum only at this time. However according to Professor Michael Stacey, Director of the Institute of Architecture at Nottingham University, “There is no shortage of talent. What we lack in the UK is the ability to link architects with the right clients.” Ninety per cent of our students are working on a schools project for their final-year thesis,” he added. Well, the probem is somewhere else.

More architects are getting interested to work for private practices which are always lucrative. Though the present credit crunch is offering an obstacle to profitableness, it attracts more architects still. These private projects deal with remunerative office developments. On the contrary the schools work are known to be insufficiently profitable. Unless these projects are made lucrative, there is no hope.