Jul 11 2005
Prince Charles gave his support to efforts by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to put design at the heart of regeneration and new development, and create beautiful, liveable and sustainable places.
In a statement delivered to the RIBA Conference in Bristol on Saturday 1 July, the Prince went on to suggest that urbanism should form a major part of architectural education and of the RIBA’s ongoing work. On the eve of its two day conference featuring speakers from the US, Copenhagen and Barcelona, as well as the UK, the RIBA gave its first RIBA European City of the Year award to the City of Copenhagen, in recognition of its achievement over 30 years in transforming its public spaces into places for people.
The citation congratulated ‘The architects, planners and politicians of Copenhagen have re-engineered the spatial fabric of their city in a way that supports and enhances a rich variety of human activity, breathing life into the city and bringing about cultural, social and economic regeneration.’ Prince Charles said: “I was delighted to have an opportunity to talk to your outgoing President, George Ferguson, recently and very heartened to hear that the subject of this year’s conference was to be ‘the power of place’. I feel greatly encouraged that issues such as beautiful, liveable, sustainable places that are built for future generations and focus on people-centred design are now at the core of the architectural agenda – as they are at the core of the work programme of my own Foundation for the Built Environment. My Foundation seeks, as you know, to teach and demonstrate in practice the principles of urbanism in a way that is grounded in traditional time-tested skills, but forward-facing to confront the challenges of today.
“It would also appear that planning reform is well underway and the demand to build a large number of houses in the U.K. makes a strong case for the expert generalist as design coordinator for regeneration and new development, as recommended in the Egan review. This must, I believe, be design-led in order to give better precision to the social and economic factors of a place and I can think of no better profession to fulfil this role than the architect.
“I firmly believe that if the architectural profession wants to add long term value to society, a more holistic approach to design is needed in architectural education. If more architects understood the complexities of a place and saw buildings as part of an interconnected system that was fluid over time and not as fashion objects, the results would be sustainable for many generations. Teaching these fundamental principles early on in an architect’s education will neither stifle creativity nor challenge the avant-garde. It is human nature to invent and challenge, but I think humans do this best when guided by a solid collective understanding of centuries of human solutions rather than by embracing a discontinuous and anti-historic approach.
“The genius of your agenda, if I may say so, is that looking at both the city and the collective good brings these complex factors together and raises the challenge for a new era for the architect in society. It would be so marvellous if architectural education could gear up to respond to this very real challenge. If it does not, I fear the job of leading the organization of new places will probably fall to other parties.
“I would like to end by sending you all my very best wishes for this conference, apologize for being unable to attend in person and to hope that you will be able to put the new urban agenda at the heart of the RIBA’s ongoing work. If you do, it will be to the ultimate benefit of future generations facing the serious challenge of structuring the human habitat to respond to the new global challenges.”