Designs on transforming environment
May 22 2009 by John Burns, Constructing Excellence
WOW. Two huge weeks for designers, constructors and our clients. A fortnight of awards, initiatives and new challenges.
Following hard on the heels of the RICS awards, Constructing Excellence presented 11 excellent regional winners showing high standards of architecture and design, followed this week by a record seven regional awards being presented by the RIBA.
All show that we have not just been improving, but helping transform some parts of the region, but not everywhere, and the shadow of declining business and recession still remains.
Two major initiatives in the region were launched last week. Be Connected is an initiative with Constructing Excellence, CIC and the region’s professions to strengthen skills, knowledge and capacity to further transform the built environment in the North East.
It was launched alongside the design review and enabling service, aimed at adding value to major projects throughout the region in the capable hands of John Devlin, former director of the client, award-winning Gateshead Council.
Principal speaker at the launch was another powerful client, David Burney, commissioner of New York City’s department of design and construction, who explained how quality was being achieved through careful selection of designers, patronage and the use of design quality indicators to maintain the shared vision of projects.
The use of price in tendering for designers, he considered to be contrary to achieving high standards.
At Government level, further design aspirations are being reinforced with renewed ambition for the achievement of design quality in the schools’ programme and in a desire to use public projects as exponents and encouragers of high design standards set out in ‘World Class Places’.
Few would argue with the desire to build new and better places with high standards of amenity, quality, sustainability, security, light, space, natural environments and design, which help to build on our existing heritage in ways which celebrate what our society can achieve with sensitivity.
